Conference Program and Speaker Bios: Gender and Growth Gaps in India

Bina Agarwal is Professor of Development Economics and Environment at the Global Development Institute, University of Manchester, UK. She was earlier Director and Professor of Economics, Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi, where she is still affiliated. She has been President, International Society for Ecological Economics; President, International Association for Feminist Economics; Vice President, International Economic Association; and visiting professor at Cambridge, Harvard, Princeton, and Minnesota among other universities. She holds honorary doctorates from the Universities of Antwerp, ISS (The Hague), and Guelph. 

Agarwal’s publications cover diverse subjects in agriculture, environmental change, land and property, and law, written especially from a gender and political economy perspective. Her notable books include the award-winning, A Field of One’s Own; Gender and Green Governance; and Gender Challenges, a three volume compendium of her selected papers. Her pioneering work on gender and land rights and on environmental governance has had global impact. In 2005 she also led a successful civil society campaign that made India’s Hindu Inheritance law gender equal. 

Her many awards include a Padma Shri from India’s President 2008; three book prizes; the Leontief Prize 2010 for “advancing the frontiers of economic thought”; the Louis Malassis International Scientist Prize; the 2017 International Balzan Prize, “for challenging established premises in economics and the social sciences by using an innovative gender perspective”; the Kenneth Boulding award in Ecological Economics 2023; and the 2024 Global Inequality Research Award, France.

To learn more about Bina Agarwal's work, please visit her personal website.

Saudamini Das is a professor in the Indian Economic Services (IES) Section of the Institute of Economic Growth and was the Institute’s NABARD Chair Professor during 2016-21. She is a fellow of the South Asian Network for Development and Environmental Economics (SANDEE), Kathmandu, and worked as a Mälar scholar (2011-12) at the Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Stockholm. She is a Senior Research Fellow of the Centre for research on the Economics of Climate, Food, Energy, and Environment (CECFEE) at the Indian Statistical Institute, Delhi and the global network Environment for Development (EfD) at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Her research areas are Climate change adaptation, assessment of loss and damage to livelihood due to climate change, valuation of ecosystem services, coastal vulnerability analysis, mangroves, and evaluation of public policy.

Dr. Saurabh Garg is an Indian Administrative Service officer of the Odisha Cadre. He is presently Secretary, Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI), Government of India. Prior to joining MoSPI, Dr. Garg was Secretary, Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, where he was involved in the formulation of policies for social, economic and educational empowerment of the vulnerable and marginalised communities. 

Previously as CEO, Unique Identification Authority of India, he was instrumental in expanding the usage of Aadhaar and strengthening the technology stack of the Aadhaar ecosystem. He was Joint Secretary in the Ministry of Finance, Government of India; Secretary in the Departments of Agriculture, Industries and Urban Development at the Government of Odisha.  He was on a secondment as Adviser at the World Bank, Washington DC.  Prior to joining the IAS, he was with the Tata Administrative Service. He has rich experience in the domains of digitalization of agriculture, digital identities, direct benefit transfers schemes, infrastructure, Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) policies and urban development.  

Dr. Garg holds a Ph.D in International Economics and Development from the Johns Hopkins University, USA; an MBA from IIM, Ahmedabad and a B. Tech from IIT Delhi. He was a Chevening Gurukul scholar at the LSE, London.

Chetan Ghate is the Director of the Institute of Economic Growth in New Delhi. He is also a Professor of Economics (HAG) in the Economics and Planning Unit, Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) – Delhi, since 2003. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from Claremont Graduate University, California, in 1999. He completed his M.A. in Economics from the Delhi School of Economics in 1995. His research focus is in the fields of macroeconomics, monetary economics, economic growth and development, and the Indian macroeconomy.  In 2014, he was awarded the Mahalanobis Memorial Gold Medal given to the best research economist in India under the age of 45.

