Class of 2021

Vijay Kelkar

Chairman, ISPP Academic Advisory Council

For his services to the country, he was awarded the Padma Vibhushan, India’s second-highest civilian award, in January 2011.

Known as the architect of the GST, Dr. Kelkar was Advisor to the Minister of Finance (2002-2004). He was the Finance Secretary in 1998-99, and in 1999 he was nominated as Executive Director of India, Bangladesh, Bhutan and Sri Lanka on the Board of the International Monetary Fund.

Besides, he has held various notable positions in government, public and private sectors. Dr. Kelkar is also Chairperson of a committee constituted by the Government of India on revisiting & revitalizing the PPP model of infrastructure development, and Chairman for a Committee constituted by the Government of India to prepare a roadmap for enhancing the domestic production of oil and gas with sustainable reduction in import dependency by 2030. He has also been Chairman of the Indian Statistical Institute and the India Development Foundation.

He holds a B.E. from the College of Engineering Pune, India, a M.S. from the University of Minnesota, U.S., and a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California, Berkeley.

Shekhar Shah

Vice-Chairman, ISPP Academic Advisory Council

Prior to joining NCAER, Shah was the World Bank’s Regional Economic Adviser for South Asia and, earlier, Sector Manager in the Bank’s research complex and a principal author of the 2004 World Development Report, Making Services Work for Poor People. During a World Bank career in Washington D.C. spanning more than two decades, Shah also served as the Bank’s Deputy Research Administrator, Sector Manager for Public Sector Management for the Bank’s work in Europe and Central Asia, and Lead Economist and Country Coordinator for Bangladesh.

Before joining the World Bank, he was the Ford Foundation’s Program Officer for Economics and International Relations for South Asia. He worked earlier in Washington DC consulting for the US Federal Reserve, FDIC, the OCC, and US banks and bank holding companies. Shah received his BA in Economics from St Stephens College, Delhi University, and his MA and Ph.D. in Economics from Columbia University.

Shubhashis Gangopadhyay

Dean, ISPP

He is also the Professor of Emerging Market Finance, University of Groningen, Netherlands; and Visiting Professor at the Gothenburg School of Business, Economics and Law, Gothenburg University, Sweden.

Dr. Gangopadhyay began his career with the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) as a Lecturer in 1983 and was promoted to a Professor in 1991. He has been a consultant to various ministries including Finance, Planning, Industry and Rural Development and in 2008 was appointed advisor to the Finance Minister, Government of India.

Dr. Gangopadhyay has also been a member of the South Asia Chief Economist’s Advisory Council of the World Bank, an advisor to the Competition Commission of India (CCI) and on the board of the Centre for Analytical Finance, Indian School of Business (ISB), besides being the Founder-President of the Society for Promotion of Game Theory and its Application; Dr. Gangopadhyay has also served on the board of the Industrial Reconstruction Bank of India (IRBI), as a member on the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) Advisory Group on Bankruptcy Law and on the Bankruptcy Task Force of IPD (Initiative for Policy Dialogue), Columbia University.

He has published widely in international journals, and has authored a number of books. Dr. is also the Chief Editor of IDF’s Journal of Infrastructure Development and the Review of Market Integration, as also a member on the editorial boards of Journal of Financial Stability and Review of Development Economics.

Dr. Gangopadhyay graduated in Economics from Presidency College, Kolkata, and earned his Ph.D. in Economics from Cornell University, USA in 1983. In 2006, he was awarded a Doctorate (honoris causa) by the University of Gothenburg, Sweden.

Ajay Shah

Professor, National Institute for Public Finance and Policy

His research interests include policy issues on Indian economic growth, open economy macroeconomics, public finance, financial economics and pensions. In the past decade, he was been extensively involved in numerous policy processes, namely: reforms of equity market, and the New Pension System.

Dr. Shah’s recent publications include “Building State capacity for regulation in India”, “Diagnosing and overcoming sustained food price volatility: Enabling a national market for food”, and “The rise of government-funded health insurance in India”.

Dr. Shah studied at IIT, Bombay, and USC, Los Angeles.

Alex Tabbarok

Professor, George Mason University

He is a research fellow of the Mercatus Center and, along with Tyler Cowen, the founder of Marginal Revolution University: An Online Platform For Learning Economics.

He is the co-author of an extensive website on the FDA, FDAReview.org, and the author/editor of a number of books including the introductory economics textbooks, Modern Principles.

Dr. Tabbarak’s research interests include empirical law and economics (tort reform, bounty hunters, judicial electoral systems etc.), voting theory and alternative political institutions and health economics.

