Vijay Kelkar Biography 
Vijay Kelkar is an Indian economist associated with the fields of Macroeconomics and Public Economics, and an academician. For his outstanding contributions to the field of Public Affairs, government of India honoured him with the second highest civilian award Padma Vibhushan in the year 2011. He is the architect of the Goods and Services Tax (GST), introduced by government of India in 2017. He is the former chairman of the 13th Finance Commission. Finance Secretary, Government of India, 1998–1999; Chairman, Thirteenth Finance Commission, India; President, Indian Statistical Institute; Vice President, Pune International Center; Chairman, CSIR-Tech; Chairman, National Stock Exchange of India Limited; Advisor to Minister of Finance, Government of India in the rank of a Minister of State, 2002-2004 etc are some of the major positions held by Vijay throughout his professional career.
He was born on 15 May 1942. He completed his professional engineering degree from College of Engineering, Pune in 1963. For advanced studies he moved to US, where he specialized in Economics. He studied at University of Minnesota in 1965 and then took Ph.D. in economics from University of California Berkeley in 1970. After completing his PhD, he moved back to India where he began his career as a faculty of economics. He worked as a professor of economics in many colleges across India.
An economist based in Pune, he has headed Kelkar committee on PPP in India and Joint Venture (JV) Committee of NCAD. Upon reaching his retirement age, he stepped down from the board from Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), IT solutions in 2017. He has been on TCS board since 2010. BJP led NDA government assigned him to head the task forces on direct and indirect taxes, a few years back, and with the implementation of GST, he came to spotlight once again.
Published: September 12, 2018
Updated: September 12, 2018
