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Here's A Not-So Short List Of Who May Replace Rajan And Their Key Traits

Chances of an unexpected name are, of course, very real
Danish Siddiqui / Reuters

Raghuram Rajan's term as governor of the Reserve Bank of India expires Sept. 4 and a replacement may be announced as early as this week. Who will Prime Minister Narendra Modi name as Rajan's successor? Bloomberg News assembled the following non-definitive list of eight possible candidates based on discussions with RBI watchers and reports in local media. With Modi keeping his cards close, the chances of an unexpected name is of course very real. A ninth wildcard candidate was added for this purpose.

SUBIR GOKARN

Once one of the RBI's youngest deputy governors in charge of monetary policy, Gokarn was also chief economist at S&P Global Ratings and is currently India's envoy to the IMF

Age: 56

Education: Doctorate in Economics from Case Western Reserve University

Noteworthy: Nomura says he'd be inclined to balance between growth and inflation

URJIT PATEL

Currently the RBI's deputy governor in charge of monetary policy, Patel has worked with Boston Consulting Group and Reliance Industries

Age: 52

Education: Doctorate in Economics from Yale and M. Phil from Oxford

Noteworthy: A key architect of India's inflation target and rate-setting panel, Nomura sees Patel as a hawk

ARUNDHATI BHATTACHARYA

The first woman chair of the 207-year-old State Bank of India, Bhattacharya would also be the first woman to lead the 81-year old Reserve Bank of India

Age: 60

Education: Holding a master's degree in literature from Jadavpur University in West Bengal, Bhattacharya had dreamed of becoming a museologist

Noteworthy: She's spearheading a clean up of bad loans at state-run banks, which Rajan has said is essential to ensure sustainable growth

ARVIND SUBRAMANIAN

Currently the top economic adviser to Modi, Subramanian is on leave from his post of senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics

Age: 57

Education: D.Phil, Oxford, with degrees in economics and management

Noteworthy: An advocate of looser monetary policy, Subramanian has suggested looking beyond benchmark consumer-price inflation and proposed dipping into the RBI's emergency funds to recapitalize state-run banks

ARVIND PANAGARIYA

Currently is vice chairman at a government policy research group headed by Modi

Age: 63

Education: Doctorate from Princeton and professor of economics and political economy at Columbia University

Noteworthy: Panagariya has advocated sharper interest-rate cuts and favors public spending

KAUSHIK BASU

Outgoing chief economist at the World Bank, Basu has also been top economic adviser to the Indian government

Age: 64

Education: Doctorate from the London School of Economics

Noteworthy: "Economics is not a moral subject," he wrote in his recent book An Economist in the Real World. In the past, Basu has proposed that governments only penalize bribe-takers to encourage bribe-givers to reveal corruption. Hobbies include reproving 2,600-year-old geometry theorems, as evidenced by a 2015 paper titled: A New and Very Long Proof of the Pythagoras Theorem By Way of a Proposition on Isosceles Triangles

ASHOK LAHIRI

Chairman of one of India's youngest commercial banks and a former adviser to the Indian government

Age: 65

Education: Doctorate from the Delhi School of Economics

Noteworthy: Lahiri's hobbies include psephology, according to his Twitter bio. Optimistic of Modi's "deep-rooted" reforms, Lahiri has highlighted the need for the government to cut its stakes in state-owned banks to 33 percent

K.V. KAMATH

The first president of the so-called BRICS Bank, Kamath has worked at one of India's top software companies and private banks

Age: 68

Education: He holds degrees in engineering and management

Noteworthy: He's said India's bad-debt problem is overblown as it doesn't yet account for 10 percent of GDP

UNKNOWN

* Willingness to withstand criticism from a key Modi ally who accused Rajan of keeping interest rates too high and of being "mentally not fully Indian"

* Ability to rein in resurgent inflation and contain the fallout of a $120 billion bank bad-loan clean up without a return to regulatory forbearance

* Charming enough to win over foreign investors and grace newspaper spreads depicting him as James Bond

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This article exists as part of the online archive for HuffPost India, which closed in 2020. Some features are no longer enabled. If you have questions or concerns about this article, please contact indiasupport@huffpost.com.