Shankar Acharya, former chief economic adviser, gently looks back at his time in the government, without revealing any secrets
When economist Shankar Acharya returned to India in 1982, after studying and working abroad for 23 years, he had a job waiting for him in the newly set up National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP) in Delhi. He was to head a study commissioned by the Finance Ministry on the dimensions of India’s black money problem. He and his team submitted the report in early 1985 and it made quite a splash. Among other things it was sceptical about demonetisation and voluntary disclosure schemes to deal with the problem. Anecdotes like this are strewn all over An Economist at Home and Abroad.