GDF 2018: India’s Development Path – Success Starting at State Level
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Featuring:
Dr. Irfan NooruddinIrfan Nooruddin is the director of the India Initiative and the Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani Professor of Indian Politics in the Asian Studies Program at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. Prof. Nooruddin is also the faculty chair of the School of Foreign Service. He is presently affiliated with Lokniti: Program for Comparative Democracy at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, New Delhi, and was previously a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC.
Prof. Nooruddin has authored two books, Elections in Hard Times: Building Stronger Democracies in the 21st Century and Coalition Politics and Economic Development: Credibility and the Strength of Weak Governments, as well as numerous journal articles, edited volume chapters, and op-eds. His expertise is in economic development, democratization, and civil conflict in the developing world.
Vivek Aggarwal
Mr. Vivek Aggarwal is an alumnus of Panjab University, Chandigarh and holds degrees in Commerce and Law. He has studied International Financial Systems at London School of Economics while on Gurukul Scholarship for Leadership and Excellence. Mr. Aggarwal started his career as a lawyer at Punjab and Haryana High Court. He joined the Indian Administrative Service in 1994.
Mr. Aggarwal has served the states of Punjab and Madhya Pradesh (MP) and has held various assignments. Apart from being a District Collector and District Magistrate in Indore, Ujjain, and Kapurthala, he has made significant contributions as Managing Director of various public sector entities.
Mr. Aggarwal was instrumental in setting up India’s first “Green Field Special Economic Zone”, along with IT parks and Industrial Complexes, in Indore to attract investments to the state of MP. He is known for structuring public private partnership (PPP) projects in the infrastructure sector. As Managing Director of the MP Road Development Corporation, Mr. Aggarwal structured PPPs for over $6 billion of highway building projects. He has also been successful in attracting private sector investments for multi-modal logistic hub, steel silos, urban public transport, electricity transmission lines, solid waste management, and Smart-city projects.
In his present capacity as Principal Secretary to the MP Department of Urban Development & Housing and the Managing Director of MP Metro Rail Corporation, he is responsible for implementing large scale urban infrastructure projects, including smart cities and affordable housing. He is also the Principal Secretary to the Chief Minister and advises him on matters of infrastructure, finance, energy, agriculture, and food.
He has won various awards for setting up public facilitation centers, urban public transport, and infrastructure. He is a prolific writer and has written regularly on statutory regime of special economic zones, public private partnerships and issues pertaining to urban development.
Rajiv Kr. Bora
Rajiv Kr. Bora is an Additional Chief Secretary in the Government of Assam, India. He is currently responsible for the departments of Welfare of Tribes and Backward Classes, Science and Technology, and Soil Conservation Department. He had been in-charge of the departments of Education and Power.
A career civil servant, Mr. Bora has acquired a wealth of experience in various areas of administration and governance throughout his career. From June 2005 to September 2009, he served as the Commissioner-cum-Secretary for the Department of Home and Political Departments and dealt with internal security matters including counter-insurgency operations, ethnic conflicts, peace talks with militant groups, and human rights. As the Commissioner-cum-Secretary for the Department of Finance (April 1998 - August 2003) he formulated the state’s medium-term fiscal and budgetary reforms program and led the negotiations with the Asian Development Bank (ADB) to secure assistance for reforms in the state’s energy sector, as well as its fiscal and governance structures. He played a key role in the computerization of both the value added tax collection system as well as the state’s treasury records, make it the first of its kind e-governance initiative in the Government of Assam.
Mr. Bora has served as Principal Secretary for the departments of Information Technology, Personnel, and Administrative Reforms & Training, Deputy Secretary (Policy) in the Ministry of Food, Government of India, Deputy Commissioner and District Magistrate in Darrang and Barpeta districts, Joint Secretary for the Department of Industries, Joint Secretary for the Department of Border Areas and Sub-Divisional Officer (Civil) Hailakandi. Mr. Bora is an alumnus of the University of California at Berkeley, the Texas A&M University, and the Delhi School of Economics.
Jessica Seddon, PhD
Jessica Seddon is the Director of Integrated Urban Strategy at the WRI Ross Center for Cities. She is the global lead for the Urban Development team, a network of researchers and practitioners across WRI’s offices that focuses on helping cities leverage spatial planning tools and strategic investments to achieve resource-efficient, equitable, resilient, and livable cities. Jessica also works with teams across the Cities and other programs at WRI to develop and implement information platforms that motivate and support government, business, and community collaboration toward sustainable urbanization.
Prior to joining WRI, Jessica co-founded and led Okapi, an India-based strategy group incubated at IIT Madras that focuses on institutional design for social innovation. Her earlier career spans academic and strategic advisory roles focused on institutional design for integrating science into policy and social initiatives. Jessica has worked with several institutions in India, including as Visiting Fellow at IDFC Institute (Mumbai); Senior Fellow at the Center for Technology and Policy, IIT Madras; Head of Research at the Indian Institute for Human Settlements (Bangalore); and Director of the Centre for Development Finance at the Institute for Financial Management and Research (Chennai). In her U.S.-based work, she has served as Strategic Advisor for the California Institute of Telecommunications and Information Technology (CALIT2) and Assistant Professor, University of California, San Diego. She was also a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow with the United States Environmental Protection Agency, working on institutional design for global air quality management.
Jessica has published book chapters and articles on infrastructure, Indian political economy, IT and governance, environmental regulation and other institutional design topics in international academic and policy venues including Cambridge University Press, Journal of Development Economics, Stanford Social Innovation Review, Foreign Affairs, Bloomberg Business Week and Harvard Business Review. She writes a monthly column for Mint, a leading business daily in India.
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