He received his B.A. from the University of Victoria, Canada, and his Ph.D. from George Mason University.

Arvind Panagariya

Professor of Economics, Columbia University

In March 2012, the Government of India honoured Dr. Panagariya with the Padma Bhushan, the third highest civilian honour in the country, bestowed in any field.

From January 2015 to August 2017, he served as the first Vice Chairman of the NITI Aayog, Government of India at the rank of Cabinet Minister. During these years, he also served as India’s G20 Sherpa, and led the Indian teams that negotiated the G20 communiqués during the presidencies of Turkey (2015), China (2016) and Germany (2017).

Dr. Panagariya is a former Chief Economist of the Asian Development Bank and was a faculty of the Department of Economics, at the University of Maryland, at College Park, from 1978 to 2003. During these years, he also worked with the World Bank, IMF and UNCTAD in various capacities.

Dr. Panagariya has authored more than fifteen books. His book – India: The Emerging Giant (2008, OUP, New York) was listed as the top pick of 2008 by The Economist and described as the “definitive book on the Indian economy” by Fareed Zakaria of the CNN. The Economist has described his book – Why Growth Matters (with Jagdish Bhagwati) – as “a manifesto for policymakers and analysts”.

Scientific papers by Dr. Panagariya have appeared in top journals. He writes a monthly column in the Times of India and his guest columns have appeared in the The Financial Times, Wall Street Journal and India Today.

He holds a Ph.D. degree in Economics from Princeton University.

Aseem Prakash

Chairperson, School of Governance and Public Policy, Tata Institute of Social Sciences

Aseem Prakash is currently the Chairperson, School of Governance and Public Policy, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Hyderabad.

He has more than 15 years of experience in research and teaching, including a stint at the University of Oxford as a Fell Fund Fellow. He has been instrumental in laying the intellectual foundation of the School of Public Policy and Governance, including designing the course curriculum of the M.A. in Public Policy and Governance Programme (PPG) at TISS.

Prior to joining TISS, he was part of the two member team that established the first Public Policy school in India- Jindal School of Government and Public Policy. Dr. Prakash was also invited by the UNDP and Department of Planning, Government of Maldives to prepare a rubric for the first ever Maldives Institute of Policy Studies in Male.

His research interests include the interface between the state and markets; regulation and institutions; sociology of markets, social discrimination, human development. His most recent books are titled “Dalit Capital: State, Markets and Civil Society in Urban India”; and “The Indian Middle Class (co-authored with Surinder Jodhka)”.

Dr. Prakash earned his doctorate from the Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.

Bhaskar Chakravorti

Dean of Global Business, The Fletcher School, Tufts University

Dr. Chakravorti serves on the Fletcher faculty as Professor of the Practice of International Business, chairs the Council on Emerging Market Enterprises and is on the Executive Committee of the Tufts Institute for Innovation. He also serves on the Global Agenda Council on the Economics of Innovation for the World Economic Forum.

Prior to joining Fletcher, Dr. Chakravorti was a Partner of McKinsey; Company, a Distinguished Scholar at MIT’s Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship, and faculty of Harvard Business School and Harvard University Centre for the Environment. He was a leader of McKinsey’s Innovation and Global Forces practices, served on its Knowledge Services Committee and taught innovation and entrepreneurship at Harvard. In a career spanning over two decades, he has been an advisor to CEOs, senior management and boards of over 30 companies in the Fortune 500, and has worked across the Americas, EU, Asia and Africa, with multiple industries.

He is the author of the best-selling book: “The Slow Pace of Fast Change: Bringing Innovations to Market in a Connected World”. His papers and articles appear in top-tier academic journals, multiple books and in widely-read media, for e.g. Harvard Business Review, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, Washington Post, CNN, Foreign Affairs, CNBC; his interviews feature in Business Week, The Economist, Fortune, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, BBC, FT, Fast Company, CNN, New Yorker, and others. He has appeared frequently on Public Radio, is a columnist for the Indian Express and blogger for CNN and the Huffington Post.

Dr. Chakravorti’s prior appointments were as a Partner and Thought Leader at the Monitor Group, Game Theorist at Bellcore (formerly Bell Labs), Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and TAS officer with India’s Tata Group.
His Ph.D. in Economics is from the University of Rochester, where he was a University Fellow.

