Pronab Sen is the Country Director for the India Programme of the International Growth Centre (IGC). He received his Ph.D. in Economics from the John Hopkins University specializing in open-economy macroeconomic systems, international economics and public finance.

Most recently the Chairman of the National Statistical Commission, he has also held positions as the Principal Adviser, Power and Energy, at the Government of India’s Planning Commission; and as the first Chief Statistician of India, acting as the functional and technical head of the national statistical system in India, as well as Secretary, Ministry of Statistics & Programme Implementation, Government of India (2007-2010).

As a representative of the Planning Commission, he was Principal Author and Coordinator of (a) the Mid-term Appraisal of the Eighth Five Year Plan, (b) the Ninth Five Year Plan, (c) the Mid-term Appraisal of the Ninth Five Year Plan, (d) the Tenth Five Year Plan, and the Mid-term Appraisal of the Tenth Five Year Plan.

Amitabh Mattoo is a Professor at the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University and concurrently serves as Honorary Professor of International Relations at the Faculty of Arts, University of Melbourne. He also serves as Chairman of the Governing Board of Miranda House, University of Delhi.

Dr. Mattoo has co-chaired the Knowledge Initiative, with the Education Minister of Jammu and Kashmir and has also been a member of the National Security Council’s Advisory Board, Prime Minister’s Task Force on Global Strategic Developments, on the Executive Committee and Governing Council, Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs and of the Indian Prime Minister’s High Level Group on Nuclear Disarmament. He received his Doctorate from the University of Oxford and has been awarded the Padma Shri, one of India’s highest civilian awards, for his contribution to education and public life.

Shahana Chattaraj is a visiting fellow at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi. She holds a Ph.D. in Public Affairs from Princeton University, a Master’s degree in city planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Bachelor’s degree in Architecture from the School of Planning and Architecture in New Delhi.

She has held research fellowships and has also taught at the Blavatnik School of Government, Oxford University and at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Chattaraj worked for several years with the United Nations Population Fund prior to her doctoral studies. She has consulted with the World Bank, advised government bodies on urban policy and planning, and has also worked on community development in New Delhi.

Sanjaya Baru is Director for Geo-Economics and Strategy, International Institute of Strategic Studies, London; and Honorary Senior Fellow, Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi. He was Media Advisor and Principal Speechwriter to former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in 2004-08. Dr. Baru has also been Chief Editor, Business Standard and Financial Express; Editorial Page Editor, The Times of India; and Associate Editor, The Economic Times. Earlier, he has taught at Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy and Institute of South Asian Studies in Singapore, as well as at the Indian Council for Research in International Economic Relations.

He is presently on the Governing Board of Centre for Policy Research, Bharat Yuva Shakti Trust and India Habitat Centre. He is a prolific author, with books like Strategic Consequences of India’s Economic Performance (Routledge, 2006), The Political Economy of Indian Sugar (Oxford University Press, 1990) and most recently, The Accidental Prime Minister: The Making and Unmaking of Manmohan Singh (Penguin/Viking, 2014) to his name.

Rahul Nainwal is Founder – UnLtd Delhi; Advisory Member, iSEED – social enterprise incubator at IRMA; Co-Founder – Agrani India Foundation; Cashrelief; and India Fellow Social Leadership Program. He is also the Co-Founder and Director, iVolunteer, since 2001.

Mr. Nainwal has earned the title of CNBC-Young Turk, is an Ashoka Affiliate Fellow, and a TED Fellow. He has completed his Post Graduate Diploma in Rural Management, Institute of Rural Management, Anand, and his B. Tech. in Metallurgical Engineering from the National Institute of Technology, Rourkela.

Parth J. Shah is the Founder, Centre for Civil Society. Dr. Shah’s research and advocacy work focuses on the themes of economic freedom (law, liberty and livelihood campaign), choice and competition in education (fund students, not schools), property rights approach for the environment (terracotta vision of stewardship), and good governance (new public management and the duty to publish).

He has edited and published extensively in international and Indian journals, on various issues ranging from currency regulation to education policy. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Auburn University, and has taught at the University of Michigan.

Dipankar Gupta, Sociologist and Public Intellectual, was formerly Professor at the Centre for the Study of Social Systems, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. For a brief period, from 1993–1994, he was also associated with the Delhi School of Economics as Professor in the Department of Sociology. His current research interests include rural-urban transformation, labour laws in the informal sector, modernity, ethnicity, caste and stratification.

Dr. Gupta is a regular columnist with The Times of India, The Hindu, and other well-known publications. He serves on the boards of a number of institutions like the Reserve Bank of India, the National Bank for Agricultural and Rural Development (NABARD) and Max India. Dr. Gupta started and led KPMG’s Business Ethics and Integrity Division at New Delhi, and was a member of the National Security Advisory Board and the News Broadcasting Standards Authority. He has also been on the Board of Governors, Doon School.

Yugank Goyal received his Ph.D. in Economics and Law from the University of Hamburg, Erasmus University Rotterdam and the University of Bologna as Erasmus Mundus Fellow. He has an L.L.M. from the University of Manchester and a Bachelor of Technology from NIT Surat, India.

