Authors, Chair, and Discussants India Policy Forum July 13–16, 2020 NCAER | National Council of Applied Economic Research NCAER India Centre, 11 Indraprastha Estate, New Delhi 110002 Tel: +91-11-23452698, www.ncaer.org NCAER | Quality . Relevance . Impact Authors, Chair, and Discussants 2 Shankar Acharya is an Honorary Professor at the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER). He has served as a Member on the 12th Finance Commission, the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council, and on the Securities and Exchange Board of India. During his previous assignment as Chief Economic Adviser to the Government of India, he was closely associated with the Government’s programme of economic reforms as well as with the macroeconomic management of the economy. Apart from being the principal author of the World Development Report, 2017, and several World Bank country reports, he has published numerous books and scholarly papers mainly on topics related to macroeconomic policy, growth, international economics, and public finance. Some of his recent books on the Indian economy are Towards Economic Crisis (2012-14) (2015), India and the Global Crisis (2012), and India’s Economy: Performance and Challenges (2010). He has a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from Oxford University and a PhD in Economics from Harvard University. Junaid Ahmad is the India Country Director for the World Bank. He was earlier the Chief of Staff to the President of the World Bank Group,and before that, the Senior Director for the Bank’s Water Global Practice, where he championed the Practice’s focus on water and the economy and resilience in water management. He has served as the Bank’s Deputy Resident Representative and Principal Economist in Johannesburg, and then as Regional Team Leader of the Water and Sanitation Program in New Delhi. He was a team member of the 2004 World Development Report: Making Services Work for Poor People. He has served in the Bank’s South Asia and Africa regions and was the Bank’s Director for Sustainable Development for the Middle East and North Africa Region. He holds a PhD in Applied Economics from Stanford University, an MPA from Harvard Kennedy, and a BA in Economics from Brow University. Abhijit Banerjee is the Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is a recipient of the 2019 Nobel Prize in Economics along with Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer, for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty. In 2003, he co-founded the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J- PAL) along with Esther Duflo and Sendhil Mullainathan and remains one of the directors of J-PAL. Abhijit is a past President of the Bureau for Research in the Economic Analysis of Development, an NBER Research Associate, a CEPR Research Fellow, an International Research Fellow of the Kiel Institute, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the Econometric Society. His areas of research are development economics and economic theory. Banerjee was educated at the University of Calcutta, Jawaharlal Nehru University, and Harvard University, where he received his PhD. 3 India Policy Forum 2020 Rajesh Bhushan serves as the Secretary, Officer on Special Duty (OSD) to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India. He is an 1987 cadre officer, and has previously served as Secretary to the Ministry of Rural Development and Cabinet Secretary, among other government positions. Across more than three decades of public service, both in the State Government and the Union Government, Rajesh Bhushan has served as an administrator and policymaker with a wide range of assignments in the fields of information technology, education, transport, rural development, and health. He currently serves as the head of the committee constituted to reform the drug regulatory system in India, by reforming the Central Drug Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO). Barry Bosworth is a senior fellow in the Economic Studies Program at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. A former presidential advisor, Bosworth is an expert on fiscal and monetary policy, economic growth, capital formation, and Social Security. He was the Director of the President’s Council on Wage and Price Stability in 1977-79 and has been a visiting lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley and Assistant Professor at Harvard University. His research has involved work on the determinants of economic growth in developing countries, saving, capital formation, and productivity growth. His recent projects include studies of U.S. saving behavior and economic growth in China and India. Some recent publications include: The Decline in Saving: a Threat to America’s Prosperity? (2012) and The Economy of Puerto Rico: Restoring Growth, with Susan Collins and Miguel A. Soto-Class (2006). Bosworth is a founding co-editor of the India Policy Forum volume. He received his PhD from the University of Michigan. Rishabh Choudhary is working as Consultant at the World Bank. His research interests include monetary policy, central banking, and fiscal sustainability at the national and sub-national levels. He received his Master’s degree in Quantitative Economics from Indian Statistical Institute, Delhi, and Bachelor’s degree in Economics from Hansraj College, Delhi University. Esther Duflo is the Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics in the Department of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a co-founder and co-director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL). She is a recipient of the 2019 Nobel Prize in Economics along with Abhijit Banerjee and Michael Kremer, for her experimental approach to alleviating global poverty. In her research, she seeks to understand the economic lives of the poor, with the aim to help design and evaluate social policies. She has worked on health, education, financial inclusion, environment and governance. Authors, Chair, and Discussants 4 Barry Eichengreen is the George C. Pardee and Helen N. Pardee Professor of Economics and Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley, where he has taught since 1987. He is a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Research Fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research, London. In 1997-98 he was Senior Policy Advisor at the International Monetary Fund. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (class of 1997). He has authored several books, with the most recent being, The Populist Temptation: Economic Grievance and Political Reaction in the Modern Era (Oxford University Press, 2018). He was awarded a doctor honoris causa from the American University in Paris, and the Schumpeter Prize from the International Schumpeter Society in 2010. He was also named one of Foreign Policy Magazine's 100 Leading Global Thinkers in 2011. He received his PhD in Economics and Master’s degrees in Economics and History from Yale University. Poonam Gupta is a Lead Economist for India at the World Bank. Prior to joining the Bank, she was the Reserve Bank of India Chair Professor at NIPFP, Professor at ICRIER and at the Delhi School of Economics, and Economist at the International Monetary Fund. Her research has been published in leading scholarly journals and publications, including the Journal of Finance, Journal of International Economics, IMF staff papers, World Bank reports, World Bank Global Economic Prospects, Africa’s Pulse, and East Asia and Pacific Update. He work has been featured in The Economist, Financial Times, and Wall Street Journal. She holds a PhD in International Economics from the University of Maryland, and a Masters in Economics from the Delhi School of Economics. Randeep Guleria is the Director of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS). He has served as the Professor and Head of the Department of Pulmonary Medicine and Sleep Disorders and Professor of Medicine, both at AIIMS. He is a member of the National Task Force for the Government of India for COVID-19, and a member of Empowered Group 2 created by the Prime Minister’s Office for multi-sectorial management of the coronavirus pandemic. He is also a member of the Joint Monitoring Group of Government of India created for pandemic and outbreak management in India since 2005. He is also the Chairperson of Clinical Research Group of Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) for COVID-19. He is the recipient of the Padma Shri award in the field of medicine, among other notable accolades. He has published over 450 publications, 100 original research articles, review reports, case studies published in reputed, peer reviewed national and international journals. He holds a D.M. in pulmonary medicine and a M.D. in internal medicine from the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGMEIR), Chandigarh. He completed his M.B.B.S. from Indira Gandhi Medical College (IGMC), Shimla. 5 India Policy Forum 2020 Renana Jhabvala is a board member for Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) Bharat, having been associated for over 40 years with the a trade union of 1.9 million members of women in the informal economy. She is also known for her writings of issues of women in the informal economy. She was awarded a Padma Shri Award in the year 1990. She has been active at the international level and represented SEWA at the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and other international forums. At the South Asia level she was instrumental in forming Home Net South Asia bringing together organisations in South Asian countries and is presently the Chair of Home Net South Asia. She is one of the founders and present Chair of WIEGO (Women in Informal Employment and Organizing) based at Harvard University, USA. She became a Member of Secretary General’s High Level Panel on Women’s Economic Empowerment in 2016.