The global financial crisis will soon be over, Duvvuri Subbarao, governor of the Reserve Bank of India, predicted in a speech at Cornell Tuesday evening. Or since his term as governor began during the beginning of the crisis in September 2008, it would be only fitting for it to end when his term is up in 2013, he joked.
Subbarao spoke before a packed auditorium as part of the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies’ Foreign Policy Distinguished Speaker Series. His talk, entitled “India in a Globalizing World: Some Policy Dilemmas” was the latest in the series started by the Einaudi Center in 2006.
Despite India’s strong growth rate in the last decade, Subbarao explained that crises in international financial markets, like those in the U.S. and Europe, have drastically impacted the Indian economy.
“[India’s] growth has moderated, investment has declined, inflation is high and the rupee has depreciated,” Subbarao said. “The biggest concern of all is that the Indian growth story, by which we set a lot of stock, is being threatened by these crises.”
India’s importance in the world economy provided the Einaudi Center “a timely opportunity” to organize a talk by Subbarao, according to Prof. Fredrik Logevall, history, director of the Einaudi Center.
“India is a very important economy in the world,” Logevall said. “ I think India’s future is of interest for all of us, or should be. It has important geopolitical implications.”
Before his post at the RBI, Subbarao worked with the World Bank as a lead economist advising developing countries on public finance management. He is alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology, Ohio State University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he was a Humphrey Fellow.
Original Author: Manu Rathore