He is the founding faculty member of O. P. Jindal Global University. In addition to helping establish the university, he spearheaded several institution building initiatives, including the designing of curriculum and academic policies of the university in its formative stage. Between 2009 and 2012, Dr. Goyal was Assistant Professor and Assistant Dean (Research & International Collaborations) at Jindal Global Law School. As a prolific public speaker in charge of the university’s outreach programmes, he has also addressed more than three hundred leading schools, colleges and universities in India on the importance of law and social science education.

Dr. Goyal has also been awarded the Teaching Excellence Award in recognition of his course content and pedagogical innovations. Prior to joining JGU, he has worked as a consultant on rural development projects with ICICI Bank’s joint venture with the West Bengal State Government. He continues to consult governmental and non-governmental organizations on a variety of projects, besides having also served as faculty at Harvard Law School’s Institute for Global Law and Policy, and at the Vedica Scholars Programme for Women in New Delhi.

Shilpa Pandit is a trained Psychologist and a Development Professional with a Ph.D. in health in school contexts, and more than a decade of research work experience in different domains of social and human development. Over the past 9-10 years, she has been an expert researcher on subjects such as gender, health, poverty and livelihoods, and employability.

Ms. Pandit is Co-Founder, DreamPath Foundation, a foundation that has reached out to more than 8000 youth and adolescents, in and around Bengaluru, on career exploration and life skills. She consults actively on social development projects, with expertise in conceptualization, design and analysis of both quantitative as well as qualitative research methods. Ms. Pandit is a Master Trainer for various capacity building programmes, having written training manuals for adults/teachers/NGO workers and others. Her core areas of expertise lie in working with adolescents and youth, across backgrounds, towards work, careers and livelihoods.

Ajay Shah is a Professor at the National Institute for Public Finance and Policy.

He has been extensively involved in the policy process of reforms of the equity market and the New Pension System. As one of the foremost policy thinkers, Dr. Shah sits on the board of a number of government task forces, departments and corporate bodies, and advises on a range of policy issues.

Prior to the NIPFP, he has held positions at the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (Mumbai), Indira Gandhi Institute for Development Research (Mumbai) and the Ministry of Finance. His research interests include policy issues on Indian economic growth, open economy macroeconomics, public finance, financial economics and pensions. Dr. Shah has studied at IIT, Bombay; and USC, Los Angeles.

Seema Chowdhry is Curriculum Director at Harappa Education. She is a Digital Media Journalist/Editor, with a Master’s in Public Administration, and brings with her over 20 years of experience in narrative-lead features journalism with special focus on corporate social responsibility (CSR), philanthropy, social entrepreneurship, future of work, responsible business practices, impact investing, among others.

Her domain knowledge of policy and advocacy tools used in the development sector are exemplary. Ms. Chowdhry’s special skill has been to create focused series on a theme; she has produced and edited comprehensive features series: “Gifting, Giving”, “Changing Face of Indian Philanthropy”, “Decoding FCRA”, “CSR Spending Trends”, and others.  At present, she is working on narratives around the Indian workplace and how it is changing, what is the future of work in urban India, women in the workplace, gig economy and work-life from a millennial lens.

Krishna Ladha is Professor at the Goa Institute of Management, and holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Carnegie-Mellon University. He has extensively taught Game Theory (MBA and doctoral levels), Business and Government, Microeconomics, Economics of Public Policy, Social Choice Theory (doctoral level), Management of Societies at a number of international universities as well as at MDI, IIMK and IIM Calcutta.

His areas of research fall in: Game Theory, Public Policy, Social Choice Theory, Condorcet Jury Theorems, Group Decision Making, Constitution Design, Constitutional History of Ancient Athens, and Governance of Higher Education. Dr. Ladha has also been a Member, Planning & Analysis Group of the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), and has worked for six years for the DAE, BARC, and the various public sector enterprises of the DAE.

Luis Miranda is Chairman of the Centre for Civil Society and CORO. He has been involved in setting up 2 highly successful companies – HDFC Bank and IDFC Private Equity. Luis spends his time, with his wife, connecting dots; using their networks to help the organisations they are connected with. He is also on the board of Educate Girls and co-founded, Take Charge, a mentoring programme for Catholic youth in
Mumbai.

Luis is also Chairman of Cigna TTK and Senior Advisor at Morgan Stanley. He is a member of the Global Advisory Board of Chicago Booth. Luis writes blogs for Forbes and Thrive Global and teaches at the Accelerated Development Program of Chicago Booth. Luis received an MBA from the Booth School of Business at The University of Chicago and is a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India.

Nimish Adhia is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Manhattanville College in New York. His domains of expertise lie in international trade, economics of developing countries, and intellectual history of capitalism. He is on the editorial board of Education About Asia and serves as the Series Editor of the Economic History Cast Studies of Sage Publishers.

Dr. Adhia earned his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Illinois, Chicago. His research concerns with the interplay of culture and economics in the international arena. He has been an Upton Miller Teaching Fellow at Beloit College and a visiting Assistant Professor at Berry College.

