Speaker Details
Montek Singh Ahluwalia
Deputy Chairman, Planning Commission, Government of India
Montek Singh Ahluwalia is currently the Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission for India. He has been a key figure in India’s economic reforms from the early 1980s. Mr Ahluwalia joined the Government of India in 1979 as Economic Adviser in the Ministry of Finance, after which he held a series of positions including Special Secretary to the Prime Minister; Commerce Secretary; Secretary in the Department of Economic Affairs; Finance Secretary in the Ministry of Finance; Member of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister; and Member of the Planning Commission in New Delhi. Between 1968 and 1979, he held various positions in the World Bank Research Department. In 2001, he became the first Director of the Independent Evaluation Office of the International Monetary Fund, resigning in 2004 to take up his current position. A prolific writer on various strategic aspects of economics, Mr Ahluwalia has made valuable contributions to a number of prominent Indian and international journals and books. He co-authored Re-distribution with Growth: An Approach to Policy, published in 1975, and in 2004 he wrote Reforming the Global Financial Architecture, Economic Paper No.41, Commonwealth Secretariat, London. He earned his BA (Hons) degree in New Delhi and his MA and MPhil degrees from the University of Oxford where he was a Rhodes Scholar.
