Archives: People

Er. Ashwin B. Pandya is the former Chairman of the Central Water Commission (CWC) and recently retired as the Secretary General of the International Commission on Irrigation and Drainage (ICID).

Er. Pandya, an alumnus of Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), New Delhi, has over 40 years of professional experience in water resources and irrigation planning, design, implementation, and financing. He has a sound knowledge of various aspects of irrigation and drainage engineering with a strong competence of leveraging technologies in core areas, especially Information Technology. He specialises in the design of dam and underground structures and related activities. He is active in the field of Dam Safety assessment, assurance and rehabilitation technologies. He has over twenty technical publications in his credit.

Er. Pandya began his career with the Central Water Commission (an apex body under Government of India) as Assistant Director and later served as its Chairman. In his professional career, he occupied top positions in various Government of India (GoI) offices under the Ministry of Water Resources (MoWR), which include Director General, National Water Development Agency (NWDA) and Chairman & Managing Director, National Projects Construction Corporation (NPCC).

An avid proponent of irrigation and hydropower projects, he has been a key figure behind the establishment of International flagship event ‘India Water Week’ for MoWR, which is presently in its fifth edition and also established the ‘National Conference on Dam Safety’, an annual event with assistance from World Bank funded Dam Rehabilitation and Improvement Project (DRIP).

He has been conferred with various awards and recognitions by professional bodies like Central Board of Irrigation & Power, Indian Geotechnical Society, Indian Society of Rock Mechanics & Tunnelling Technology, Aqua Foundation, Water Digest etc. He is associated with a number of water resources societies as member and office bearer such as Indian Water Resources Society, Indian Association of Hydrologists, etc.

Er. Pandya was elected as the Vice President of ICID for the period 2014-16 and made active contributions to the various activities of the Commission. He is currently serving as Secretary General of ICID with effect from 01 January 2018.

Dr Cecilia Tortajada is an Honorary Professor at School of Social and Environmental Sustainability, University of Glasgow, UK; Visiting Professor, School of Water and Environment, Chang’an University, Xi’an, China; and Distinguished Visiting Professor, Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi, India.

She has more than 25 years of experience in research, teaching, and consultancy, with a focus on water resources management and its policy, social, economic, and political dimensions. Her current work is on impacts of global challenges on water security.

Dr Tortajada is an elected member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences of the Vatican. In 2024, she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Science in Technology by Aalto University, Finland, in recognition of her significant contributions to research and education in water resources and development. She is also a recipient of the Crystal Drop Award (2016) and the 50th Anniversary Award (2021) from the International Water Resources Association (IWRA).

She serves on several distinguished bodies, including the International Selection Committee of the Millennium Technology Prize (Technology Academy Finland), the UKRI Future Leaders Fellowships Peer Review College (UK), and the OECD Initiative on Water Governance.

Professor Tortajada is the former President of the Third World Centre for Water Management, Mexico, and remains the first and only woman to have served as President of the IWRA in its more than 50-year history. A prolific author, her work has been translated into Arabic, Chinese, Farsi, French, German, Hindi, Japanese, Portuguese, and Spanish.

She is Associate Editor of River Journal and serves on the editorial boards of NPJ Clean Water, Water Resources Management, Water International, International Journal of Water Governance, Urban, Planning and Transport Research, and the Journal of Natural Resources Policy Research. She also co-edits two book series published by Springer Nature: Water Resources Development and Management, and SpringerBriefs on Case Studies of Sustainable Development. Additionally, she is a member of the Series Advisory Board for SpringerBriefs in Earth Sciences, Geography & Earth System Sciences.

Distinguished Visiting Professor, University of Glasgow, UK, and Gujarat University, India; Director, Water Management International, Singapore; and Chief Executive, Third World Centre for Water Management, Mexico. 

Prof. Asit K. Biswas is universally acknowledged as one of the world’s leading authorities on water, food, environment and development-related issues. He has a very distinguished career as an academic; senior public official in Canada; advisor and confidant to Presidents, Prime Ministers and Ministers in 23 countries, six Heads of United Nations  Agencies, two Secretary-Generals of OECD, several Heads of bilateral aid agencies, and four CEOs or Chairmen of MNCs in Fortune 500 list. 

He has worked and lived in all continents except Australia. He was a member of the World  Commission on Water, and co-founder of International Water Resources Association and World Water Council. 

He was a member of the Global Agenda Council of the World Economic Forum and is currently member of the International Advisory Board, Pictet Asset Management, Geneva; member of the Advisory Board, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur; and Strategic Advisor, Singapore International Water Week. 

Among his numerous awards are Crystal Drop and Millennium Prizes of the International Water Resources Association; Walter Huber Prize of the American Society of Civil Engineering; Stockholm Water Prize, considered to be the Nobel Prize for water, for “his outstanding and multi-faceted contributions to global water resource issues;” “Person of the  Year” award from Prime Minister Harper of Canada; Aragon Environment Prize of Spain. Reuters named him as a “one of the top 10 water trailblazers of the world.” Impeller magazine selected him as “true global water hero.” 

