Vice Chairman, NITI Aayog 

Dr. Rajiv Kumar is Vice Chairman, NITI Aayog, in the rank and status of a Cabinet Minister.  He also serves as the Chancellor of Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics, Pune and Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Giri Institute of Development Studies, Lucknow.

He has wide experience of having worked in academia, government, industry as well as in multilateral institutions.  He started his academic career in Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER) as a Researcher during 1977-1982.  He later became the Director & CEO of ICRIER between 2006 and 2011.  He was a Professor at the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade (IIFT) and a Senior Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research (CPR), Delhi.  He was the Head of Pahle India Foundation, a non-profit making research think tank, which he founded in 2013.

In the government, he was the Economic Advisor with the Department of Economic Affairs (DEA), Ministry of Finance (1991-1995) and Senior Consultant at the Bureau of Industrial Costs and Prices (BICP), Ministry of Industry (1989-1991). 

His experience in multilateral financial institutions was with Asian Development Bank (ADB), Manila, where he spent 10 years before returning to India in 2004.  He was also the Chief Economist of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) during 2004-2006 and Secretary-General of Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) during 2011-2013.  He served on the Central Boards of State Bank of India for two terms and was also on the Central Board of Reserve Bank of India (RBI).

Dr. Kumar has a Ph.D. in Economics from Lucknow University and a D.Phil from Oxford University.