Ila Patnaik appointed as Principal Economic Advisor

1.    Ila Patnaik appointed as Principal Economic Advisor

i. Centre has appointed columnist and RBI Chair Professor at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy, Ila Patnaik, as Principal Economic Advisor, a post that had been vacant since November 2013.

ii. The appointment assumes significance as Dr. Patnaik has in her columns by-and-large concurred with Reserve Bank Governor Raghuram Rajan’s policy stances. “

iii. The most important factor that favours success this time is Governor Raghuram Rajan,” Dr. Patnaik wrote days after Dr. Rajan’s appointment in a column on an RBI proposal about interest rate futures.

iv. More recently, in April she wrote: “His strategy of an aggressive attack on inflation, despite the scepticism often voiced in the Indian monetary policy debate about the effectiveness of monetary policy, was the right strategy and is yielding results.”

v. Ms. Patnaik did her Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Surrey, Guildford, U.K.

Note: The post of the Principal Economic Advisor was last held by Dipak Dasgupta, a former Lead Economist for India and South Asia at the World Bank.

2.    Gopalakrishna takes charge as CAFRAL director

i. Reserve Bank of India (RBI) executive director G. Gopalakrishna has voluntarily retired from the service and joined as director of Centre for Advanced Financial Research and Learning (CAFRAL).

ii. CAFRAL, a not-for-profit organisation, is an independent body fully funded by the RBI.

iii. Mr. Gopalakrishna’s name was in the reckoning for Deputy Governor in place of Anand Sinha who retired in January. He was the senior most among nine executive directors who appeared before the search panel headed by RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan. However, R. Gandhi was selected for the post of Deputy Governor earlier this month.

iv. He was appointed as Executive Director on October 26, 2007, and looked after banking supervision, financial stability and communication before seeking retirement from the RBI. He also had a stint as the Executive Director of the Deposit Insurance & Credit Guarantee Corporation.

3.    HDFC Bank set World Record for Blood collection in a single day

i. Housing Development Finance Corporation (HDFC) Bank set World record for Blood collection in a single day. The blood donation camp organised by HDFC Bank on 6 December 2013 was recorded in the Guinness Book of Records. 

ii. The camp involved 61902 participants with 1115 blood donation camps held across 709 locations in the country. The camp has found a place in Guinness Book of Records as the largest such drive on a single day.

iii. With this HDFC became the first corporate firm to hold such recognition. 

iv. Earlier in 2010 Shiv Sena, a political party of Maharashtra, was entered into the Guinness Book of Records for organizing the blood donation camps. 

Note: According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), a country needs a minimum stock of blood equal to 1% of its population. This means India needs 12 million units of blood.