Lisa Ho is a Postdoctoral Associate within the Inclusion Economics research initiative at the Yale Economic Growth Center and Macmillan Center. Lisa graduated with a PhD in Economics from MIT in June 2024. She studies development and labor economics, with a focus on female labor force participation, digital work, and the evolution of gender norms.

Dr. Suhani Jalota is a Hoover Fellow at the Hoover Institution and founder of the Myna Mahila Foundation, a research-driven social enterprise with the mission to increase women’s agency and decision-making power to make them more confident, financially independent, and healthy.  

In her research, Jalota uses field experiments to explore the intersection between women’s employment, health, and agency and how technology can amplify their self-determination.

Shri S. Krishnan is posted as Secretary in the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India since 11th September, 2023. He has earlier served as Additional Chief Secretary, Industries, Investment Promotion & Commerce Department, Government of Tamil Nadu during March, 2020 to August, 2023. Of the 1989 batch of the Indian Administrative Service, he has also been Additional Chief Secretary in the Finance Department and Principal Secretary in the Housing and Urban Development and in the Planning, Development and Special Initiatives Departments.

He was the founder CEO of the Tamil Nadu Infrastructure Development Board. He has also served as the Chairman of the Fifth Tamil Nadu State Finance Commission. He served as the Senior Advisor in the Office of the Executive Director for India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Bhutan in the International Monetary Fund (Washington DC) and represented the Government of India in the G20 Expert Groups on International Financial Architecture and Global Financial Safety Nets.

In the Government of India, he has been Deputy Director in the LBSNAA (Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration) for 4 years from 2000 to 2004 and Private Secretary to the Union Finance Minister. He was District Collector of Virudhunagar District where he calmed a volatile situation and ensured implementation of development programmes during a 3 year tenure. He was also Deputy Secretary (Budget) in Finance Department for 4 years.

Meet Mehta is a Ph.D. student in Economics at Yale University. He is interested in research related to firms and development. He has completed Masters in Economics from Indian Statistical Institute, Delhi and Bachelors in Economics from Narsee Monji Institute of Management Studies, Mumbai. 

Dr. V. Anantha Nageswaran is the Chief Economic Adviser to the Government of India since January 2022. Prior to this appointment, he has also worked as a writer, author, teacher and consultant. He has written a weekly Mint column for fifteen years on Tuesdays, since 2007. He has co-authored four books: The Rise of Finance – Causes, Consequences and Cures; Derivatives; Can India Grow?; and The Economics of Derivatives.

He has taught at several business schools and institutes of management in India and in Singapore. He was the Dean of the IFMR Graduate School of Business and a distinguished Visiting Professor of Economics at Krea University. He was one of the founders of Aavishkaar Venture Capital Fund and the Takshashila Institution. He has served on the Academic Advisory Board of DAV Schools in Tamil Nadu and the Indian School of Public Policy. He was a part-time member of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister of India from 2019 to 2021. 

In his corporate career spanning seventeen years from 1994 to 2011, he was a Currency Economist at the Union Bank of Switzerland, Head of Research and Investment Consulting in Credit Suisse Private Banking in Asia, Head of Asia Research and Global Chief Investment Officer at Bank Julius Baer. He was an independent Director on the Boards of TVS Supply Chain Solutions, Sundaram Fasteners, TVS Sri Chakra Tyres, Delphi TVS and Aparajitha Corporate Services. 

In 1985, he received a Post-Graduate Diploma in Management from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. He earned his doctoral degree from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst in 1994 for his work on exchange rate behaviour.

Rohini Pande is the Henry J. Heinz II Professor of Economics and Director of the Economic Growth Center at Yale University. She is also the faculty director of Inclusion Economics at Yale. She is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, an Econometric Society fellow, and a former co-editor of American Economic Review: Insights. Pande received the 2018 Carolyn Bell Shaw Award from the American Economic Association for promoting the success of women in the economics profession and the 2022 Infosys Prize in Social Sciences. Formerly, Pande was the Rafik Harriri Professor of International Political Economy at Harvard Kennedy School.

