Mr Praveen Kishore
Visiting Policy and Management Associate, Center for Public Policy
Praveen Kishore is a civil servant by profession and a development economist by training and passion, a keen researcher who has also handled variety of public administration, management and policy assignments with governments since 2000. He has extensively worked in public health, nutrition and human development sector as well as in areas of governance, organizational reforms and public financial management.
He has been working in the state of Bihar since 2011, mostly in public healthcare sector, and has held positions of Director, ICDS and Managing Director of state medical corporation with Government of Bihar. Earlier, with Ministry of Finance at federal government level, he was instrumental in planning and designing a comprehensive restructuring, redesign and business process reengineering package for the field revenue department at pan-India level. Even after joining civil services, Praveen has continued learning and updating himself. During 2009-11, he was selected as World Bank Fellow and pursued master’s degree in international development from Harvard University, USA. He has also obtained PGPPM degree from IIM, Bangalore on Government of India scholarship. In addition, he obtained degrees in Economics, Mathematics and Management before joining civil services.
A bibliophile and voracious reader, he is also engaged in research, writing and in sharing of ideas and discussion in public forums. He has published many articles and research papers in reputed journals like Economic and Political Weekly, Harvard Kennedy School Review and Journal of Applied Economic Research and has also delivered talks at Harvard University, IIMs, ADRI, ISID and other places. His main research interests are social and human development, public health and nutrition, political economy and society, and governance challenges and administrative reforms. Many of his research work and writings are available on his website, www.praveenkishore.wordpress.com. He is available on Twitter @PraveenKishore_ and can be contacted at praveenkish@gmail.com
He is a visiting scholar at Centre for Public Policy, IIM Bangalore. In 2019 itself, he will be joining University of Rochester, USA to pursue PhD in public health sciences on full scholarship.
Dr. Sibichen K Mathew
Visiting Policy and Management Associate, Center for Public Policy
Dr Sibichen K Mathew belongs to the 1992 batch of the Indian Revenue Service and currently work as the Commissioner of Income Tax. He is a Certified Fraud Examiner (CFE). After securing First Rank and Gold Medal for Post Graduate Examination in Sociology from University of Kerala, he completed his MPhil in Social Systems and environmental movements from Jawaharlal Nehru University(JNU) and PhD in Fiscal Sociology from Bharathiar University. He was a college topper and university rank holder in LLB from Karnataka State Law University. He secured an A Grade in Post Graduation in Public Policy and Management from the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Bangalore. He has completed a course on International Public Policy at Maxwell School of Public Policy, Syracuse University and a course of Corporate Taxation and Advocacy Skills at Duke University, United States. He was a recipient of gold medals from the National Police Academy and National Academy of Direct Taxes, India. He is a blogger and leadership trainer. His areas of interest include Corporate Governance, White Collar Crimes and Cyber Sociology. Dr Sibichen’s book “Making People Pay: The Economic Sociology of Taxation’ is a pioneering work in the area of fiscal sociology and public finance. His latest book ‘When the Boss is Wrong: Making and Unmaking of Leader within You’ has been a best seller.
Website: www.sibichen.in
E mail: sibi5555@gmail.com
Dr. Nicole Rigillo
Dr. Nicole Rigillo is a socio-cultural anthropologist interested in the shifting landscape of social responsibility in India today. She is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow holding a joint appointment at the University of Edinburgh’s Department of Anthropology and the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore’s Centre for Public Policy. Her current research, funded by the Fonds de recherche société et culture du Québec and the Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute (2017-2019), examines how citizens in Bangalore are using online platforms such as Whatsapp, Facebook, and Twitter to mobilize government representatives towards the improvement of municipal infrastructure and systems (e.g. waste management, community security). She received her PhD from McGill University’s Department of Anthropology in 2015. Her dissertation examined the emergence of corporate social responsibility (CSR) as a new form of non-state social welfare provision in Bangalore following the 2013 revision of India's Companies Act.
Dr. Anirban Mitra
Dr. Anirban Mitra has joined the Center for Public Policy, IIM Bangalore on 4th January 2016 and will be on campus till the end of March 2016, as a Visiting Scholar.
Anirban Mitra is an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Oslo. His research interests lie in the areas of Development Economics and Political Economy; often in their overlap. He has been interested in the role of economic factors behind ethnic/civil conflict particularly in the context of Hindu-Muslim violence in India and the Maoist conflict in Nepal. His other works relate to institutional design and its ramifications on elements of public expenditure and income distribution. He has published recently in the Journal of Political Economy and in the Economic Journal. Anirban received his PhD from New York University (USA) in 2012 and MA in Economics from JNU (New Delhi, India) in 2005.
Website: https://sites.google.com/site/anirbanmitraecon/home
Professor Ashutosh Varshney
Ashutosh Varshney is Director, Center for Contemporary South Asia, Sol Goldman Professor of the Social Sciences and International Studies and Professor of Political Science at Brown University. Before joining Brown, he taught at Harvard (1989-98) and the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (2001-2008). His awards include the Guggenheim, Carnegie and Social Science Research Council-MacArthur fellowships and the Gregory Luebbert and the Daniel Lerner prizes. He served on the former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan’s Millennium Task Force on Poverty. He has also served as an adviser to the World Bank and UNDP.
He has authored and edited nine books, including Battles Half Won: India's Improbable Democracy (Penguin 2013 and 2014), Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life: Hindus and Muslims in India (Yale University Press, 2002 and 2003), Democracy, Development and the Countryside: Urban-Rural Struggles in India (Cambridge University Press, 1995 and 1998). His research and teaching cover three areas: Ethnicity and Nationalism; Political Economy of Development; and South Asian Politics and Political Economy. His academic papers have appeared in World Politics, Perspectives on Politics, Comparative Politics, Daedalus, Journal of Development Studies, Journal of Asian Studies, Journal of Democracy, Journal of East Asian Studies, and Foreign Affairs, among others. He edits the new Modern South Asia Series of Oxford University Press (New York). In addition to professional journals, he also contributes guest columns to newspapers and magazines. He is a contributing editor of the Indian Express.
He is currently working on a multi-country project on cities and ethnic conflict, on urban governance and citizenship in India, and on the role of caste and religion in the era of high economic growth in India.
Professor Varshney is at the Center for Public Policy during July and August and is reachable at ashutosh_varshney@brown.edu.