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Able administrator

V.K. Aravamudha Ayangar

Another administrator, I’ve just heard about, had a unique distinction. V.K. Aravamudha Ayangar of the Indian Audit and Administration Service was nominated as a member of the Central Legislative Assembly in the early 1930s while continuing to serve as an officer in the Finance Department. This was in order to help the Finance Member pilot a Bill through the Assembly. The Bill was to set up the Reserve Bank of India and he was the youngest member of the Assembly at the time.

Ayangar was the Secretary of the 1925 Royal Commission that recommended the setting up of a central bank in India, what later was called the Reserve Bank of India. He was again Secretary of another body that recommended the setting up of the Reserve Bank, namely the Central Banking Enquiry Committee of 1929-31. His service with these two commissions made him the most knowledgeable person to help steer the Bill in the Assembly. Unfortunately, the first Bill was defeated, despite Ayangar’s numerous impassioned speeches advocating the concept, but it was passed at the second attempt and became known as the Reserve Bank of India Act 1934. The RBI was intended to secure “marketing stability in India and generally to separate the currencies and credit system of the country to its advantage.”

He was to be appointed Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank when it was to begin operations from April 1935, but took a break in England before that to recuperate from the strain of almost a decade of non-stop work trying to get the idea of a central bank approved and implemented. Sadly, he died in an accident in England in July 1934 while on furlough. When the Madras Club in Simla met to condole Ayangar’s death, Sir R.K. Shanmukham Chetty (to be India’s Finance Minister post-Independence) said, “Had Mr. Ayangar been alive he would have one day risen to the position of Finance Member of the Government of India.”

Ayangar, an MA in Mathematics from Madras University, was a student of Presidency College. He joined the Subordinate Accounts Service in 1915, was five years in the Accountant General’s office in Madras, then worked in Calcutta before being promoted to the IAAS in December 1925.

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