Dr Michael Debabrata Patra, Deputy Governor, Reserve Bank of India is a career Central Banker. He is a postgraduate from Utkal University and a PhD in economics from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai. He has done his post-doctoral research on financial stability at Harvard University as a fellow.

Dr Patra started his journey in the Reserve Bank of India in 1985 and in January 2020, he was appointed as Deputy Governor of Reserve Bank of India. He also served in the International Monetary Fund as Senior Adviser to Executive Director.

As Deputy Governor of RBI he oversees the monetary policy department, financial markets operations department, financial markets regulation department, deposit insurance, international department, department of economic and policy research, department of statistics and information management, corporate strategy and budget department and financial stability unit for monetary policy. He is the member of the Monetary Policy Committee of the Reserve Bank of India, which is invested with the responsibility of the monetary policy decision making in India.

He has published several papers and a book in the areas of inflation, monetary policy, international trade and finance including exchange rates and balance of payments.