Spending more than 34 years as a Public Servant as an officer of the Indian Administrative Service he has had ’hands on’ experience of International Trade, Investment Promotion, Overseas Investments, International Contracts, Dynamics of Petroleum Sector and Environmental issues, especially Climate Change. He has been closely associated with major policy and regulatory initiatives in the domain of trade, energy and environment for more than 15 years by virtue of his having occupied key positions in the Ministries of Commerce, Petroleum & Natural Gas and Environment & Forests. He has also been Chairman, Central Pollution Control Board. He has spent over five years as Director on the Board of major Public Sector Undertakings such as ONGC, OVL and OIL. Following his retirement he was associated with climate change negotiations and was a member of several Central Government Committees. He is Permanent Invitee to the Governing Council of the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM), Pune, under the Ministry of Earth Sciences, for the period 2012-2017. From July 2013 onwards, he is an Independent Director on the Board of Directors of SAIL, a premier Central Public Sector Enterprise.
Mahendra L. Kumawat is a former Director General of the Border Security Force (BSF), the border patrol agency of the Government of India. On August 1, 2009 he was succeeded by Raman Srivastava. He has also served as a Special Home Secretary. Kumawat was an IPS Officer of the Andhra Pradesh Cadre in 1972 as an Internal Security Expert had considerable experience in dealing with naxalism and terrorism. He was a member of the Anti-Naxalite Commando Force from 1992-94 and also proposed the National Police University, later approved by the Union Cabinet. He was awarded the Indian Police Medal for Meritorious Service in 1989 and the President’s Police Medal for Distinguished Service on 26 January 1997. He also served as the Chairman of Rajasthan Public Service Commission.
Mr. N.K. Singh is a prominent Indian economist, academician, and policymaker. He is currently Chairman of the 15th Finance Commission. Prior to this position, he presided as Chairman of the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Review Committee (FRBM). He also served as a member of the Upper House of the Parliament, the Rajya Sabha, from 2008 to 2014, during which time he contributed to several prominent Parliamentary Standing Committees including the Public Accounts Committee, the Committee on Foreign Affairs, and the Committee on Human Resource Development.
Mr. Singh had a long and distinguished career as a member of the Indian Administrative Services before his entry into politics and fiscal policy leadership. In his home cadre in the State of Bihar, he inter alia has held important positions like the Industrial Development Commissioner and Deputy Chairman, Bihar Planning Board. He was part of the core group of advisors and strategists during India’s economic reforms of 1991. He was principal interlocutor for negotiations with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for structural adjustments, loans and Balance of Payment support instrumentalities. He served as Expenditure Secretary, Revenue Secretary, Secretary to the Prime Minister of India and Member Planning Commission among other senior leadership roles.
Mr. Singh brings a wealth of national and international experience to the table, having interacted closely with multilateral organizations such as the World Bank, IMF, ADB, and OECD. His early work as First Minister, Economic and Commercial, Indian Embassy, Japan (1981–85) and subsequent contributions to the international economic order were recognized by the Emperor of Japan with the award of the “Order of the Rising Sun - Gold and Silver" in 2016. Mr. Singh has been a recurrent participant of numerous international forums such as Davos, the Neemrana Conference and India Foundation to mention a few. He is also on the Board of Governors for Ananta Aspen Centre.
On the academic front, he is a Member of the Governing Board of the Nalanda University and Chairperson of its Endowments Committee. Mr. Singh has been a recurring eminent guest lecturer at prestigious academic institutions and Universities like Columbia, Yale and Stanford. He also holds the position of Co-Chairman of the India Advisory Committee, London School of Economics. He is a Member on the Board of Trustees of the Institute of Economic Growth of the Delhi School of Economics. He was Chairman, Board of Governors for Management Development Institute and International Management Institute.
Mr. Singh is also a published author with several prominent books to his name. "Politics of Change", "Not by Reason Alone,", “The New Bihar: Rekindling Governance and Development". His Autobiography Portraits of Power: Half a Century of Being at Ringside was released in October 2020, which has brought out more vividly his 40 years of engagement in policy making. He has been a reputed columnist in leading Indian newspapers including the likes of Hindustan Times, Hindustan, The Indian Express, The Hindu, and Mint.
Sanjeev S. Ahluwalia has core skills in institutional analysis, energy and economic regulation and public financial management backed by eight years of project management experience (2005 to 2013) in governance and policy support with the Poverty Reduction and Economic Management (PREM) practice of the World Bank in Africa. Subsequently, he worked as a consultant for World Bank governance projects in India and most recently in electricity reform in Myanmar and Energy Transition in India.
He was the founder Secretary of the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission, Government of India, in 1999. During three years of consultancy with TERI he provided technical assistance to the newly corporatized utility GRIDCO to submit its first Tariff Application to the Orissa Electricity Regulatory Commission under the World Bank and DFID assisted Orissa Electricity Reform Project.
In the Government of India, he was in the Ministry of Disinvestment, Department of Economic Affairs and in the Ministry of Commerce. He has ten years of experience in industrial and rural development, district, and municipal administration, and was Secretary, Finance in the Government of Uttar Pradesh, which was his home cadre in the Indian Administrative Service.
He has a master’s in Economic Policy Management from Columbia University, New York; a post graduate diploma in financial management from the Faculty of Management Studies, Delhi University, and a master’s in history from St. Stephens College, Delhi.
He is affiliated with the Observer Research Foundation as an Advisor since 2014.
He hosts a Blog - https://ahlu-india.com/
Select Publications
"From Lattus to Lasers" Realising India's Electricity Potential" 2022. TERI Alumini Association & Shakti Foundation, New Delhi.
“Co-authored “Sustainable Urban Networks for Dynamic and Resilient (SUNDAR) India”. 2022. RTI International
“Valuing our common future” September 30,2022 orfonline.org
“Glasgow 2021 – Reward aggressive carbon mitigation” Asian Age, August 24, 2021.
Surendra Singh joined the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) in 1959 and retired in 1996 as Cabinet Secretary to the Government of India. During a distinguished career spanning nearly four decades, he held a number of important positions in the Government of India, i.e. Secretary (Industry) and Secretary (Company Affairs), Special Secretary in the Prime Minister’s Office and Special Secretary in the Ministry of Commerce. He handled the Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) and Secretariat for Industrial Approvals (SIA). He was the Chairman of the High Powered Committee on Independent Power Production, and the Committee on Infrastructure Development.
Earlier in his career, he served the Government of India in Ministries of Industry and Commerce and the Government of U.P. in the Industries and Infrastructure Departments.
He has also served as Advisor to the Government of Tanzania on Trade Promotion and as Economic Counselor in the High Commission of India, London.
After retiring from the IAS, Mr. Singh served as Executive Director on the Board of the World Bank, representing India, Bangladesh, Bhutan and Sri Lanka. He chaired the important World Bank Committee on Development Effectiveness. He was also a director on the Boards of the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA).
After completing his assignment with the World Bank, Mr. Singh has held positions on the Boards of Directors of various prestigious companies and banks. He chaired a committee set up by the Planning Commission on restructuring of the Institute of Applied Manpower Research. He has been advisor to Government of Maharashtra on international financial institutions. He has also been a member of the Planning Commission Consultative Committees on industry, international economic relations, transport and tourism.
His exceptional and meritorious performance in the Civil Service was recognized by the award of Padma Bhushan by the President of India
Vikram Sood is Advisor at Observer Research Foundation.
Mr. Sood is the former head of the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) — India’s foreign intelligence agency. He writes on security, foreign relations and strategic issues. He is the author of The Unending Game: A Former R&AW Chief’s Insights into Espionage (2018).
