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Nikhil Pahwa is the Founder Editor and Publisher of MediaNama (www.medianama.com) the leading publication for news and analysis on the evolving digital ecosystemin India. Nikhil is also a TED Fellow as well as a co-founder with SaveTheInternet.inand Internet Freedom Foundation.

Nikhil Raymond Puri is an independent researcher and risk consultant. He obtained his PhD in Politics from the University of Oxford.

Nikhil Sharma Senior Vice President (Engineering) GIST Impact

Nikhila Natarajan is Senior Programme Manager for Media and Digital Content with ORF America. Her work focuses on the future of jobs current research in the field of machine learning and artificial intelligence digital innovation and strategy. Nikhila also tracks Americas political faultlines.

Nikita Jain is an Indian Economic Service officer trainee

Nikita is an advocacy & communication strategist, with over two decades of cross-sectoral expertise committed to driving transformative change. At The Leprosy Mission Trust India, she leads impactful advocacy initiatives, to inform and influence public policy at both national and state level, to increase political, public, and social support for people affected by leprosy, and to facilitate development of change agents.

Email: [email protected] 

Dr Nilanjan Ghosh is a Director at the Observer Research Foundation (ORF) in India, where he leads the Centre for New Economic Diplomacy (CNED) and ORF’s Kolkata Centre. His current roles also include Member of the Global Future Council on the Future of Nature and Security at the World Economic Forum (2023-25), Co-Chair of Task Force 3 on International Financial Architecture for Think20 under Brazil’s G20 Presidency (2024), Member of the Board of Country Representatives for the European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists (EAERE, 2024-25), and Member of the Research Advisory Committee for WWF India (2023-24).

Nilanjan was the President of the Indian Society for Ecological Economics (INSEE, 2022-24) and the Director of the Think20 India Secretariat during India’s G20 Presidency in 2023. He was also a Member of the Expert Committee constituted by the Supreme Court of India in 2021, formulating the Net Present Value criteria for forest land diversion.

His career trajectory in reverse chronological order includes roles such as Senior Fellow at ORF, Senior Vice President & Chief Economist at the Multi Commodity Exchange of India Limited, and faculty positions at TERI School of Advanced Studies. From 2015 to 2020, he advised WWF India in establishing their Ecological Economics practice.

Nilanjan has taught at institutions including Linnaeus University, the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, and Jadavpur University, and visited Uppsala University, MIT, and Stanford University.

A natural resource economist with over two decades of experience, Nilanjan holds a Ph.D. from IIM Calcutta. He has authored/ edited 15 books and monographs and has written over 100 peer-reviewed papers and several commentaries/ op-eds. His advisory work spans organisations like IUCN, USAID, FORMAS, UNCTAD-India, WWF-UK, IWMI-WLE, etc.

Nilanjan Gupta is a research fellow in the History Department of Jadavpur University. His research focus is on issues of mobility and the development of science and technology during the colonial period. He has recently concluded his M. Phil research at Jadavpur University.

Nilanjana Das is a Research Intern with the Observer Research Foundation in India.

Nilanthi Samaranayake is Director of the Strategy and Policy Analysis Program at CNA a non-profit research organisation in the Washington area. She studies non-traditional security issues including disaster relief and resilience. The views expressed are solely those of the author and not of any organisation with which she is affiliated.

Nilesh Bane was a research fellow at ORFs Mumbai Centre.

Nimisha Chadha is a Research Assistant with ORF’s Centre for New Economic Diplomacy. She was previously an Associate at PATH (2023) and has a MSc in Policy Economics from Erasmus University, Rotterdam.

Ms. Nimisha Pal is a freelance consultant in the area of Traffic and Transport Planning.

Nirali Bakhla is a Research Associate at Bharti Institute of Public Policy at the Indian School of Business Hyderabad. She holds a Bachelor's and Master's degree in Economics from SRCC University of Delhi and IGIDR Mumbai respectively. She also pursed her M.Phil in Development Studies from IGIDR. Her research interests include food agricultural and natural resource economics and rural livelihoods.

Niranjan Chandrashekhar Oak is a research scholar at the Centre for Indo-Pacific Studies Jawaharlal Nehru University New Delhi.

Niranjan Sahoo, PhD, is a Senior Fellow with ORF’s Governance and Politics Initiative. With years of expertise in governance and public policy, he now anchors studies and programmes on democracy, human rights, federalism, electoral reforms (particularly issues related to political funding), and cross-cutting issues of exclusion, insurgencies, affirmative action and inclusion. A recipient of the Asia Fellowship (2009) and a former Sir Ratan Tata Fellow, he currently serves as the South Asia member for the Carnegie Rising Democracies Network, where he debates and writes on democracy, foreign policy, human rights and other related issues.

Niranjan has authored two books: Politics of Power Sector Reforms in India (Pentagon Press, 2007) and Reservation Policy and its Implementation across Domains in India: An Analytical Review (Academic Foundation, 2009). His third book Exclusion and Insurgencies in India is in the pipeline. His latest (co-authored) monograph “Funding India’s Democracy” will be published soon. He regularly contributes for academic and current affairs journals, newspapers, think thanks and blogs, and features on television programmes related to his areas of expertise.

