Racing Against Time

Santosh Mehrotra, a human development economist, was Professor of Economics at Jawaharlal Nehru University and Chairperson of its Centre for Labour. He earned an MA from the New School for Social Research and a PhD from Cambridge University (1985). He spent fifteen years with the UN (1991–2006), heading UNICEF’s global research programme on social policy for developing countries at the Innocenti Research Centre, and serving as chief economist of the Human Development Report. Returning to India, he headed divisions of the Planning Commission (2006–09), lead-authoring chapters of the 11th and 12th Five Year Plans, and directed the National Institute of Labour Economics Research (2009–14). He was lead author of the second India Human Development Report (2011), and has authored fourteen books. His writings have been translated into Hindi, Spanish, French, Italian, Russian, German, and Portuguese. He consults regularly with the ILO, ADB, UNDP, UNESCO, and UNEVOC.

Balaji Parthasarathy joined IIITB in July 2000 as an Assistant Professor, and became a Professor in February 2013. He served as the Institute’s first Dean (Faculty) from January 2014 until February 2017. In 2012, he also co-founded IIITB’s Center for Information Technology and Public Policy. His intellectual interests are rooted in economic geography and economic sociology, and explore the relationships between technological change and innovation, economic globalization, and social transformation. Within this broad focus, his work follows two threads. One thread examines the impacts of public policies and firm strategies on the social and spatial organization of production in the ICT (information and communications technology) industry. Another thread deals with ICTs for Development or ICTD. Here, his interests lie in understanding how ICTs are deployed in various domains of activity to transform social relationships, especially in underprivileged contexts.

Dr Manjunath is Additional Labour Commissioner (Industrial Relations), Government of Karnataka. He is a distinguished labour administrator with over 25 years of experience in industrial relations. He has pioneered legislative innovation and social protection frameworks for emerging workforce segments.

Sridhar Krishna is a Senior Scholar at the Takshashila Institution where he led the 20 million jobs project before joining the group researching on AI Governance. His specific area of interest is AI and Jobs. Till recently, he was a Managing Director at Accenture where he worked on analytics and AI. Prior to Accenture, Sridhar ran an IT services company in Chennai after having spent a decade manufacturing industrial rubber products.

Prof. Rajeev Gowda is a former Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha (2014-20) and a former Professor at the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (2000-14). He is Chairman of the Research Department of the Indian National Congress and one of the party’s national spokespersons. He has been Vice Chairman of the Karnataka Policy and Planning Commission (2023-24) and Director, Central Board, Reserve Bank of India (2011-14).