Career
He was chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Jammu & Kashmir Bank from 2005 to 2010. Drabu received a The Master of Philosophy in Economics from Centre for Development Studies (Trivandrum), Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi. Drabu started his career with the Government of India in 1990, first with the Perspective Planning Division of the Planning Commission of India, then as a consultant to the Economic Advisory Council of the Prime Minister and finally with the Tenth Finance Commission.
He then joined the media and became an editor at Business Standard, where he set up a research bureau.
Subsequently, he served as a consultant to the Asian Development Bank. After the 2002 state elections, a PDP-led coalition state government (in alliance with the Indian National Congress) came to power in Jammu and Kashmir and appointed Drabu as its economic advisor in January 2003.
He planned tax reforms, methods of expenditure compression and attempted to reduce the debt stock of the state government. He was simultaneously appointed as chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Jammu & Kashmir Bank by the PDP-Congress government in 2005.
In the 2008 state elections, the PDP was defeated and the Jammu & Kashmir National Conference came to power and formed the new coalition government
In 2014, he formally joined PDP and contested the state elections on the party ticket from his home constituency Rajpora, winning it with a big margin.
