Suman Bery is an Indian economist, academic, and writer who is the Vice Chairman of NITI Aayog. [1] 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. [2] He was the former director general of National Council of Applied Economic Research and the former Indian country director of International Growth Centre. [3] [4]
Bery was educated at The Doon School in Dehradun, and then spent a year at Oakham School, UK. [5] He then went to Magdalen College, University of Oxford, where he read philosophy, politics and economics, and later received a master's degree in public affairs from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University. [6]
Suman worked at the World Bank for 28 years, and later became the lead economist. His career at the bank spanned research on financial sector development and country policy and strategy, notably in Latin America and the Caribbean. His country experience included Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Peru. Areas of focus included the macro-economy, financial markets, and public debt management.
From 1992 to 1994, on leave from the World Bank, Mr. Bery worked as Special Consultant to the Reserve Bank of India, Bombay, where he advised the Governor on financial sector policy, institutional reform, and market development and regulation. [7]
In 2001, he left the World Bank to become the director general of National Council of Applied Economic Research(NCAER). [8] He was the director general and chief executive of NCAER from 2001 till 2011. He is also a senior visiting fellow at Centre for Policy Research. [9]
Bery was Royal Dutch Shell's Chief Economist between 2012 and 2016. While at Shell he led a collaborative project with Indian think tanks to apply scenario modelling to India's energy sector. [10]
In previous roles, Suman has served as a member of the Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council, of India's Statistical Commission and of the Reserve Bank of India's Technical Advisory Committee on Monetary Policy. [11]
He is a Global Fellow in the Asia program of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington DC, a Nonresident Fellow of the Brussels think-tank Bruegel, as well as a Senior Fellow of the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth. [12] [13]
He also serves on the board of the Shakti Sustainable Energy Foundation in New Delhi, a non-profit dedicated to supporting India's transition to a low-carbon future. [14]
He regularly contributes columns to newspapers, journals, and magazines, including Forbes , Business Standard , Indian Express , and Economic and Political Weekly . [15] [16] [17] [18]
Ajay Gopikisan Piramal is an Indian billionaire businessman, and the chairman of the Piramal Group, a conglomerate with interests in pharmaceutical, financial services, real estate, healthcare analytics and glass packaging. As of July 2024, his net worth is estimated at US$2.8 billion.
The Planning Commission was an institution in the Government of India which formulated India's Five-Year Plans, among other functions.
The National Security Council (NSC) of India is an executive government agency tasked with advising the Prime Minister's Office on matters of national security and strategic interest. 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.
John Matthai CIE (1886–1959) was an economist who served as Independent India's first Railway Minister and subsequently as well as India's Finance Minister, taking office shortly after the presentation of India's first Budget, in 1948. He was born on January 10, 1886, as the son of Challiyal Thomas Matthai and Anna Thayyil to an Anglican Syrian Christian family. He graduated in economics from the University of Madras. He served as a Professor and Head in University of Madras from 1922 to 1925. He presented two Budgets as India's Finance Minister, but resigned following the 1950 Budget in protest against the increasing power of the Planning Commission and P. C. Mahalanobis. He was the first Chairman of the State Bank of India when it was set up in 1955. He was the founding President of the Governing Body of the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) in New Delhi, India's first independent economic policy institute established in 1956. He served as the Vice Chancellor of the University of Mumbai from 1955 till 1957 and then as the first Vice Chancellor of the University of Kerala from 1957 to 1959. His nephew, Verghese Kurien, is generally recognized as the architect of India's White Revolution. Dr. John Matthai Centre, Thrissur, located on the large plot of land donated by his family, is named in his honour. His wife, Achamma Matthai was an Indian social worker and a women's rights activist. The Government of India honoured him in 1954 with the award of Padma Shri, the fourth highest Indian civilian award, for his contributions to the society,
Arvind Panagariya is an Indian economist who is the Jagdish Bhagwati Professor of Indian Political Economy at Columbia University and is also 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.