Pande’s research, which has influenced policy in South Asia and globally, focuses on how institutions shape power relationships and patterns of economic, political, and environmental advantage in low-income countries. She is interested in the role of public policy in providing the poor and disadvantaged political and economic power, as well as how notions of economic justice and human rights can legitimize and enable such change. With Inclusion Economics India Center, she is working with Indian state governments on gender-inclusive rural development and digital policies and with Inclusion Economics Nepal, she is evaluating policies to strengthen quality of policy-making by elected local governments.

Pande received a PhD in economics from the London School of Economics, a BA/MA in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics from Oxford University, and a BA in Economics from Delhi University.

Michael Peters is an Associate Professor of Economics at Yale University, a Faculty Research Fellow of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and a Research Affiliate at the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR). He received his PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and held an Assistant Professor position at the London School of Economics before joining Yale. In his research he focuses on economic growth and long-run economic development.

Aishwarya serves as the Deputy Director of the Economic Growth Center since March 2022. Prior to the EGC, Aishwarya managed research and evaluation investments for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Women’s Economic Empowerment strategy, and for the Foundation’s Financial Services for the Poor team. Her previous experience includes running a financial inclusion research initiative at the EGC from 2011-2014 in partnership with Innovations for Poverty Action, leading the Monitoring, Research and Evaluation unit at Women for Women International and working as an Associate Researcher at Microsoft Research India. Aishwarya earned a bachelor’s degree in economics and women’s studies from Wellesley College and a master’s degree in public administration and international development from the Harvard Kennedy School.

Dr. Naresh C. Saxena was the topper of his batch in the IAS in 1964. He worked as Secretary, Planning Commission (1999-2002), Secretary, Rural Development (1997-99), GOI, and Head of the National Academy of Administration, Mussoorie (1993-96), where he also served as Deputy Director during 1976-80. He has chaired several government committees, such as on 'Women's Land Rights', ‘Identification of BPL families’, ‘Forest Rights Act’ and 'Bauxite Mining in Orissa'.

Dr. Saxena was Visiting Professor for six years on Forestry to the Regional Community Forestry Training Centre (RECOFTC), Bangkok during 1993-98. He did his Doctorate in Forestry from the Oxford University in 1992. He was awarded honorary Ph.D from the University of East Anglia (UK) in 2006. Dr. Saxena is a member on the Editorial Board, Development Policy Review, London, International Forestry Review, Oxford, and the Royal Swedish Academy of Agriculture and Forestry, Stockholm. He was a Director on the ADB Institute, Tokyo from 2002-2004. 

On behalf of the Supreme Court of India, Dr. Saxena monitored hunger based programmes in India from 2002 to 2017. He was also a member of the National Advisory Council chaired by Ms. Sonia Gandhi. He recently wrote a book, 'What ails the IAS & Why It Fails to Deliver? An Insider’s View', published by Atlantic.

Simone Schaner is an Associate Professor (Research) of Economics at the University of Southern California and the Scientific Director for Gender at Inclusion Economics. Her work explores economic mechanisms that contribute to inefficiency and misallocation in low-income settings, with a focus on labor, financial, and healthcare markets.  She is also an affiliate of the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development, the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab, the Center for Effective Global Action, and a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research. She has a Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an A.B. in economics from Princeton University.

Fabrizio Zilibotti is Tuntex Professor of International and Development Economics in the Department of Economics at Yale University.

He earned a Laurea in Political Science at the Università di Bologna (1989) and a Ph.D. (1994) of Economics at the London School of Economics. He holds a Honorary Master of Arts degree (M.A., privatim) from Yale University. He is a former professor at Universitat Pompeu Fabra, University College London, Stockholm University, and the University of Zurich. He is a Fellow of the Econometric Society, EEA, CEPR and CESifo. He was the President of the European Economic Association in 2016.