Assigned to the Intelligence Bureau, R Govindarajan was posted to Indonesia in 1966. In 1968 he joined the newly created external intelligence unit of the Intelligence Bureau, the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) where he served as staff officer under R. N. Kao and became part of the "Kaoboys". In 1970 he was posted to Sri Lanka, where Raghuram Rajan missed school one year because of political turmoil.