Dr. Montek Singh Ahluwalia
Dr. Montek Singh Ahluwalia, a key member of India’s economic brain trust for the better part of the last two decades, has an excellent shot at becoming the next managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). In fact, the role fits him so well that it is possible that he would be disregarded.
For someone who has overseen the reform of the Indian economy as long as he has, Dr. Ahluwalia is equally at home with the World Bank-IMF system having previously served there in very senior positions. He last served as the first director of the IMF’s Independent Evaluation Office between 2001 and 2004. It is remarkable how quickly and easily his name has cropped up in the Western media, including in The Economist and The New York Times, as a credible candidate for this powerful position.
If robust economic management is a primary requirement for the next IMF chief, then Dr. Ahluwalia wins hands down. A Rhodes scholar with an M. Phil from the Oxford University, Dr. Ahluwalia represents the very best in terms of both scholarship as well as hands-on running of a giant bureaucracy. He is currently the deputy chairman of India’s Planning Commission and in that role he oversees the entire country’s economic planning and management.
This is as good a time as it will ever be to liberate the IMF from the US-Europe stranglehold and bring in someone from an economic success story in the face of huge odds. While India still remains very seriously mired in large-scale poverty, there is no denying its extraordinary success in turning a basket case into one of the world’s two most important economies in a span of two and half decades that also saw its population grow more than 400 million.
The 68-year-old may be weighed down by his age but that is more than made up by his enormous experience and success.