Yamini Aiyar was the president and chief executive of the Centre for Policy Research (CPR), New Delhi, a public policy research think tank. She was appointed President of CPR in 2017. She was previously a senior research fellow and founder, in 2008, of the Accountability Initiative (AI) at the centre. Through Accountability Initiative, Yamini is credited with pioneering one of India's largest expenditure tracking surveys for elementary education. She is also regular columnist in newspapers, such as The Hindustan Times, LiveMint, and The Indian Express'.
Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister of India (PMEAC) is a non-constitutional, non-permanent and independent body constituted to give economic advice to the Government of India, specifically the Prime Minister. The council serves to highlight key economic issues facing the country to the government of India from a neutral viewpoint. It advises the Prime Minister on economic issues like inflation, microfinance, and industrial output.
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.
Janmejaya Kumar Sinha is the present chairman of Boston Consulting Group (BCG) India, a BCG fellow and a member of the Henderson Institute Innovation Sounding Board.
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.
Santosh Mehrotra is a development economist, whose research and writings have had most influence in the areas of labour, employment, skill development, on the relationship between human development and economic growth, child poverty, and the economics of education. He was an economic adviser in the United Nations system in New York City, Italy, and Thailand (1991–2006), and technocrat in the government of India (2006–2014), apart from making contributions to academic research since the mid-1980s. He has also in recent years established a reputation as an institution-builder in the field of research in India, despite facing difficult odds. He brings a combination of professional experience: with the Indian government as a policy maker and adviser, with international organisations as a technical expert, having lived on three continents and travelled to 63 countries providing technical advice to governments; and as an academic whose research work has been translated into French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and German.
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.
Amitabh Kant is presently India's G20 Sherpa. He is an Indian bureaucrat and the former chief executive officer of NITI Aayog, a public policy think tank of the Government of India. He is a retired member of the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), the central civil service of the Government of India.
Rajiv Kumar is an Indian economist who had served as the second vice-chairman of the NITI Aayog. He also serves as the chancellor of Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics, Pune His earlier stint in government was initially with the Ministry of Industry and subsequently in the Ministry of Finance, as economic advisor during the reform years of 1991-1994. He has wide experience of having worked in government, academia, industry associations, as well as in international financial institutions. He also served as an independent director on the central boards of the Reserve Bank of India and the State Bank of India.
The Raghuram Rajan Committee on Financial Sector Reforms was a committee constituted by the Government of India in 2007 for proposing the next generation of financial sector reforms in India. It was chaired by University of Chicago economist Raghuram Rajan who had earlier been the chief economist at the International Monetary Fund. The committee, in its report titled A Hundred Small Steps, recommended broad-based reforms across the financial sector, arguing that instead of focusing "on a few large, and usually politically controversial steps", India must "take a hundred small steps in the same direction".
Rajesh Shukla (born 1 August 1965) is an Indian researcher, author and applied statistician. His major area of work is the Indian Consumer landscape and citizens’ environment. Shukla has served as the Director for NCAER-Centre for Macro Consumer Research and is a visiting professor at Institute for Human Development (IHD), India. He is currently serving as the Managing Director & CEO of People Research on India's consumer economy (PRICE, branded as ICE 3600), an independent not-for-profit ‘think-tank’ cum ‘fact-tank’, engaged in identifying data gaps, collecting, building and disseminating seminal knowledge and insights into India's Citizens’ Environment and Consumer Economy.
B.V.R Subramaniyam is a retired 1988-batch Chhattisgarh cadre Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer who was empaneled as a secretary in the central government and is experienced with conflict zone administration. He is former Chief Secretary of the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir. He has previously served in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) under both Manmohan Singh and Narendra Modi. He has been instrumental in containing insurgency in Chhattisgarh in the 2010s. In February 2023, he has taken charge as 4th CEO of NITI Aayog.