Bibek Debroy

Bibek Debroy is an Indian economist, serving as the chairman of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister of India.

He is also the Chairman of the Finance Ministry's 'Expert Committee for Infrastructure Classification and Financing Framework for Amrit Kaal'.

Debroy has made significant contributions to game theory, economic theory, income and social inequalities, poverty, law reforms, railway reforms and Indology among others.

Bibek Debroy's recent co-authored magnum opus, Inked in India, stands distinguished as the premier comprehensive documentation, capturing the entirety of recognized fountain pen, nib, and ink manufacturers in India.

He is also an anchor for the fortnightly show Itihasa on Sansad TV.

His grandparents had migrated from Sylhet, now in Bangladesh; his paternal grandfather and his father migrating as late as 1948.

His father went on to join the Indian Audit and Accounts Service.

Bibek Debroy started his school education at Ramakrishna Mission Vidyalaya, Narendrapur.

After that he studied at Kolkata Presidency College and Delhi School of Economics.

Later on, Debroy went to the University of Cambridge on a Trinity College scholarship, where he met his then supervisor, Frank Hahn, a noted British economist.

Debroy, under the tutelage of Hahn, worked on integrating information into a general equilibrium framework.

A considerable amount of work on integrating information into a general equilibrium framework took place during this period.

Though his initial intention was to complete a PhD, owing to no substantial results, Debroy settled for the lower degree of MSc and returned to work in India.

His past positions include the Director of the Rajiv Gandhi Institute for Contemporary Studies, Consultant to the Department of Economic Affairs of Finance Ministry (Government of India), Secretary-General of PhD Chamber of Commerce and Industry and Director of the project LARGE (Legal Adjustments and Reforms for Globalising the Economy), set up by the Finance Ministry and UNDP for examining legal reforms in India.

Debroy was born in Shillong, now in Meghalaya, on 25 January 1955.

He has been a member of the National Manufacturing Competitive Council from November 2004 to December 2009.

He was the Chairman of a Committee set up by the Chief Minister of Jharkhand to recommend a development plan for the State.

He has been a Member of the Chief Minister's Economic Advisory Council in Rajasthan.

Between December 2006 and July 2007, he was the rapporteur for implementation in the Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor.

Debroy has authored several books, papers and popular articles, has been the Consulting Editor of Indian financial and other newspapers.

From 2014 to 2015, he was the Chairman of the High Powered Committee set up by the Ministry of Railways to restructure Indian Railways.

In the past, Debroy has taught at Presidency College, Calcutta, Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics, the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade and the National Council of Applied Economic Research.

From its inception in January 2015, till June 2019, Mr. Debroy was a member of the NITI Aayog, the think tank of the Indian Government.

He was awarded the Padma Shri (the fourth-highest civilian honour in India) in 2015.

On 5 January 2015, he was appointed as permanent member of NITI Aayog (or National Institution for Transforming India Aayog), which is the replacement of Planning Commission and will act as a think-tank to the government of India.

In 2016, he was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by US-India Business Summit.

In 2022, he was conferred with Lifetime Achievement Award by The Australia India Chamber of Commerce (AICC).

In February 2024, Debroy was conferred Insolvency Law Academy Emeritus Fellowship, in recognition of his distinguished leadership, public service, work and contributions in the field of insolvency.

In September 2017, he was appointed Chairman of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister.

From September 2018 to September 2022, the President of the Indian Statistical Institute.

In September 2022, he was appointed Chancellor of Pune’s Deccan College Post Graduate and Research Institute.

Debroy anchors Itihasa, a show telecasted on Sansad TV, the official channel of Parliament of India.

The series is a journey to discover what is "Bharata", what it means to be "Bhartiya" and what it means in terms of India's Sanatana Sanskriti.

Debroy has translated the unabridged version of the Mahabharata into English, in a series of 10 volumes.

He has also translated the Bhagavad Gita, the Harivamsa, the Vedas and Valmiki's Ramayana (in three volumes).

He has translated the Bhagavata Purana (in three volumes), the Markandeya Purana (one volume), the Brahma Purana (two volumes) the Vishnu Purana (one volume, the Shiva Purana (three volumes) and the Brahmanda Purana (two volumes). Along with Manmatha Nath Dutt, he is only the second person to have translated both the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, in unabridged form, into English. For his translations, he has been conferred with Sir Ramakrishna Gopal Bhandarkar Memorial Award in July 2023 by the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute.

The Reception by experts in the popular press has been favorable.

Business Standard, reviewing his translation of Ramayana, admired Debroy's lucidity and addition of explanatory footnotes.

Arshia Sattar, reviewing the same work for The Indian Express, applauded his remarkable feat of translating the two major Sanskrit epics and praised his introduction to the text as well as literal translation; notwithstanding the relatively poor scholarly apparatus vis-à-vis Goldman, Debroy's was held to be more compact and accessible.

He served as a Member of Niti Aayog till June 2019.