Ashutosh Varshney

Professor, Brown University

The Sol Goldman Professor of International Studies and the Social Sciences and Professor of Political Science at Brown University, Ashutosh, also directs the Center for Contemporary South Asia. Previously, he taught at Harvard (1989-98) and the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (2001-2008). He served on the former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s Millennium Task Force on Poverty (2002-5). He has also served as an adviser to the World Bank, UNDP and the Club of Madrid.

Pradeep K. Chhibber

Director, Institute of International Studies, University of California, Berkeley
He is Professor and Indo-American Community Chair in India Studies and Director of the Institute of International Studies at University of California, Berkeley. He received an MA and an MPhil from the University of Delhi, and a PhD from the University of California, Los Angeles. He studies the politics of India, and its political parties and party systems. His recent research is on religion and politics, elections and parties, the ideological roots of the party system, and the politics of development in India. He is currently working on a book on the ideological basis of party politics in India. He is an active contributor to the editorial pages of the Indian Express. With Ashutosh Varshney of Brown University, Rhode Island, he is completing a book manuscript on the influence of caste and religion in twenty-first century politics in India.

Jairam Ramesh

Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha

Jairam Ramesh is a Member of the Parliament of India representing Andhra Pradesh in the Rajya Sabha. Prior to his new assignment, he was holding charge as the Minister Of State (independent charge) in the Ministry Of Environment and Forests in UPA-II. Jairam Ramesh has been a pioneer in putting forward the Green India initiative during his stint as the Union Minister of Environment & Forests .He has authored a number of key government reports in area as diverse as energy, technology, capital goods, industrial policy and telecom. His column on economics and public policy called ‘Kautilya’ in The Times of India is very popular. He is also the author of the book ‘Making Sense of Chindia’, a book that describes the forces of globalization and liberalization, and is an assessment of international relations in today’s world.

Neelanjan Sircar

Fellow, CPR

Neelanjan Sircar is a senior fellow at CPR. His research interests include Indian political economy and comparative political behavior with an eye to Bayesian statistics, causal inference, social network analysis, and game theory. Mr Sircar’s recent work focused on state level elections in India through both data work and ethnographic methods. He is particularly interested in understanding theoretic principles that undergird the decision-making processes of voters in India, which can shed light on democratic practice in the developing world more generally. He also works on projects characterising the social connections between citizens in India and their local brokers and leaders, as well as how these local brokers and leaders, both rural and urban, make decisions.

Kanchan Chandra

Professor, NYU, Abu Dhabi

Kanchan Chandra (Ph.D 2000, Harvard), Professor of Politics at NYU, works on questions of ethnicity, democracy, violence, patronage and clientelism, party politics and the politics of South Asia. She is lead author of Democratic Dynasties (2016) Constructivist Theories of Ethnic Politics (2012), author of Why Ethnic Parties Succeed: Patronage and Ethnic Headcounts in India (2004) and of articles in several leading journals. She is currently working on two large-scale research projects (1) A project which theorizes about the effect of ethnic mobilization on democratic stability and governance from a constructivist perspective, combining field research with cross-national data on ethnic parties and violence around the world. (2) A project on democratic transformations in South Asia.

Srinath Raghavan

Sr. Fellow, CPR

Srinath Raghavan is a senior fellow at the Centre for Policy Research. He is also a senior research fellow at the India Institute at King’s College London. Srinath works on contemporary and historical aspects of India’s foreign and security policies. His recent books include War and Peace in Modern India: A Strategic History of the Nehru Years, 1971: A Global History of the Creation of Bangladesh and India’s War: The Making of Modern South Asia, 1939-45. He is a regular columnist and commentator on international and strategic affairs. He has been a member of India's National Security Advisory Board. He is a recipient of the K. Subrahmanyam Award for Strategic Studies (2011) and the Infosys Prize for Social Sciences (2015).

Colonel (Retd) Ajai Shukla

Consulting Editor, Strategic Affairs, Business Standard
Colonel Ajai Shukla (Retd.) works with Business Standard, a national daily published from India. He writes on strategic affairs, regional issues, Indian defence policy and the defence economy. Besides being a frequent commentator on television, he also hosts a strategic affairs blog, Broadsword (ajaishukla.blogspot.com). From 2001 to 2008, he worked as a prime time news anchor and war correspondent with New Delhi NDTV. Before taking up journalism, Ajai was in the Indian army for over two decades, retiring as a colonel.

