India's Top Economic Advisor Flunked the IAS Exam

India's Chief Economic Advisor Arvind Subramanian on Friday said he had flunked his IAS entrance test and did not do very well in his academic career initially. Entrance for the Indian Administrative Service is considered to be one of the toughest exams in the country.

"Let me tell you that I failed the IAS exam. I failed in getting into the most prestigious stream at IMF. I wrote a mediocre PhD thesis. I had many many more academic papers rejected than accepted."

Mr Subramanian said he wanted to make the "confession" because he was known as "a very successful person, the chief economic adviser and so on".

An alumnus of St. Stephens College and IIM Ahmedabad, Mr Subramanian was a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and the Center for Global Development before taking up his new assignment as the chief economic advisor last year. He obtained his M.Phil and D.Phil from the University of Oxford. (Read: Who is Arvind Subramanian)

Mr Subramanian taught at Johns Hopkins' School for Advanced International Studies from 2008 to 2010 and at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government from 1999 to 2000. He also served as an assistant director in the research department of the International Monetary Fund.

He has written extensively on subjects like growth, international trade, and World Trade Organization. He is also the author of 'Eclipse: Living in the Shadow of China's Economic Dominance' and is the co-author of "Who Needs to Open the Capital Account".

In 2011, Foreign Policy magazine named him among Top 100 Thinkers.

(With inputs from PTI)