NEW DELHI: Former Reserve Bank of India Governor Shaktikanta Das, who demitted office in December 2024 and headed the central bank during the Covid pandemic, was on Saturday appointed the second Principal Secretary to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
This will be the first time in the country’s history that the Prime Minister will have two Principal Secretaries at the same time. The post was created in 1971 by then PM Indira Gandhi, who named PN Haksar her Principal Secretary.
Modi will now have two Odisha-born top advisers in the PMO Principal Secretary PK Mishra (77), born in Sambalpur, and Principal Secretary-2 Das (68), born in Bhubaneswar.
Das, a 1980-batch IAS officer of the Tamil Nadu cadre, was handpicked to helm the RBI in 2018 post-retirement. The appointment was necessitated due to the sudden resignation of Urjit Patel. As Das, the first non-economist RBI chief in 28 years, took control of the central bank, sceptics asked how a bureaucrat with an academic background of history (Das is BA history from St Stephen’s College, Delhi) would handle currency, that too at a time of strained Centre-RBI ties. Over the next six years since assumption of charge as the RBI chief on December 12, 2018, Das was to prove his critics wrong. He steered the central bank through Covid-19, two wars and a nagging inflation. All this while Das calmly managed economic growth, liquidity and market stability, and was ranked among the top three central bankers for two years in a row by Global Finance magazine. The magazine also awarded him an A+ rating in its 2024 Central Banker Report Cards.
An official order said the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet had approved the appointment of Das as Principal Secretary-2 to the PM with effect from the date he assumed office. Das’ tenure would be co-terminus with the term of the Prime Minister or until further orders, whichever was earlier, the order said.
Earlier, as a bureaucrat who spent a long time in the management of economy, Das was Revenue Secretary and Secretary, Economic Affairs. He was a vocal supporter of the controversial 2016 demonetisation move and principal driver of the GST reform that kicked off from July 1, 2017.
When announcing his appointment as the RBI chief, late Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had said, “Shaktikanta Das has had an experience of preparing several budgets as Joint Secretary in charge of the government’s budget division. He was India’s G20 Sherpa and member, 15th Finance Commission. He has been extremely professional, having worked with many governments and has excelled himself. He has the right credentials for the job.”
Appointed RBI chief for three years, Das was granted another three-year extension and he proved his mentor Jaitley right. A lesser-known aspect of Das’ life is his knowledge of multiple languages, including Tamil.
The image of a stunned Jaitley looking on as Das answered a journalist in fluent Tamil at the 2016 Economic Editors Conference in Delhi remains fresh in several minds. Das had picked up the language as an IAS officer in Tamil Nadu where he served as district magistrate in Dindigul and Kancheepuram, apart from Principal Secretary, Industry. Das’ PMO entry signals Modi’s commitment to economic reforms needed to help India find place among the top three global economies in his third term.