Anit Mukherjee

Assistant Professor, Nanyang Technological University
Anit Mukherjee is an Assistant Professor in the South Asia Programme at the RSIS, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He has published for Armed Forces & Society, New York Times, The Caravan, and Indian Express, among others. His article titled “Fighting Separately: Jointness and Civil-Military Relations in India” was awarded the 2017 Amos Perlmutter prize by The Journal of Strategic Studies. Currently a Non-Resident Fellow at Brookings India, Anit was a Major in the Indian Army and is an alumnus of India’s National Defence Academy.

Sushant Singh

Associate Editor, The Indian Express
Sushant Singh is Associate Editor at the Indian Express. He served for two decades with the Indian Army, including several stints in Jammu and Kashmir, and as a military observer with the United Nations.

General (Retd) Ved Prakash Malik

Former Chief of the Army Staff of India
General Ved Prakash Malik PVSM, AVSM (born 1 November 1939) served as the 19th Chief of Army Staff of the Indian Army from 30 September 1997 till 30 September 2000.[1] He was the Army Chief during the Kargil War. He has been awarded with various medals such as Param Vishisht Seva Medal, Ati Vishisht Seva Medal, Poorvi Star, and many such honors. Currently, he is an independent director on the board of some well-known private sector companies and advisor to various foundations and trusts. He has authored and edited various defence related books and has written chapters and articles for several other security-related books.

Amir Ullah Khan

Former head of strategy, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

Amir Ullah Khan is a Development Economist. He is Visiting Professor at the ISB and NALSAR in Hyderabad. He was earlier head of strategy at the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation. Prior to that he worked as Director at the India Development Foundation and Editor at Encyclopedia Britannica. Amir studied Electronics Engineering at Osmania University, Rural Management at IRMA and then got his PhD from the Jamia Millia Central University. He edits, with Dr Bobby John, the Journal of Development Policy and Practice.

Leena Menghaney

Head, South Asia, Médecins Sans Frontières
Leena Menghaney is the South-Asia Head for MSF's Access Campaign. Area of work and expertise is Public Health, Innovation and Intellectual Property. She is working with government, civil society and other stakeholders to implement public health safeguards in the Indian patent law. Since March 2005, her work involves providing technical support for legal challenges filed by public interest groups and people living with HIV/AIDS against pending patent applications covering HIV and other essential drugs for neglected co-infections. She has also been involved in providing legal analysis on various free trade agreements and bilateral investment treaties being negotiated by India with many developed countries. More recently, as part of the MSF Access Campaign team she has worked on addressing patent and regulatory barriers in India to encourage supply of low cost Direct Acting Antivirals for MSF's medical projects in high burden Hepatitis C settings.

Amrita Tripathi

Author & Founder-Editor, The Health Collective
Amrita Tripathi is a writer, former news anchor and the founder-editor of The Health Collective, a site dedicated to raising awareness on mental health and illness. Tripathi writes contemporary fiction; she is the author of Broken News and The Sibius Knot. She consults in the field of digital media and tweets @amritat

Aparna Jaswal

Fortis Hospital
Dr. Aparna Jaswal is an acknowledged expert in Cardiology at Fortis Escorts Heart Institute, New Delhi.She has been working at FEHI as a Principal Consultant since 1998.Dr. Jaswal has to her credit Certified Cardiac Device Specialist from the HRS, USA. Dr. Jaswal has many research projects and has been actively participating in National and International Research Trials. She has been invited as a faculty to various national and international symposia and workshops. She also has to her credit for having been the first electrophysiologist to start an EP program in Mauritius in November 2010.Dr. Jaswal has advanced as a Fellow of the Heart Rhythm Society, USA in March 2011.

Subhadra Menon

Executive Director, Research, The Kailash Satyarthi Foundation

SY Quraishi

Former CEC of India
Dr Quraishi brought to the Election Commission 35 years of distinguished work in the civil service, at both federal and state levels. Prior to his joining the Commission, he was Secretary, Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports, Govt. of India. He is known for his special contributions in social sector reforms covering health, education, population, drug abuse, and civil society action. He has done extensive work in the fields of Gender, Women & Child Development, HIV/AIDS, Youth and Adolescent issues. UN and other international organizations have availed his expertise in these areas as consultant and resource person on several occasions. He has a number of books, articles and talks to his credit on issues related to democracy, elections, HIV AIDS and Family Planning, social marketing, women and child development and Youth. His book ‘Social Marketing for Social Change’ has broken new ground in the field of Development Communication.

