Dr. Anand P. Gupta was a faculty in the Economics Area at IIMA from 1979 to 1997. He did his M.A. (Economics) and Ph.D. (Economics) at the University of Florida, served as Professor of Economics and Chairman of the Economics Area at IIMA.
Professor Gupta is very proud of his association with the IIMA. He thoroughly enjoyed everything that he did while at the IIMA-be it teaching, research, consulting, his work as Chairman of the Alumni Relations Committee and as Chairman of the Research and Publications Committee. He developed an elective course "Fiscal Policy and Business" for the PGP Programme and it turned out to be popular course. He was a recipient of the Best Faculty Award at the IIMA and considered it to be a very proud achievement.
In 2019, he was Director, Economic Management Institute, New Delhi, and Member, Board of Directors, IC Centre for Governance, New Delhi. Other positions that he has held include: Public Finance and Fiscal Policy Specialist at the World Bank; Guest Scholar at the Brookings Institution; Distinguished Visitor to the United States at the invitation of the United States Government; Visiting Scholar at the George Mason University's Centre for Study of Public Choice; Guest Faculty, Government of India's Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration; Special Invitee, Institute of Chartered Accountants of India's High Level Committee on Outcome Budget; and consultant to several organizations, including the Asian Development Bank, International Initiative for Impact Evaluation, International Labour Organization, United States-India Business Council, and The World Bank.
He has served on several government committees, including the Government of India's Expert Committee on Tax Measures to Promote Employment, and the Government of India's Textiles Committee. Author of many publications (including "Evaluation of Governance: A Study of the Government of India's Outcome Budget", Journal of Development Effectiveness, December 2010), he has coordinated several training programmes for Indian Administrative Service officials and has served as a faculty in many training programmes.
The work that Professor Gupta has done on Management of Public Finances and Fiscal Policy and related areas has been received very well in both policy and academic circles. Some examples: Finance Minister R. Venkataraman, while presenting the Government of India's budget for the year 1980-81, announced the acceptance of the Government of India's Expert Committee on Tax Measures to Promote Employment's recommendation to modify the provision relating to tax holiday benefit under the Income Tax Act by linking the benefit to the income of a new enterprise, so as to avoid the tax system's bias in favour of capital-intensive techniques. Professor Gupta was a member of this Committee. A question on Professor Gupta's study, titled "Who Benefits from Government Expenditures in India?", that he had done under the auspices of the International Labour Office's World Employment Programme, was raised in the Lok Sabha on March 27, 1981.
Prime Minister Indira Gandhi wrote Professor Gupta a letter on January 23, 1982, saying "I have received your letter of the 20th January enclosing your note on the management of our fiscal system which I am sending on to the Finance Minister. I shall also read it with interest." This considerably influenced fiscal policy reforms in India. The United States Government, on November 23, 1982, invited Professor Gupta to visit the United States of America to study the U. S. Government's tax incentive programme, visit corporate and finance institutions, and confer with colleagues in his special field of interest. While in the United States, the United States Department of Commerce invited Professor Gupta to give a seminar on "Taxation in India" at Boston, which was attended largely by Americans interested in exploring investment opportunities in India. The point that Professor Gupta made was that what mattered for investment decision-making in India was not the nominal corporate tax rate but the effective tax rate, which was substantially lower, even zero, in India and illustrated this by presenting the actual tax experiences of many companies operating in India. This greatly helped in removing the misperception among Americans that India was a high-tax country. The Public Accounts Committee (Seventh Lok Sabha) selected Professor Gupta's article, titled "Management of Income Tax Function: Is India a Tax Haven?" (Economic and Political Weekly, Volume XVI, Number 9, Review of Management, February 28, 1981) for an evaluation of India's corporate income tax system, and submitted its findings in its 143rd Report which was presented to Lok Sabha on April 22, 1983 and laid in Rajya Sabha on April 26, 1983.
The Economic Times, in its issue of March 17, 1993, carried a lead editorial, titled "Redefine Budget Deficit", on Professor Gupta's article, titled "Reforming Deficit Measurement: The Indian Case", that had appeared in Economic and Political Weekly, Volume XXVIII, Numbers 8 and 9, February 20-27, 1993.
As of 2019, Professor Gupta and his wife, Pushp, lived in New Delhi. They have two sons. The elder son, Nainish, is an economist and lives with his family in Jupiter, Florida. And the younger son, Pranshu, is a software engineer and lives with his family in Gurugram, Haryana.
(Bio provided by Anand Gupta in 2019)
Date of Birth: July 08, 1937