Jessica Seddon

Jessica Seddon

Outside WRI, Dr. Seddon serves on the advisory board of the Wilderhill Global Clean Energy Index (NEX). Prior to joining WRI, she co-founded and led Okapi, an India-based strategy group incubated at IIT Madras that focuses on institutional design for social innovation. Her earlier career spans academic and strategic advisory roles, focused on institutional design for integrating science into policy and social initiatives.

Dr. Seddon has worked with a number of institutions in India, including as Visiting Fellow at IDFC Institute (Mumbai); Senior Fellow at the Center for Technology and Policy, IIT Madras; Head of Research at the Indian Institute for Human Settlements (Bangalore); and Director of the Centre for Development Finance at the Institute for Financial Management and Research (Chennai). In her U.S. based work, she has served as Strategic Advisor for the California Institute of Telecommunications and Information Technology (CALIT2) and as Assistant Professor, University of California, San Diego. She was also a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow with the United States Environmental Protection Agency, working on institutional design for global air quality management.

Dr. Seddon has published book chapters and articles on infrastructure, Indian political economy, IT and governance, environmental regulation and other institutional design topics in international academic and policy venues. She writes a monthly column for Mint, a leading business daily in India. Dr. Seddon earned her Ph.D. in Political Economy from Stanford University Graduate School of Business, and her B.A. in Government and Latin American Studies from Harvard University.

Michael Greenstone

Milton Friedman Professor, Harris School of Public Policy, University of Chicago

Michael Greenstone is the Milton Friedman Professor in Economics, the College, and the Harris School, as well as the Director of the Becker Friedman Institute and the interdisciplinary Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago.

He previously served as the Chief Economist for President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, where he co-led the development of the United States Government’s social cost of carbon. Dr. Greenstone also directed The Hamilton Project, which studies policies to promote economic growth, and has since joined its Advisory Council. He is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a fellow of the Econometric Society, and a former editor of the Journal of Political Economy. Before joining the University of Chicago, Dr. Greenstone was the 3M Professor of Environmental Economics at MIT.

His research, which has influenced policy globally, is largely focused on uncovering the benefits and costs of environmental quality and society’s energy choices. His current work is particularly focused on testing innovative ways to increase energy access and improve the efficiency of environmental regulations around the world. Additionally, he is producing empirically grounded estimates of the local and global impacts of climate change as a co-director of the Climate Impact Lab. Dr. Greenstone also created the Air Quality Life Index™ that provides a measure of the gain in life expectancy, communities would experience if their particulates air pollution concentrations are brought into compliance with global or national standards.

He received a Ph.D. in Economics from Princeton University, and a B.A. in Economics, with High Honors, from Swarthmore College.

Niranjan Rajadhyaksha

Research Director and Senior Fellow at IDFC Institute

He provides direction to the Institute’s research programmes. Previously, he was Executive Editor of Mint, a financial daily, where he managed the opinion section, wrote daily editorials, and the award-winning Café Economics column. He also helped launch the data journalism initiative at the newspaper. Before joining Mint, he was Deputy Editor of Business World, a financial magazine.

Dr. Rajadhyaksha was awarded the Jefferson Fellowship by the East-West Center in Hawaii in 1998. He received the Society of Publishers in Asia Awards for excellence in opinion-writing, two years in a row (2010 and 2011), besides winning the Ramnath Goenka Award for Excellence in Journalism in 2012, and the B.R. Shenoy Award for Economics in 2017. Dr. Rajadhyaksha is a member of the academic advisory board of the Meghnad Desai Academy of Economics, the board of trustees of the Centre for Civil Society, and of the advisory committee on the fifth volume of the official history of the Reserve Bank of India, written by Tirthankar Roy, besides also serving on the Economics curriculum advisory committees of the Mumbai School of Economics and Public Policy, Ramnarain Ruia College and Welingkar Institute of Management.

Dr. Rajadhyaksha holds a B.A. and M.A. in Economics from Mumbai University; his Ph.D. thesis has been submitted to the Mumbai School of Economics and Public Policy.

Shamika Ravi

Director of Research at Brookings India

She leads the Development Economics research vertical at Brookings India, where the focus is on financial inclusion, health, gender inequality and urbanization.

Dr. Ravi is a Visiting Professor of Economics at the Indian School of Business where she teaches courses in Game Theory and Microfinance. She is affiliated with the Financial Access Initiative of New York University and is an Independent Director on the board of Microcredit Ratings International Limited. She was part of the Enforcement Directorate of Microfinance Institutions Network in India and has served as an Independent Director on boards of several leading microfinance institutions.

Dr. Ravi publishes extensively in peer-reviewed journals and writes regular opinion pieces in major newspapers. Her research work has been featured and cited by BBC, The Guardian, The Financial Times, and most national and regional newspapers and magazines in India.

