Suman K Bery to become NITI Aayog Vice Chairman after Rajiv Kumar’s exit

Outgoing NITI Aayog Vice Chairman Rajiv Kumar will be replaced by Suman K Bery, the government announced late on Friday.

While the reason behind Kumar’s resignation was not immediately clear, it marked the second resignation of a VC from the government-run think tank since it was founded in 2014: Kumar himself had been appointed following the resignation of former VC Arvind Panagariya, who resigned in 2017 to return to his teaching assignment at Columbia University.

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According to the government order, Kumar’s term will come come to an end on April 30, after which Bery will take over from May 1.

Bery completed his undergraduate studies in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from the University of Oxford, and went on to complete a Master’s in Public Affairs (MPA) from Princeton University. He then went on to work with the World Bank in Washington DC, with his areas of expertise being macroeconomy, financial markets, and public debt management.

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After coming back to India, Bery held the post of  Director General of the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) for a decade, from 2001 to 2011. He also served as a member of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council, the Reserve Bank of India’s Technical Advisory Committee, and the National Statistical Commission under the UPA government.

Bery’s appointment as the new VC of NITI Aayog comes amid the war in Ukraine, which has considerably pushed up oil and commodity prices and disrupted global supply chains, and the NITI Aayog is likely to be tasked with helping the Modi government tackle rising inflation and the economic fallout of the war in eastern Europe.