Public Policy Forum & LITFest 2021

Dr Gursharan Dhanjal , MA, MPhil, PhD from Delhi University and an expert in strategic affairs, is Managing Director & Editor, SKOCH Group. He is also Editor of INCLUSION—a quarterly publication that focuses on development and addresses inclusive growth-related issues. INCLUSION has completed six years. He has over 20 years of work experience ranging from academics to research and business journalism to consulting. He started his career as an Assistant Professor and taught at Delhi University for five years before joining Asia Business News (India)—Dow Jones, a premier broadcaster of business and financial news during the mid-90s. He also worked for CNBC for over three years during the late 90s.

He has led various research projects, impact assessments and field studies in financial inclusion, e-governance and ICT for development that included traversing across the country, collecting citizen voices for over a decade now. His areas of expertise include research and rich media content. A prolific writer, Dr Dhanjal has contributed over 200 columns in leading national dailies including The Hindustan Times, The Times of India, The Financial Express and The Pioneer. He has published research papers in several journals of repute in addition to authoring a widely acclaimed book entitled Tarapur: The Politics of Nuclear Age. He has recently published another book in association with Sameer Kochhar entitled Infrastructure and Governance. He has contributed papers that have been published in various books, e.g., Growth and Governance: Essays in Honour of Nandan Nilekani; An Agenda for India’s Growth: Essays in Honour of P Chidambaram; Policymaking for Indian Planning: Essays in Honour of Montek Singh Ahluwalia, edited by Sameer Kochhar; and, Building from the Bottom: Infrastructure and Poverty Alleviation, edited by Sameer Kochhar and M Ramachandran. He is a member of the Working Group on ICT in Higher Education constituted by Planning Commission for the 12th Five Year Plan. He is a regular speaker at various public fora and institutions including IIT-Delhi and Delhi University where he is also a visiting faculty. He is Member, Course Preparation Team for Master’s Programme, School of Social Sciences, Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU). His research interests include nuclear non-proliferation, political systems, ICT for development, financial inclusion, education, public administration, urban development, conflict resolution and peace building.

Dr Amar Patnaik is Rajya Sabha Member from Odisha representing the Biju Janata Dal. He is also the party’s national spokesperson and head of the party’s IT wing. Dr Patnaik completed his PhD, which is published as a scholarly work on public policy titled “Institutional Change and Power Asymmetry in the context of Rural India”.

Amar Patnaik is a former civil servant belonging to the Indian Audit and Accounts Service under the Comptroller and Auditor General of India from where he prematurely retired to join the academic world. He has held positions of principal Accountant General of Sikkim, Odisha, Kerala and West Bengal during his service career. He was also the Director of the Agricultural Marketing and Co-operatives Department of Odisha, India, where he designed sustainable livelihood models for farmers through efficient and effective marketing of their produce.

Reema Nanavatyleads Self Employed Women’s Association’s (SEWA) economic and rural development activities reaching out to seventeen million women and their families across India.

Since 1989 she has pioneered revival, restoration and innovation of rural livelihoods from district to global level. Reema is being recognized across India and in the neighbouring countries as a champion of making livelihoods of the poor women reach markets they deserve. May they be women artisans, salt pan workers, farmers, or labourers, she has made efforts over two decades to mainstream amazing diversity of skills and knowledge of India’s citizens into the national mainstream. Her effort has created a more dynamic local economy and fairer and equal society for thousands of SEWA sisters, citizens of India.

Born on May 22, 1964 in Ahmedabad, Reema graduated in science from Gujarat University and was selected to IAS services of Government of India.

Jairam Ramesh is an Indian economist who served in the V.P Singh’s Government in 1990 and in Manmohan Singh’s finance ministry in the Narasimha Rao administration. He was an advisor to Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram between 1996–98. He went on to serve as Deputy Chairman, State Planning Board, Government of Karnataka and on the Economic Advisory Council of Andhra Pradesh. In 2004 he was elected to Rajya Sabha from Adilabad district in Andhra Pradesh. Subsequently, he was inducted into the cabinet in Manmohan Singh’s administration. He was re-elected in 2010 to Rajya Sabha and was made the Minister of Rural Development and Minister of Drinking Water and Sanitation. After he was appointed the minister for environments and forests, he banned the use of bulls as performing animals, which later snowballed into the ban of Jallikattu in Tamil Nadu in 2016. He was elected to Rajya Sabha for the third term in 2015.

Alok Misra has around 28 years of professional experience in international development, rural finance, microfinance, inclusive finance and research at both policy and implementation level.

Dr Misra has worked globally across 22 countries and with premier institutions like NABARD, NCDEX and MDI. He has provided consulting to ADB, UNCDF, World Bank, IFC, IDLO, Rabo Bank among others. Currently, he is a member of SMART Campaign Accreditations committee, Inclusive Finance India Group of Advisors and member of digital finance working group constituted by ITU, Geneva.

N C Saxena was the topper of his batch (1964) in the IAS. He retired as Secretary, Planning Commission in 2002. He also worked as Secretary, Ministry of Rural Development (1997-99), and as Director, National Academy, Mussoorie (1993-96). Author of several books and articles, Dr. Saxena did his Doctorate in Forestry from Oxford University in 1992. He was awarded honorary Ph.D. from the University of East Anglia (UK) in 2006.