Mumbai, April 22: The government has initiated the process to find Kaushik Basu’s successor.

Last week, the finance ministry advertised for the post of chief economic adviser either on an ad hoc deputation or contract basis for a three-year tenure.

Basu’s term runs out in August after which he is expected to return to Cornell University and don his academic robes once again. He has been on leave from Cornell University where he is professor of Economics and the C. Marks professor of International Studies.

The notice — which is posted on the finance ministry’s website — says the aspirant to the post must have a master’s degree in economics from a recognised university and at least six year’s experience in economic research or providing economic advice or evaluation of economic reforms. And this includes administrative experience.

It’s also desirable — though not essential — that he or she also has a doctorate degree in economics and published research work in refereed international or national journals of repute in the field of Economics.

The position comes with a fixed pay of Rs 80,000 a month. The last date for submitting applications is May 18.

It is interesting that expertise in the “evaluation of reforms” is one of the desirable attributes that the government is looking for in the aspirants to the position.

Reforms unwittingly became a hugely controversial subject in the past week after Basu was reported to have told an audience at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington that no big-ticket reforms were possible in India until after the general elections in 2014.

The Opposition seized on the reported comment to assail the government for failing to push the reform agenda.

Basu, however, immediately issued a clarification on the issue, saying that his remarks to the US think-tank were addressed towards the possible European crisis.

“There is nothing to clarify. I meant everything that I said; the lack of clarity was in its reporting,” Basu said in an interview with a news agency. He said that it was around this central message he had spoken about India.

“At the Carnegie lecture, the gist of my argument was that 2014 was an important year because numerous European banks would have to begin to repay $1.3 trillion worth of loans that they had received from the European Central Bank. This could precipitate a major global economic crisis,” Basu said in the statement.

In an e-mail he sent out after the outbreak of the latest controversy, he wrote: “As CEA (chief economic adviser to the finance ministry), I have often expressed opinions which are not necessarily that of the ministry of finance or of the Government of India. This is one of the strengths of India that it allows us to generate and discuss new ideas.”

He added that some reforms such as the relaxation of controls in foreign investment in the retailing sector would happen shortly since “in principle, they did not need the support of the Opposition”.

In the case of other reforms such as the introduction of the goods and service tax (GST), the Opposition realised it was a good measure but were “reluctant to let it happen under the current regime. A single-party majority government would not face this problem”.

Last September, Basu had slammed the Reserve Bank of India’s textbook approach to monetary policy formulation of raising rates to hammer down inflation — an approach that didn’t seem to work at all. All it did was undermine growth in the economy — a realisation that dawned on the RBI only last week when it slashed the repo rate by an unexpected 50 basis points, making its first rate cut in three years.

Basu at that time spoke glowingly about how countries such as Turkey and Brazil had taken a very pragmatic approach to monetary policy. “We do know that there are countries out there in the world with high inflation which have used contrary policies,” Basu told a news channel at that time. Turkey, he said, had cut interest rates even as they reconciled themselves to the fact that inflation would remain reasonably high. But contrary to expectations, the rate cut in Turkey saw a decline in inflation as well.

Basu’s ability to propound radical views was equally in evidence in a working paper he prepared in March 2011 when corruption scandals were rocking the government.

Basu posited the idea that in a certain class of bribes, the act of giving a bribe should be treated as legal. He suggested that this was a small but novel idea to “cut down the incidence of bribery”.

He said the government ought to legitimise what he called “harassment bribes” — money that a taxpayer must pay under the table to get a tax refund, or the bribe given to complete the paperwork with respect to subsidised housing.

“We should declare the act of giving a bribe in all such cases as legitimate activity. In other words, the giver of a harassment bribe should have the full immunity from any punitive action by the state,” Basu said in the paper.

He argued that once the law was suitably amended, the interests of the bribe giver and the bribe taker would be at divergence. This would lead to a sharp decline in the incidence of bribery. “The bribe giver will be willing to co-operate in getting the bribe taker caught. Knowing this will happen, the bribe taker will be deterred from taking a bribe.”

Some might term this argument as naive, but Basu has never shrunk from articulating views that were either too radical or diametrically opposite to the ones held by the people in power.

Basu has been called a theorist. He was appointed as chief economic adviser in December 2009. His term was originally supposed to end in February this year. But he was given a six-month extension to help to complete the budgetary process for 2012-13, which was delayed by the elections in UP and three other states.