Raghuram Govind Rajan, chief economic adviser in the finance ministry, who was Tuesday named the next governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), brings with him wide experience as a banker, academician and technocrat, having served institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and taught at the University of Chicago.

At 50, Rajan will also be among the youngest to occupy the high office at Mint Street in Mumbai, where he takes over from incumbent Duvvuri Subbarao on Sep 5. But holding high positions at young age is not new for this Bhopal-born financial economist. 

An alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in New Delhi, the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Ahmedabad, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a gold medallist all through, Rajan was the youngest economic-counsellor and chief economist at the IMF from October 2003 to December 2006.

His peers, in a poll conducted by The Economist, called him an economist "with the most important ideas for a post-crisis world", which was a rare distinction for a person of Rajan's age. He was all of 48 then. 

src IANS