The government Saturday appointed 1987-batch Tamil Nadu cadre IAS officer TV Somanathan as the next Cabinet Secretary of India. He will have a two-year tenure beginning August 30. He will take over the charge from Rajiv Gauba, a 1992-batch IAS officer, who has been the Cabinet Secretary since 2019.
Somanathan, who is presently the Finance Secretary in charge of the Department of Expenditure, will be the Officer on Special Duty in the Cabinet Secretariat till he takes over as the Cabinet Secretary.
Somanathan has worked closely with M Karunanidhi for three years from 2007 to 2019, when the latter was the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu. He had a ring side view of how the veteran DMK leader pushed through politically some tough economic reforms such as increasing power tariff.
Somanathan, who has a doctorate in economics from Calcutta University, worked in the office of Prime Minister Narendra-Modi as a Joint Secretary and Additional Secretary for more than three years, driving economic policy.
He was appointed Expenditure Secretary in December 2019, and became the first among equals in the North Block as the Finance Secretary in April 2021. Unlike many countries in the West, which turned the fiscal tap on with huge cash handouts during the Covid-19 pandemic, Somanathan loosened the purse strings only for the most needed
His fiscal prudence ensured the government retained the firepower to spend productively — he did not hold back on public expenditure, which has helped India keep its growth momentum at 7 per cent plus for the last three years, even as the government waits for private sector investment to take the baton.
As the senior-most secretary among the five secretaries in the Finance Ministry, Somanathan has been one of the most influential bureaucrats. His range of experience through the years encompassed many roles — from being a Secretary in the CM’s office in Tamil Nadu, to driving policy in the PMO, heading the Planning Department in Tamil Nadu, and finally as the senior most bureaucrat in North Block as Finance Secretary.
Somanathan has quietly pushed policy changes that ensured elimination of hidden subsidies and efficiency in expenditure management that helped restore credibility in budget estimates. He brought all expenditures above the line, cleaning up the government’s finances, to reveal the real fiscal deficit.
He has also helped design a number of PLI (Production-Linked Incentive) schemes and also had a major role to play in the PM Garib Kalyan and Atmanirbhar Bharat announcements in 2020.
Somanathan went to secondary school in northern Nigeria, is a qualified chartered accountant, cost accountant and company secretary and has a Ph.D too. He has held several important positions in the Indian government earlier including a stint with the World Bank. He was a joint secretary in the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) between 2015 and 2017, from where he moved to the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) first as Joint Secretary and then as Additional Secretary in charge of overseeing the implementation of crucial economic policies. Last year, he was also appointed the chair of the committee reviewing the pension system for government employees.
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