Prof Suryadevara Mahendra Dev appointed Chairman of Economic Advisory Council to Prime Minister

Prof Suryadevara Mahendra Dev has been appointed the Chairman of Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister. 

After the appointment as the Chairman of Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister, Prof Mahendra Dev resigned from the Board of Directors of Axis Bank, as the former is a full-time position.

Prof Suryadevara Mahendra Dev’s resume is full of prestigious appointments in various positions in the public and private sectors.

He started his career as an assistant professor at the Indra Gandhi Institute of Development Research in Mumbai in 1988 and worked there for 10 years till 1998. 

After that, he was engaged with the University of Bonn, Germany, for a short period of 4 months as a visiting professor. From 1998 to 2008, he was Director of the Centre for Economic Studies, Hyderabad. 

Prof Dev was appointed the Chairman of the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices, Ministry of Agriculture, in 2008 and served there till August 2010. In 2013, he was appointed a member of the National Statistical Commission, Ministry of Statistics, Program Implementation, where he served till 2016. At the same time, he was a board member of the International Food Policy Research Institute till 2019. 

In the private sector, Prof Mahendra Dev served as an Independent Director of Kotak Mahindra Bank from 2013 to 2021, and of Axis Bank from 2021 to June 5, 2025. 

Additionally, he was the Director and Vice-Chancellor of the Indra Gandhi Institute of Development Research from 2010 to 2022. Presently, he has also been serving, since 2022, as Chairman of the Institute of Development Studies Andhra Pradesh, in a part-time capacity. And at present, he was also a full-time Editor of Economic and Political Weekly since August 2023. 

Prof Dev completed his masters degree, MA Economics, in 1978 from Acharya Nagarjuna University, Andhra Pradesh. Thereafter, he went to the Delhi School of Economics, where he completed his M.Phil and Ph.d in Economics. From 1992 to 1993, Prof Dev was at Yale University for his post-doctoral research in Development Economics.