Yaga Venugopal Reddy (born 17 August 1941) is an Indian economist and a retired Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer of the 1964 batch belonging to Andhra Pradesh cadre. Reddy served as governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), India's central bank, from September 2003 until September 2008.
In 2010, he was awarded India's second highest civilian honour, the Padma Vibhushan.
Early life
Yaga Venugopal Reddy was born on 17 August 1941 in a Telugu family in Patur village, Kadapa district of present-day Andhra Pradesh, India.
Education and honours
Reddy received his M.A. in economics from Madras University, India, and his PhD from Osmania University, Hyderabad. He also holds a diploma in economic planning from the Institute of Social Studies, Netherlands.
Reddy was awarded the degrees of Doctor of Letters (Honoris Causa) by Sri Venkateswara University, India; and Doctor of Civil Law (Honoris Causa) by the University of Mauritius. On 17 July 2008, he was made an Honorary Fellow of the London School of Economics.
He has been a visiting fellow, London School of Economics, a full-time UGC Visiting Professor in Department of Business Management, Osmania University; full-time Visiting Faculty, Administrative Staff College of India and continues to be Honorary Professor at Centre for Economic and Social Studies at Hyderabad. Reddy was also Distinguished Professor of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras.
Positions held
In 1996, Reddy had been appointed deputy governor of RBI. He has also worked with the International Monetary Fund as executive director in 2002. Prior to joining the Indian Administrative Services (IAS), he worked as a lecturer from 1961.
While in the IAS, he held the positions of secretary (banking) in Ministry of Finance and principal secretary in Government of Andhra Pradesh and has worked with the governments of China, Bahrain, Ethiopia and Tanzania.
Reddy was Member of The Commission of Experts of the president of the UN General Assembly on Reforms of International Monetary and Financial System. In addition to the chair, Professor Joseph Stiglitz (USA), members of this UN Commission were drawn from Japan, Western Europe, Africa, Latin America, South and East Asia.
Reddy was president of the Indian Econometric Society during 2011. Reddy was on the advisory board of Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET). The INET advisory board includes Nobel laureates as well as other prominent economists.
Reddy was on International Advisory Board of the Columbia Program on Indian Economic Policies, Columbia University, New York. He was a Member of an informal international group of prominent persons on International Monetary Reforms. He was also on Advisory Group of eminent persons to advise the finance minister of India on G-20 issues.
He was the chairman of the Fourteenth Finance Commission of India since 3 January 2013.
Reddy was appointed the twenty-first governor of the Reserve Bank of India on 6 September 2003 and served in that position for five years.
Contributions
Reddy has worked on piloting a calibrated approach to financial sector reforms.
A 19 December 2008 article in the New York Times has credited the tough lending standards he imposed on the Indian banks as RBI Governor for saving the Indian banking system from the sub-prime and liquidity crisis of 2008.
At the Reserve Bank, he was Member-Secretary of two high level committees chaired by RBI governor Dr. C. Rangarajan: one on Balance of payments and the other on Public Sector disinvestments.
Reddy was also a member of the Reserve Bank of India's Policy Group on External Debt Statistics. Reddy is credited to have played a crucial role in framing macro-economic policies that helped quarantine the country from the domino effect of the financial crisis encountered by the South-East Asian countries during the later part of the 1990s. He, along with Dr. C. Rangarajan, is also credited with the formulation of the course to be steered by the country to come out of the then Balance of Payments crisis.
In the Indian context, he was the first to use the term 'financial inclusion' in April 2005 in his Annual Policy Statement as Governor of the Reserve Bank of India. Banks were urged in the Annual Policy Statement to review their existing practices to align them with the objective of financial inclusion.