In accordance with the provisions of Section 17(15B) and (16) of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, the Reserve Bank has been operating the Corpus Fund Scheme in universities and research institutions for promotion of economic research, training in banking, real sector issues, monetary and financial economics. The Reserve Bank established a Professorial Chair (called “RBI Chair”) under the Scheme at MIDS in 1986. Since then, the RBI Chair professorship at MIDS has been held by Prof. A. Vaidyanathan (1986-1990), Prof. Nasir Tyabji (1990-1994), Prof. Padmini Swaminathan (1994-2011), Prof. D. Jayaraj (2011-2018). At present, Prof. L. Venkatachalam holds the RBI Chair Professor position at MIDS from 2018 onwards. There are two supporting staff who assist the RBI Chair Professor in carrying out research and dissemination activities.
The RBI Chair Professor is responsible and accountable for the functioning of the RBI Chair at the institute in accordance with the academic requirements as may be specified by the Reserve Bank. The RBI Chair Professor provides input on sector-specific topics as suggested by the Reserve Bank from time to time.
In addition to research, RBI Chair organises short training courses and capacity-building programmes on macroeconomics, monetary economics, development economics, public policy, project evaluation, climate change finance, Green GDP, etc. In addition, it helps in peer reviewing the papers submitted for the Occasional/Working Paper series by the RBI staff.