SHIVSHANKAR MENON is currently a distinguished fellow of Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C.; chairman, advisory board, Institute of Chinese Studies, New Delhi; member, board of trustees, International Crisis Group; and a distinguished fellow of Asia Society Policy Institute, New York. He was previously the national security adviser to the prime minister of India (January 2010–May 2014) and foreign secretary of India (October 2006–July 2009). He has served as the Indian ambassador/high commissioner to China, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Israel. In 2016 he published a book Choices: Inside the Making of Indian Foreign Policy (Brookings and Penguin Random House India, 2016). He has been a Fisher Family Fellow at the Kennedy School, Harvard University, 2015, and a Richard Wilhelm Fellow at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2015. He was chosen as one of the ‘Top 100 Global Thinkers’ by Foreign Policy magazine in 2010.
DUVVURI SUBBARAO was the governor of the Reserve Bank of India (2008–13). Prior to that, he was the finance secretary to the Government of India, 2007–08, and secretary to the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council, 2005–07. As a career civil servant for over thirty years, he has worked in various positions at the federal and state levels in India. On leave of absence from the civil service, he worked with the World Bank (1999–2004), where his job involved advising developing countries on macroeconomic management. Subbarao is currently a distinguished visiting fellow at National University of Singapore.
S.Y. QURAISHI, a civil servant, was the seventeenth chief election commissioner of India. He revolutionized voter participation in India. For this and other electoral reforms, he figured in 100 Most Powerful Indians of 2011 and 2012 by Indian Express. He has delivered lectures on democracy and elections worldwide. He is on the board of advisers of International IDEA (Institute of Democracy and Electoral Assistance), Stockholm. He has been appointed the Global Ambassador of Democracy alongside eminent leaders like Kofi Annan. His book An Undocumented Wonder: The Making of the Great Indian Election has been a phenomenal success.
ROBIN JEFFREY is a visiting research professor at Institute of South Asian Studies, Singapore. His most recent book, written with Assa Doron, is Waste of a Nation: Garbage and Growth in India (Harvard University Press, 2018). He is the author, also with Assa Doron, of Cell Phone Nation (Hachette India, 2013). He published India’s Newspaper Revolution in 2000, with two subsequent editions.
TAN TAI YONG, a historian, is the president of Yale-NUS College. He was the director of ISAS, National University of Singapore, from 2008 to 2015. He specializes in South and Southeast Asian History. He has published extensively on the Sikh diaspora, social and political history of colonial Punjab, decolonization and the partition of South Asia, and on Singapore’s history. He has authored and co-authored several books, including Singapore: A 700-Year History, Creating Greater Malaysia: Decolonization and the Politics of Merger, The Garrison State and The Aftermath of Partition in South Asia.
DIPANKAR GUPTA is a sociologist and public intellectual. He was formerly a professor at the Centre for the Study of Social Systems, JNU, and was also associated with the Delhi School of Economics. His research interests include rural–urban transformation, labour laws in the informal sector, modernity, ethnicity, caste and stratification. He serves on the board of the RBI, National Bank for Agricultural and Rural Development (NABARD) and Max India. He has authored several books including Justice before Reconciliation: Negotiating a ‘New Normal’ in Post-riot Mumbai and Ahmedabad, The Caged Phoenix: Can India fly? and Interrogating Caste: Understanding Hierarchy and Difference in Indian Society. He is a regular columnist with Times of India and The Hindu.
ASHOK GULATI is currently the Infosys Chair Professor for Agriculture at ICRIER. Prior to this, he was chairman of the Commission for Agriculture Costs and Prices, Government of India; director at the International Food Policy Research Institute. He has written fourteen books and several research papers on Indian and Asian agriculture. He is a prolific writer in the media on agri-policies, and has been awarded the Padma Shri for his contribution to the field of agriculture policies in India.
GAYATHRI MOHAN is a consultant working on agriculture policy research at Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER). During her tenure, she has conducted studies related to the agriculture-water nexus in India, in relation to rest of the world. She is an INSPIRE fellow, with a PhD in agricultural economics from University of Agricultural Sciences, Bangalore. Her areas of research interest include agricultural policies, development economics, natural resource economics and rural development.
PRONAB SEN is the country director for the International Growth Centre’s India Central Programme. Earlier, he was the chairman of the National Statistical Commission; and principal economic adviser at the Government of India’s Planning Commission. He was also the first chief statistician of India; and secretary, Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, Government of India. A distinguished economist, he has taught at Johns Hopkins University and the Delhi School of Economics. As principal adviser, Perspective Planning Division of the Planning Commission, he was the author of the Approach Paper to four Five Year Plans and the principal author and coordinator of three Five Year Plans and Mid-term Appraisals.