Nirmal Ganguly is an economist economic administrator and development professional. He has worked with the Asian Development Bank in various capacities and with the Government of India in the Ministry of Finance Ministry of Commerce and Industry.

Nirmalya Choudhury has been a career researcher who has a Doctorate from Technical University Berlin post graduate diploma in Forest Maagement from IIFM Bhopal and a Masters in Economics from Calcutta University. In the past he has worked as an Associate Professor with the Centre for Water Polcy regulation and Governance in the Tata Institute of Social Sciences Tata Education and Development Trust Council on Energy Environment and Water Sir Ratan Tata Trust and the International Water Management Institute. In the recent years he has been working on multiple developmental challenges vulnerability and resilience of the people residing in the recurrent flood prone areas in Ganga-Brahmaputra basin.

Nisha Holla is Visiting Fellow at ORF where she writes on ideas and shifts at the intersection of technology economics and policy. She tracks the impact of technology on democratising access to socio-economic development the importance of building strategic technology moats and policy frameworks required to drive indigenous technology development in India.

Nisha is also Technology Fellow at the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Platforms (C-CAMP), where she explores policy and economic strategies in scientific and technological development.

Nisha has co-authored numerous articles on human capital development in India, comparative studies of Indian states’ economic and demographic growth, multiple facets of India’s technology readiness, and India’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Her writings have appeared in The Financial Express, The Indian Express, The Sunday Guardian, and YourStory.

As part of her independent research work, Nisha has co-produced several key reports such as Human Capital Development of India published by FICCI, India’s Response to COVID-19, Maharashtra 2025 — Road to USD One Trillion, Karnataka’s Response to COVID-19, and Uttar Pradesh 2030 — An Accelerated Economic Vision. She was a key contributor to the Bengaluru Innovation Report 2019.

At Biomoneta Research, Nisha worked on designing technology for the prevention of the spread of infectious diseases. Nisha was earlier based in the San Francisco Bay Area working at the cutting edge of hardware product and process development.

Nisha is co-inventor of a US patent designed to optimise semiconductor processing workflows.

Nisha Verma is Librarian with Media and Publications at ORF Delhi. She is responsible with overall development of its library and acquires, organises and disseminates information to the researchers. She also facilitate reference assistance to the Foundation’s scholars as well as the outside scholars for their research.

Nishant Rajeev is a Senior Analyst at the South Asia Program in the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) at the Nanyang Technological University Singapore. He previously worked at the Institute of South Asian Studies (ISAS) National University of Singapore and a public affairs firm in India.

Nishant Sirohi is an advocate and a legal researcher specialising in the intersection of human rights and development - particularly issues of health, climate change, and the right to development. He currently holds positions as a Law & Society Fellow at Transitions Research, Goa and a Health & Human Rights Fellow at Geneva Health Files. Nishant holds an M.Phil. in Theory and Practice of Human Rights from the University of Oslo’s Norwegian Centre for Human Rights and a B.A.LL.B. (Hons.) from Aligarh Muslim University.

Nishtha Gautam was Associate Fellow at Observer Research Foundation where she works on gender issues in policy and governance. She holds an MPhil from the Faculty of Arts, University of Delhi and is a lecturer at one of the institution's affiliated colleges. Her analysis pieces have appeared in various periodicals like Wall Street Journal, Daily Mail (UK), The Caravan, India Today, Hindustan Times, The Pioneer, DNA, Mail Today, Daily O, as well as the web editions of NDTV and CNN-IBN. Her views are frequently solicited by radio and TV broadcasts for discussions on gender issues.

Nitish Priyadarshi is assistant professor of geology at the Ranchi University.

Dr Nitya Mohan Khemka is Director at PATH- a global Health think-tank focussing on health equity. She is also Trustee of the Khemka Foundation, an Indian public charitable trust. Prior to PATH, she was the Head of the UK Liaison Office for the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) where she was instrumental in establishing the organization’s presence in the United Kingdom. Nitya is also an Associate Fellow at Homerton College at the University of Cambridge where she researches topics spanning gender inequality, poverty and human development. A Fellow Commoner for Clare Hall College, Nitya advises the college on its academic programmes and fundraising strategy.

Nitya holds a PhD and MPhil in Development Studies from the Department of Land Economy at the University of Cambridge. She holds an MA in Economics and BSc in Mathematics, Economics and Statistics from Bangalore University. She serves on the Women’s Leadership Board of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, supporting the Women and Public Policy Program and on the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) UK Advisory Board. Dr Khemka has published on a wide range of topics in human development. Her most recent book is titled “Rethinking Philanthropy in the Global South: Public-Private Partnerships in a Post-COVID World” (Cambridge University Press, 2024). Her last books were Pathways to Equality: Advancing Gender Goals (Global Policy Journal, 2023) and Accelerating Global Health Equity in G20 Nations (ORF, 2023).

Nivedita Kapoor is a Post-doctoral Fellow at the International Laboratory on World Order Studies and the New Regionalism Faculty of World Economy and International Affairs National Research University Higher School of Economics Russia. Nivedita was formerly Junior Fellow with ORFs Strategic Studies Programme.

Nivruti Rai is country head Intel India at Intel Corporation. Based in Bengaluru she provides overall engineering and business unit leadership.