Chief Economic Advisor to the Government of India


The is a post in Government of India and is equivalent to rank of Secretary to the Government of India.
The CEA is the ex-officio cadre controlling authority of the Indian Economic Service. The CEA is head of Economic Division of the Department of Economic Affairs, Ministry of Finance, Government of India.
Until 2009, the CEA’s position was a Union Public Service Commission appointment and until the 1970s almost all CEAs were members of the Indian Economic Service.

Role of the CEA

The extent to which the Government takes into account the advice of the Chief Economic Adviser has generally been considered to be open-ended.
In his 2018 book titled Of Counsel: The Challenges of the Modi-Jaitley Economy, former CEA Arvind Subramanian stated that the job of the CEA carried no executive responsibility. According to him, the only clearly defined job of the CEA was to produce the Economic Survey of India preceding the Union Budget.

List of CEAs

Below is a list of Chief Economic Advisers that have been appointed by the Government of India since Independence in 1947.