SUMIT GANGULY holds the Rabindranath Tagore Chair in Indian Cultures and Civilizations and is a distinguished professor at the department of political science at Indiana University, Bloomington. He is authored, co-authored, edited and co-edited twenty-five books on contemporary South Asian politics. His most recent book, written with William R. Thompson, is Ascending India and Its State Capacity (Yale University Press, 2017).
POONAM MUTTREJA, executive director, Population Foundation of India (PFI), has over thirty-five years of experience in promoting women’s rights, rural livelihoods, public advocacy, communications and behaviour change. She conceived and promoted the popular television serial ‘Mai Kuch Bhi Kar Sakti Hoon’ (I, a Woman, Can Do Anything). Before joining PFI, she served as the country director of McArthur Foundation in India. She serves on the board of several non-governmental organizations, and has co-founded SRUTI, Dastkar and the Ashoka Foundation. She is an alumnus of Delhi University and Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. Poonam is a regular television and print commentator in India and internationally.
RAJIV KUMAR is the vice-chairman of NITI Aayog. He is also the founding director of Pahle India Foundation, New Delhi, and the chancellor of Gokhale Institute of Economics and Politics, Pune. He has served earlier as the secretary general, Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry; director and chief executive of ICRIER; principal economist, Asian Development Bank, and economic adviser, Ministry of Finance, Government of India. His books include Modi and His Challenges, Resurgent India: Ideas and Priorities and Exploding Aspirations: Unlocking India’s Future. A leading economist, he is a widely recognized economic columnist and a leading speaker on issues in Indian political economy.
SANJOY CHAKRAVORTY is professor of geography and urban studies at Temple University and a visiting fellow at the Center for the Advanced Study of India, University of Pennsylvania. His current research focuses on theoretical and empirical work on India, cities, inequality, and epistemology. He also writes fiction. His recent books include The Other One Percent: Indians in America (2016; a collaborative work on the Indian diaspora), The Promoter (2015; a novel), and The Price of Land: Acquisition, Conflict, Consequence (2013). His research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Justice, the American Institute of Indian Studies, and the World Bank.
A.K. SHIVA KUMAR is a development economist and policy adviser who works on issues of human development, including poverty, health, nutrition, basic education and the rights of women and children. He is a board member of the Global Partnership to End Violence against Children; and is a senior policy adviser to UNICEF India. He also teaches economics and public policy at Ashoka University and Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. He is an alumnus of Bangalore University, the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, and Harvard University from where he did his master’s in public administration and PhD in political economy and government.
AMITENDU PALIT is senior research fellow and research lead (trade and economic policy) at ISAS, National University of Singapore. Prior to joining academics, he worked for almost a decade in the Ministry of Finance in India and in various other ministries. An economist working on trade policies, regional developments, China–India relations and political economy, he is a columnist for Financial Express and a regular contributor to various global media. His books include The Trans Pacific Partnership, China and India, China–India Economics and Special Economic Zones in India. He appears as an expert on the BBC, Bloomberg, Channel News Asia, CNBC, Doordarshan (India) and All-India Radio.
SUMITA DAWRA is a member of the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), 1991 batch. She has a rich experience in public policy at various levels of governance in India, besides a good international exposure to public policy in China. Her experiences have helped her develop strong insights into using public policy as an effective tool for growth and development of countries. She has authored two books in public policy, namely—China: Behind the Miracle and Poor but Spirited in Karimnagar: Field Notes of a Civil Servant. Sumita is presently working as governance specialist with UNICEF India on a two-year deputation from service.
RONOJOY SEN is senior research fellow at ISAS and the South Asian Studies Programme, National University of Singapore. He has worked for over a decade with leading Indian newspapers, most recently as an editor for Times of India. His latest book is Nation at Play: A History of Sport in India (Columbia University Press/Penguin, 2015). He is also the author of Articles of Faith: Religion, Secularism and the Indian Supreme Court (Oxford University Press, 2010), and has edited several books. He has a PhD in political science from the University of Chicago and has read history at Presidency College, Kolkata.
S. NARAYAN (IAS, 1965 batch) with nearly four decades (1965–2004) in public service in the state and Central governments, in development administration, was the economic adviser to the prime minister during 2003–04. Prior to this assignment, he served the Government of India as the finance and economic affairs secretary, secretary in the Departments of Revenue, Petroleum, Coal and Industrial Development. In the Ministry of Finance, his responsibilities included formulation of macroeconomic policy for the government, tariff and taxation policies, as well as initiatives for modernizing the capital markets. His special interests include public finance, energy policy, governance issues and international trade. He has authored one book, edited two and written numerous policy papers, reports and book chapters. He also writes regularly in newspapers, both locally and internationally, on issues relating to public policy, governance, public finance, trade and energy. He has been a visiting senior research fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore since 2005.