Shruti Rajagopalan is Assistant Professor of Economics at the State University of New York, Purchase College and a Fellow at the Classical Liberal Institute at NYU School of Law. She earned her Ph.D. in Economics, in 2013, from George Mason University. Dr. Rajagopalan’s broad area of interest is the economic analysis of comparative legal and political systems.

Her research interests specifically include law and economics, public choice theory, and constitutional economics. Besides writing opinion editorials on Indian political economy in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Mint, The Hindu BusinessLine, and The Indian Express, Dr. Rajagopalan also writes on various policy aspects for the fortnightly column called The Impartial Spectator in Mint.

Razeen Sally is the Director of the European Centre for International Political Economy (ECIPE), which he co-founded in 2006. He is also Associate Professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, and Chairman of the Institute of Policy Studies, the main economic think tank in his native Sri Lanka.

Dr. Sally was on the faculty of the London School of Economics for eighteen years, from where he also received his Ph.D. He has held adjunct teaching, research and advisory positions at universities and think tanks in the US, in Europe, Africa and Asia.

Dr. Sally is on the Global Agenda Council for Competitiveness of the World Economic Forum, and was awarded the Hayek Medal by the Hayek Society, in 2011. He is a member of the Mont Pelerin Society; his research and teaching focuses on global trade policy and Asia in the world economy. He has written on the WTO, FTAs, and on different aspects of trade policy in Asia, besides also on the history of economic ideas, especially the theory of commercial policy.

Bappaditya Mukhopadhyay is a Professor at the Great Lakes Institute of Management, and is also a Visiting Professor at IIM Calcutta; at the University of Ulm, Germany; and at S P Jain Centre for Management in Singapore and Dubai. He is also the Managing Editor of: Journal of Emerging Market Finance and Journal of Infrastructure and Development, besides serving on the Editorial Advisory Board of the: International Research, Journal of Finance and Economics, International Bulletin of Business Administration, European Journal of Economics, Finance and Administrative Sciences and International Journal of Applied Economics and Finance..

Dr. Mukhopadhyay has published over 15 articles in peer reviewed journals, and is currently authoring a book on Credit Risk Management. He is also a special invitee on a number of boards: Risk Management Committee, Punjab National Bank, Member Index Committee, NCDEX, besides being a member of the Research Advisory Committee, NICR; and a special invitee on the board of the Risk Management Committee, IFCI.

Shubhashis Gangopadhyay is the Dean of the Indian School of Public Policy, Founder and Research Director of the IDF. He graduated in Economics from Presidency College, Kolkata, and received 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.

Besides being an Advisor to the Finance Minister, Government of India, Dr. Gangopadhyay has been a Consultant on policies to various ministries including Finance, Planning, Industry and Rural Development. He has led important government research projects like the leading indicator of economic activity, the impact of steel de-control on SAIL, the optimum use of Hajira-Bijapur-Jagdishpur gas pipeline and on the exit policy. He is currently on the board of IDE-I (International Development Enterprises – India), besides handling a number of high-profile, policy advisory roles.

Sudipto Mundle is a Distinguished Fellow at the Nation al Council of Applied Economic Research. He continues to serve on several corporate and other boards. Formerly he was an Emeritus Professor at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP), New Delhi. He was also a member of the Fourteenth Finance Commission, the erstwhile Monetary Policy Advisory Committee of the RBI  and the National Statistical Commission, where he also acted as Chairman. He spent much of his career at the Asian Development Bank, Manila, from where he retired as a Director in the Strategy and Policy Department in 2008.

In his earlier career in India he served in several academic institutions including the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, the Centre for Development Studies, Trivandrum, and the NIPFP, New Delhi, where he was the Reserve Bank Chair Professor. He has had visiting assignments at Yale University, USA; Cambridge University, UK; the Institute of Social Studies at the Hague and the Japan Foundation, Tokyo. He was also an economic adviser in India’s Ministry of Finance from 1986 to 1989. His current research interests include development economics, fiscal & monetary policy, macroeconomic modelling and governance. He has published several books and papers in professional journals.

Arun Maira is a thought leader on social and economic development and transformational change and leadership. He is an author of several books including: Shaping the Future: Aspirational Leadership in India and Beyond; Redesigning the Airplane While Flying: Reforming Institutions; and Transforming Capitalism: Improving the World for Everyone. His most recent book is Listening for Well-Being: Conversations with People Not Like Us. He is a frequent speaker at international forums on the reform of institutions.

Arun Maira is Chairman of the Board of Trustees of HelpAge International and Chairman of the Foundation for MSME Clusters.

He was a Member of the Planning Commission of India from 2009 to 2014, and a Member of the National Innovation Council. He was Chairman of The Boston Consulting Group in India from 2000-2008. Earlier, he worked with the Tata Group for 25 years in senior management and board positions.

Arun Maira has been Chairman of the Quality Council of India, Save the Children India, and the Axis Bank Foundation. He has served on the boards of the UN Global Compact and several social work organizations and educational institutions in India and abroad. He has also served on the National Council of the Confederation of Indian Industry for many years.