She received her B.A. in Economics from LSR College, her M.A. from the DSE, and her Ph.D. from NYU.

Nimai Mehta

Professorial Lecturer, Department of Mathematics and Statistics, American University

Dr. Mehta has held teaching positions at the School of Economics, University of the Philippines, where he was a Research Fellow and Program Associate with the Center for Integrative and Development Studies, and previously with the Ateneo de Manila University, Department of Economics. Prior positions include: Visiting Scholar at the James M. Buchanan Center for Political Economy in Fairfax, Virginia, and Adjunct Professor at George Mason University, Department of Economics.

He obtained his Masters in Applied Economics from Bombay University, and a Doctorate in Economics from George Mason University with specializations in comparative economic systems, public choice, and development.

Gerard Alexander

Associate Professor, Department of Politics, University of Virginia

His research began with a focus on the conditions of democratic consolidation in advanced industrial countries, especially in Western Europe. His first book — The Sources of Democratic Consolidation (Cornell University Press, 2002) — argued that the key, right-of-center political movements formed long-term commitments to democracy only when their political risks in democracy became relatively low as left agendas moderated across time.

In the Journal of Theoretical Politics (2001) he argued that formal political institutions in democracy cannot create the degree of predictability needed for consolidation. In Comparative Political Studies (2002) he argues that non-formal, social-structural characteristic of countries are more important causes of regime outcomes than the formal regime characteristics emphasized in prominent claims concerning the rule of law and “institutionalized uncertainty.” Related reasoning is the basis of an article in The National Interest titled: The Authoritarian Illusion(2004).

His current research concerns factors affecting the size and role of government in selected cases in Western Europe and also the United States, and how they influence conservative attempts at reform of welfare states.

Dr. Alexander is a Visiting Professor at the American Enterprise Institute. He earned his Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University.

Neeti Shikha

Associate Dean, ISPP

She is a Life Member of FORE Society, Parent Body of Fore School of Management. She is also on Academic Advisory Council of ISPP. She  serves on the board of Goeman Bindt HTO, a private non-profit international legal and policy advisory and research think-tank, as an  Expert and a Leader. Neeti is also the founding board member of Insolvency Research Foundation, an joint initiative of industry and government.

She has held academic positions at various law and business schools in India and Singapore. Previously, she was an associate professor and Head International cell at Symbiosis Law School Noida. She has been an Assistant Professor & Director, Centre for Corporate and Commercial Laws at National Law University Jodhpur, followed by her stint at Fore School of Management and IMT Ghaziabad. She has held visiting positions at IIM Rohtak and IIFT, New Delhi. She is a trainer and coach for various management development professional programs.

Dr. Shikha has completed her doctorate in corporate governance from National Law University Jodhpur, India. She holds LLM in International Business Laws from the University College London, UK. She is the recipient of prestigious Hague Scholarship where she attended Private International Law Course at the Hague Academy. She has given talks at National University Singapore, University of Indonesia and has many publications and 2 books to her credit. She is member of the prestigious European Corporate Governance Institute.

Maya Tudor

Associate Professor of Government and Public Policy, Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford

She is currently working on two manuscripts, a comparative study of nationalisms and democracy in Asia and a critical review of nationalism research (Cambridge University Press).  Her last  book, ‘The Promise of Power‘ (Cambridge University Press, 2013), was based upon her 2010 dissertation, which won the American Political Science Association’s Gabriel Almond Prize for the Best Dissertation in Comparative Politics.  The book investigates the origins of India and Pakistan’s puzzling regime divergence in the aftermath of colonial independence.  She is also the author of articles in Comparative Politics, Indian Politics and Policy, Journal of Democracy, and Party Politics.

Before embarking on an academic career, Maya worked as a Special Assistant to Chief Economist Joseph Stiglitz at the World Bank, at UNICEF, in the United States Senate, and at the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee. A dual citizen of Germany and the United States, she has lived and worked in Bangladesh, Germany, France, India, Kenya, Pakistan, the Philippines, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Jyotsna Puri

Head, Independent Evaluation Unit, Green Climate Fund

Puri has worked previously at the Green Climate Fund, 3ie, UNEP, the World Bank and UNDP. She is also adjunct associate professor at Columbia University, New York where she was also a research scientist. She has published in many academic journals and written for newspapers and provided advice as a board member to several development organizations.

She holds a PhD and MSc in Agriculture and Resource Economics and an MA in Development Economics. She is a national of India.