Economist Rajiv Kumar will be the new Vice Chairman of NITI Aayog. He will succeed Arvind Panagariya, the first Vice Chairman of the NITI Aayog. Mr. Panagariya had recently resigned from his post.<br/>Rajiv Kumar holds a DPhil in Economics from Oxford and a PhD from Lucknow University. He is a senior fellow at the Centre for Policy Research. <br/><br/>Earlier, he was Secretary General of the FICCI and had also served as Director and Chief Executive of the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations. He has also served as the chief economist of the Confederation of Indian Industries and held senior positions in the the Asian Development Bank, the Indian Ministry of Industries, and the Ministry of Finance.<br/><br/>An official spokesperson said, the government has also appointed Dr Vinod Paul, a pediatrician at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences as a member of the NITI Aayog. Dr Paul has done substantial work in public health.