The National Security Advisor is the senior official on the National Security Council of India, and the chief advisor to the Prime Minister of India on national security policy and international affairs. In 2019, the term of Ajit Doval the current NSA was extended for another 5-year term, and has been assigned the rank of a Union Cabinet Minister and ranks at the seventh position in the Indian Order of Precedence.
The National Security Council (NSC) of India is an executive government body tasked with advising the prime Minister of India on matters of national security and foreign policy. It was established by the former Prime Minister of India Atal Bihari Vajpayee on 19 November 1998, with Brajesh Mishra as the first National Security Advisor.
Bibek Debroy is an Indian economist, serving as the chairman of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister of India. He is also the Chairman of the Finance Ministry's 'Expert Committee for Infrastructure Classification and Financing Framework for Amrit Kaal'. Debroy has made significant contributions to game theory, economic theory, income and social inequalities, poverty, law reforms, railway reforms and Indology among others. Bibek Debroy's recent co-authored magnum opus, Inked in India, stands distinguished as the premier comprehensive documentation, capturing the entirety of recognized fountain pen, nib, and ink manufacturers in India.
Isher Judge Ahluwalia was an Indian economist, public policy researcher, and professor. She was Chairperson Emeritus, Board of Governors, at the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER). She had also served as the chairperson of the board of the International Food Policy Research Institute, and the chairperson of the Government of India's High-Powered Committee on Urban Infrastructure Services. She was awarded India's 3rd highest civilian award, Padma Bhushan, in 2009.
Sukhadeo Thorat an Indian economist, educationist, professor and writer. He is the former chairman of the University Grants Commission. He is professor emeritus in Centre for the Study of Regional Development, Jawaharlal Nehru University. He is an expert on B. R. Ambedkar.
Nand Kishore Singh is an Indian politician, economist and former Indian Administrative Service officer. He is a senior member of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) since March 2014 after having served as a Member of Parliament in the Rajya Sabha (2008-2014) from Bihar for the Janata Dal (United). He has been a senior bureaucrat, Member of the Planning Commission and handled assignments of Union Expenditure and Revenue Secretary. He was also Officer on Special Duty to Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
Arvind Panagariya is an Indian economist who is also holding the position of Jagdish Bhagwati, the Director of Deepak and Neera Raj Center on Indian Economic Policies at School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University in New York City. He served as first vice-chairman of the government of India think-tank NITI Aayog between January 2015 and August 2017. He has been appointed as the chairman of 16th Finance Commission by the government of India. He is a former Chief Economist of the Asian Development Bank. He was awarded the Padma Bhushan by the President of India in 2012 for his contributions in the field of economics and Public Policy.
Amir Ullah Khan is a professional economist and professor who works on development issues primarily in the health, education, and agriculture sectors. Prof. Khan has worked for the Ministry of Finance, Government of India and the UNDP at Project LARGE. He is a former Deputy Director and policy advisor to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Prof. Khan writes a regular column for the business news publication livemint.com and for the newspaper etemaaddaily.com He is also a visiting professor at the Indian School of Business and at NALSAR in Hyderabad.
Dhananjay Ramchandra Gadgil, also known as D. R. Gadgil, was an Indian economist, institution builder and the vice-chairman of the Planning Commission of India. He was the founder Director of the Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics, Pune and the author of the Gadgil formula, which served as the base for the allocation of central assistance to states during the Fourth and Fifth Five Year Plans of India. He is credited with contributions towards the development of Farmers' Cooperative movement in Maharashtra. The Government of India recognised his services by issuing a commemorative postage stamp in his honour in 2008.
Vijay Kumar Saraswat is an Indian scientist who formerly served as the Director General of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and the Chief Scientific Advisor to the Indian Minister of Defence. He retired as the Director General of the DRDO on 31 May 2013. Saraswat is presently a member of NITI Aayog, the Indian Government's apex public policy think tank and the President of Sree Chitra Tirunal Institute for Medical Sciences and Technology, Trivandrum. Saraswat is also a former Chancellor of Jawaharlal Nehru University.
Arvind Virmani is an Indian economist and full time Member of NITI Aayog. He was appointed India's representative to the International Monetary Fund in 2009. Prior to that, he was the Chief Economic Advisor to the Government of India.
Ajai Chowdhry is one of the six founding members of HCL. He is currently the Chairman-Board of Governors at National Institute of Foundry and Forge Technology (NIFFT), Ranchi, International Institute of Information Technology, and Naya Raipur.
Rahul Khullar was an IAS officer of the 1975 batch and a former chairman of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI).
National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) is India’s oldest and largest independent, non-profit, economic policy research think tank. Established in New Delhi in 1956, it acquired considerable national and international standing within only a few decades of its founding. It is one of a handful of think tanks globally that combine rigorous analysis and policy outreach with deep data collection capabilities, especially for household surveys.
The NITI Aayog serves as the apex public policy think tank of the Government of India, and the nodal agency tasked with catalyzing economic development, and fostering cooperative federalism and moving away from bargaining federalism through the involvement of State Governments of India in the economic policy-making process using a bottom-up approach. Its initiatives include "15-year road map", "7-year vision, strategy, and action plan", AMRUT, Digital India, Atal Innovation Mission, Medical Education Reform, agriculture reforms, Indices Measuring States’ Performance in Health, Education and Water Management, Sub-Group of Chief Ministers on Rationalization of Centrally Sponsored Schemes, Sub-Group of Chief Ministers on Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, Sub-Group of Chief Ministers on Skill Development, Task Forces on Agriculture and up of Poverty, and Transforming India Lecture Series.
Ashok Gulati is an Indian agricultural economist and a former chairman of the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP), the advisory body of the Government of India on food supplies and pricing policies. Gulati was instrumental in the hiking the minimum support price of several food grains. Currently he is Infosys chair professor for Agriculture at Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER). He is also a member of the Task Force on Agriculture set by the prime minister under NITI Aayog and chairman of the Expert Group on Agriculture Market Reforms (2015). He was an active member of the high-level committee set up by the NDA Government to restructure and reorient Food Corporation of India in order to improve its operational and financial efficiency.
The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance (SCOF) is a department related standing committee (DRSC) constituted by the Parliament of India comprising selected members of parliament for the purpose of legislative oversight on the policies and decision making of the following four ministries:
- Ministry of Finance (MoF)
- Ministry of Corporate Affairs
- Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation
- NITI Aayog
Suman Bery is an Indian economist, academic, and writer who is the Vice Chairman of NITI Aayog. After serving at the World Bank for 28 years, Bery served as the Chief Economist of Oil and Gas supermajor Royal Dutch Shell, based in The Hague, Netherlands. He is a Global Fellow in the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington DC and a Non-resident Fellow of Brussels based think tank Bruegel. He was the former director general of National Council of Applied Economic Research and the former Indian country director of International Growth Centre.
Sixteenth Finance Commission is the Finance Commission constituted by the Government of India under Article 280 of Constitution. Arvind Panagariya has been appointed as the Chief of the Commission with the main task of determining revenue sharing between Central Government and State Government for a period of five years from April 1, 2026.
