V. K. R. V. Rao Chair

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The Board of Governors of the Institute chooses an economist of international eminence for the Chair for every two years.  The person chosen for the Chair has to spend at least three months in ISEC during his/her tenure and interact with the faculty and students, give lectures and seminars and undertake research.  Under the arrangement the Institute meets the cost of air travel to visit the Institute twice during the tenure and the Professor is paid a monthly honorarium.  The Chair is financed by the interest received from the corpus granted by the Ministry of Finance.

Prof. T. N. Srinivasan, Chairman, Department of Economics, Yale University was the first V.K.R.V. Rao Chair Professor, and he was appointed for the term 1997–99.  During his tenure Prof. Srinivasan visited the Institute twice, worked closely with the faculty and guided the students.  He also gave a series of eight lectures on Indian Economy, which has been brought out as a monograph "Eight Lectures on Indian Economic Reforms" by the Oxford University Press.

For the period 1999–2001, Prof. Kaushik Basu, Carl Marks Professor, Cornell University was appointed as the V. K. R. V. Rao Chair Professor. 

Prof. Arvind Panagariya, Professor of Economics, Department of Economics, University of Maryland was appointed as the V. K. R. V. Rao Chair Professor from 2002-03.

Prof. Ravi Kanbur, T. H. Lee Professor of World Affairs and Professor of Economics at Cornell University was appointed as V. K. R. V. Rao Chair Professor for the year 2004-05.

Prof. James Gilmore Manor, Professorial Fellow, Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex was appointed as V. K. R. V. Rao Chair Professor for the year 2006-07.

Prof. Michael Walton, Senior Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research, Delhi and Adjunct Lecturer in International Development at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University and also Visiting Professor for the 2007/08 semester of the Delhi School of Economics was  appointed as V.K.R.V. Rao Chair Professor for the year 2008-09.

Prof. Ashutosh Varshney, Professor, Department of Political Science, Brown University was appointed as V.K.R.V. Rao Chair Professor for the year 2010-11.

Prof. Gita Gopinath, Professor of Economics, Department of Economics, Harvard University was appointed as V.K.R.V. Rao Chair Professor for the year 2012-12.

Prof. David E Bloom, Clarence James Gamble Professor of Economics and Demography, Harvard School of Public Health, Harvard University was appointed as V.K.R.V. Rao Chair Professor for the year 2013-14.

Prof. Michael Goldman, Professor of sociology and Global studies at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis was appointed as V.K.R.V. Rao Chair Professor for the year 2016-17.

Prof. Kunal Sen Director, UNU-WIDER, (United Nations University, World Institute for Development Economics Research) and is a Professor of Development Economics at the Global Development Institute, University of Manchester has been appointed as V.K.R.V. Rao Chair Professor for the year 2020-22