With a passion for reading and an innate disposition towards asking probing questions, this girl child preferred reasoning and inferring logically rather than simply memorizing the texts, regularly topped class after class in the school.Being the daughter of doctor-parents, coupled with an excellent academic record, she joined Hindu College, New Delhi, then considered the best campus for pre-med. But after working as a volunteer in an army hospital and having realized that she was not cut for spending time in and around hospitals, she rationally chose economics. She then obtained her MA and MPhil in economics from Delhi School of Economics and a PhD from Bombay University.This young scholar is none other than the present member of the Monetary Policy Committee of RBI, Dr Ashima Goyal, Professor Emeritus, IGIDR, Mumbai. With a strong desire to understand the Indian economy and curious about post-independence India’s slow economic growth, she extensively researched macroeconomics with an emphasis on macro-dynamics and growth, institutions and development, micro-foundations and general equilibrium, open economy and international finance, and political economy.Her research focused on applying modern macroeconomic principles to the analysis of the Indian economy and policy in the context of India’s developmental issues and special features of Indian institutions to identify structural changes required for spurring growth. She has published more than 100 papers in national and international journals. She has also authored and edited a number of books including, A Concise Handbook of the Indian Economy in the 21st Century (2019), besides writing chapters for many edited books.Along with her research pursuits, she has also been teaching Advanced Macroeconomics, Development Theory and Policy, Macroeconomics II, and the optional paper, International Economics and Finance at IGIDR. Interestingly, all these subjects are taught through discussions on research papers of the relevant area, for she believed in “learning by doing”. This mechanism, she says has helped students to select and work on their own projects. She has guided 20 scholars for PhD, five for MPhil., and three for MSc dissertation.Dr Goyal is an active participant in the policy debate through the media and as a member of various government committees and boards such as the RBI Technical Advisory Committee for Monetary Policy, Empowered Committee on External Commercial Borrowings, Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council, etc. She belongs to that rare breed of economists from Indian academia, who wrote columns for newspapers articulating economic issues that plagued the country as a true academic with no “pre-conceptions immune to facts”.This multifaceted economist was also a visiting fellow at the Economic Growth Center, Yale University, USA, and a Fulbright Senior Research Fellow at Claremont Graduate University, USA. She has also participated in research projects with ADB, DEA-GOI, GDN, RBI, UN ESCAP and WB. She won many awards for her research contributions in economics: won two best research awards at GDN meetings at Tokyo (2000) and Rio de Janeiro (2001). She was the first Professor P. R. Brahmananda Memorial Research Grant Awardee.Dr Goyal, representing a rare combination of a woman completely at ease with research, teaching, and unbiased public debating, and with so much of accomplishment in her chosen field of economics, proves that nothing would be a constraint including the gender factor if one “forgets oneself” and “get absorbed” in what one is doing to come up with the best for the society. Enjoy reading her journey through economics that is a beautiful ode to grit and determination!