SUBHOMOY BHATTACHARJEE is a consulting editor at Business Standard. He writes on public policy—primarily finance and energy. His latest book India’s Coal Story: From Damodar to Zambezi traces how India’s coal reserves were at the centre of a major political scandal that nearly sent a prime minister to jail. It explores why since Independence, business and government in India could not settle the rights on energy security, creating the murky politics of coal and sketches the options for India’s future energy security. He has read economics at the Delhi School of Economics, Delhi University. He has worked with the Government of India; with Economic Times, Indian Express and Financial Express; and is now a consultant with Research and Information System for Developing Countries, a New Delhi-based think tank. He is also a commentator of business news on various TV channels.
SUBRATA K. MITRA is the director, ISAS, and visiting research professor, NUS, and emeritus professor Heidelberg University, Germany. The dynamic interaction of culture and rationality has deeply influenced his research profile, which focuses on governance and administration, citizenship, hybridity and re-use, the evolution of the Indian state from classical to modern times, the transition to democracy and its consolidation, and security and foreign affairs of South Asia. His books Culture and Rationality (SAGE, 1999), The Puzzle of India’s Governance (Routledge, 2005), Re-use: The Art and Politics of Integration and Anxiety (SAGE, 2008), Politics in India (Routledge, 2017), Kautilya’s Arthashastra: Classical Roots of Modern Politics in India (jointly authored with Michael Liebig, NOMOS 2016, Rupa, 2017) represent different facets of his oeuvre.
DHRUVA JAISHANKAR is a fellow in foreign policy studies at Brookings India, New Delhi, and at Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C. He is also a regular contributor to Indian and international media. He was previously a transatlantic fellow and programme officer with the German Marshall Fund in Washington, D.C.; a research assistant at Brookings; and a reporter for CNN-IBN. He has been a visiting fellow with the Rajaratnam School of International Studies; an IISS–SAIS Merrill Center Young Strategist; and a David Rockefeller fellow with the Trilateral Commission. He is an alumnus of Macalester College and Georgetown University.
NALIN MEHTA is a social scientist, journalist and author. He is a consulting editor with Times of India and the editor of the journal South Asian History and Culture (Routledge). He was previously the managing editor, Headlines Today; adjunct professor at IIM Bangalore; and has held senior positions with the Global Fund in Geneva, Switzerland, and UNAIDS. He also held fellowships at National University of Singapore, Australian National University, La Trobe University, and the International Olympics Museum. His books include Behind a Billion Screens: What Television Tells Us About Modern India, India on Television: How Satellite Channels Have Changed the Way We Think and Act and Sellotape Legacy: Delhi and the Commonwealth Games.
PAWAN AGARWAL is currently the CEO, Food Safety and Standards Authority of India in the Government of India. He is an IAS officer of 1985 of the West Bengal cadre. He has served in various capacities in the Central and state governments, such as the joint secretary, skill development, adviser, higher education, Planning Commission (now NITI Aayog) and in the HRD ministry and the University Grants Commission. He was the Fulbright New Century Scholar at Harvard University/Emory University; visiting scholar and fellow at ICRIER, New Delhi, and the Centre for the Study of Higher Education and the Australia India Institute at the University of Melbourne. He has authored Indian Higher Education: Envisioning the Future (SAGE, 2009).
U.K. SINHA served as the chairman of Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) from February 2011 to 1 March 2017. Prior to this, he was the chairman and managing director at UTI Asset Management Company from 2005 until February 2011. Preceding this, he was the joint secretary in the Department of Economic Affairs at the Ministry of Finance and looked after capital markets, external commercial borrowings, pension reforms and foreign exchange management functions from June 2002 to October 2005. He has been conferred with many awards viz. CNBC-TV18 India Business Leader Awards (IBLA), ‘Outstanding Contribution to Indian Business Award 2014’, and Economic Times, ‘Business Reformer of the Year Award 2014’ to name a few. He was selected for the IAS in 1976. He holds MSc and LLB degrees.
PINAKI CHAKRABORTY is professor at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy, India, and a research associate at Levy Economics Institute, New York. He is also the chairman of Kerala Public Expenditure Review Committee, appointed by the Kerala government. He was the economic adviser to the Fourteenth Finance Commission of India. He has held appointments as a visiting faculty at the University of Ottawa and the University of Carleton, Canada, Centre for Development Studies, JNU, and the Indira Gandhi Institute for Development Research, Mumbai. He has advised the governments of Nigeria, Kenya and some CIS countries in Central Asia. He holds a PhD in economics.