Rajeev Gowda

Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha (Karnataka)
Prof. Gowda has been active in politics since his return to India in 2000. In June 2014, Prof. Gowda was nominated to the Rajya Sabha by the Congress from Karnataka. He took oath on 7 July 2014. Prof Gowda leads ‘Bengaluru Needs You’ (BNY), a citizen movement to involve and empower people to engage with civic authorities to bring positive transformation in the city. Prof. Gowda is a Founder Trustee of Mentor Together, an organization which aims to connect children from disadvantaged backgrounds to professionals who will serve as their mentors based on shared academic, career and personal interests. http://rajeevgowda.in/Biography.aspx

G. Sampath

Social Affairs Editor, The Hindu
G Sampath is the Social Affairs Editor at The Hindu. His work focuses on the social dimensions of public policy, politics, culture, and technology. He was previously the Books Editor at Daily News and Analysis (DNA) and a columnist for Livemint. He also pens the satirical column, ‘Allegedly’ for The Hindu.

Devesh Kapur

Director, Center for the Advanced Study of India, University of Pennsylvania
Devesh Kapur was appointed Director of the Center for the Advanced Study of India in 2006. He is Professor of Political Science at Penn, and holds the Madan Lal Sobti Chair for the Study of Contemporary India. Prior to arriving at Penn, Professor Kapur was Associate Professor of Government at the University of Texas at Austin. His research focuses on human capital, national and international public institutions, and the ways in which local-global linkages, especially international migration and international institutions, affect political and economic change in developing countries, especially India. His book, Diaspora, Democracy and Development: The Impact of International Migration from India on India, published by Princeton University Press in August 2010, earned him the 2012 ENMISA (Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Migration Section of International Studies Association) Distinguished Book Award. The Other One Percent: Indians in America (co-authored with Sanjoy Chakravorty and Nirvikar Singh), published in October 2016 by Oxford University Press, received widespread acclaim. His latest edited works are Navigating the Labyrinth: Perspectives on India’s Higher Education (with Pratap Bhanu Mehta), published in January 2017 by Orient BlackSwan, and Rethinking Public Institutions in India (with Pratap Bhanu Mehta and Milan Vaishnav), forthcoming in May 2017 by Oxford University Press.

Siddharth Varadarajan

Founding Editor, The Wire
Siddharth Varadarajan is a founding editor of The Wire. He was earlier editor of The Hindu.

Kanta Murali

Assistant Professor, University of Toronto
Kanta Murali is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science. Her research interests include comparative political economy of development, Indian politics, politics of growth and economic policy, state-business relations among others. Her current focus is on the political and social drivers of economic policy in developing countries.

Vivek Dehejia

Professor of Economics, Carleton University, Canada
A Resident Senior Fellow in Political Economy at IDFC Institute, Dr. Dehejia is also Associate Professor of Economics and Philosophy at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada and Columnist, Mint. He holds a PhD in Economics (1995) from Columbia University in New York, where his thesis supervisors included the Nobel laureate Robert Mundell and the noted international trade economist Jagdish Bhagwati. Dr. Dehejia is also co-author of "Indianomix: Making Sense of Modern India" (Random House India, 2012, republished in paperback 2015).

T.N. Ninan

Chairman, Business Standard Pvt Ltd

T.N. Ninan is an award-winning journalist and one of India's most respected economic editors. He was the editor of Business Standard between 1992 and 2009, taking it from a single edition to an all-India footprint, and establishing its clear voice for economic reform and a liberal polity. Earlier, Ninan was the editor of The Economic Times and responsible for its radical transformation as well as rapid growth. He has also been the editor of Business World and executive editor of India Today. Ninan is the recipient of several awards, including the B.D. Goenka award for excellence in journalism.

Jayant Sinha

Minister of State for Civil Aviation, Government of India
Jayant Sinha (born 21 April 1963 in Giridih) is the Minister of State for Civil Aviation, a Member of Indian Parliament and formerly the Minister of State for Finance. He has also been an investment fund manager and management consultant. In May 2014, he was elected to the Lok Sabha, representing the Bharatiya Janata Party from Hazaribagh, Jharkhand.

Shekhar Gupta

Minister of State for Civil Aviation, Government of India
Shekhar Gupta is Founder and Editor-in-Chief of ThePrint, a digital start-up building a new editorial space of non-hyphenated liberalism, neither Left, nor Right, liberal on society, liberal on economy. Shekhar, a recipient of the Padma Bhushan, hosts Off the Cuff - an offering from ThePrint and “Walk the Talk” on NDTV 24x7 every week.