Because of his manifold research contributions, he has received seven Honorary Doctorates of Technology or Engineering from leading global universities, including from both University of Glasgow and University of Strathclyde. He was elected an Academician over 20 years ago. He currently has an h-index of 46. Google Scholar lists 950 of his publications and over 10,400 citations of his work. He has a Research Gate score of 42.1, which puts him into the top 2.5% of all scientists from all disciplines from the entire world.

He is the author or editor of 89 books. His work has been translated into 42 languages. Prof. Biswas is the founder of the International Journal of Water Resources Development and was its Editor-in-Chief for its first 29 years. He is a regular media contributor to BBC, CNN, CNBC, TRT, Project Syndicate, The Conversation, Channel News Asia, MediaCorp and China Daily on issues related to natural resources management, climate change, environment, geopolitics, international relations, business strategies and innovations. His opinion pieces in various international media are now read by some 1.74 million readers annually all over the world.

Dr. Rajeev Ranjan is a Senior Fellow at CPR.

Dr. Ranjan, IAS (Retd) joined the service in 1985 and was allotted the Tamil Nadu cadre. He served as Special Secretary, GST Council, Department of Revenue, Ministry of Finance, Government of India and later as Secretary, Department of Fisheries, Ministry of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairying, Government of India before retiring as Chief Secretary, Government of Tamil Nadu.

Champaka Rajagopal is a senior researcher, educator, practitioner, focused on urban policy, governance, planning and infrastructure governance. She is a Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research, India, Professor Affiliae at the Urban School, SciencesPo, Paris, France, Founder, Director of The Entrepreneurship and Partnerships Lab. She also serves as Trustee on the Board of Trustees, IJURR Foundation, UK.

Her research interests lie in investigating state-business relationships, firms, entrepreneurship and innovation, with a focus on commercial and contract laws, policies, governance, mechanisms directed at privatisation. She draws on experiential learning from her more than two decades of engagement with multi-national corporations and international finance institutions, in India and abroad.

Previously, as part of international consultancy firms, she co-led large statutory plans, including the Draft Development Plan for Greater Mumbai 2034 and Revised Master Plan 2015, Bangalore, where the focus was to remove regulatory rigidity and regulatory capture. In her two decades of practice across cities in the global South and the North, with international donors, national-state governments, businesses, markets and communities she has advanced the design of policies, regulatory processes, instruments and mechanisms that deepen democratic processes and respond to place.

Resulting from practice is her article, Reciprocity as Regulation: Exploring Methodologies in Urban Design for the Historical Pete, Bangalore, published in Ed, Harriss-White, Basile, Lutringer, Mapping India’s Capitalisms, Old and New, Springer, 2015. She has authored book chapters and news articles on problems in urban planning through the years.

Champaka has a doctoral degree from the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands, in Governance, Planning and International Development Studies (2021), a Master’s Degree in Urban Design from the University of California at Berkeley, USA (2002) and an undergraduate degree in the architecture of the built environment from the Centre for Environment Planning and Technology, Ahmedabad, India (1997).

Mr Asok Kumar (IAS) retired as a Special Secretary to the Government of India and the Director General of the National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG). His earlier work as the Mission Director of the National Water Mission, popularizing the slogan of ‘Catch the rain, where it falls and when it falls,’ acquired him an appellation of ‘Rain Man.’ During his long and rich career as a civil servant, Asok’s out of the box interventions are often discussed in public administration conversations. Trained as an engineer and later studied public policy at the International School of Business, Hyderabad, Asok was a Chevening Scholar of CRISP (Chevening Rolls Royce Innovation, Science and Leadership Programme) cohort of 2013 at the University of Oxford. As a Senior Fellow at CPR, he will be working on a book on implementing the Namami Gange programme, the Government of India’s flagship programme for cleaning Ganga. Additionally, he will be revisiting some of his research interests around key social reform interventions during his career to engage with policy and public administration questions. He will also be advising the TREADS Initiative’s research programme under the MoU between CPR and NMCG to pursue policy research towards rejuvenating India’s rivers.

Mr Saugata Bhattacharya is an economist with over 30 years of experience in economic and financial markets analysis, policy advocacy, infrastructure and project finance, consumer behaviour and analytics. He has written and published extensively on these subjects. Before joining CPR as a Senior Fellow, Sauagata was the Chief Economist and Executive Vice President at the Axis Bank. Earlier, at IDFC, he worked as a specialist with the Policy Advisory Group and participated in several key committees of Government of India, including the Prime Minister’s Task Force on Infrastructure. At CPR, he will be playing a lead role in the ongoing work with the Government of Andhra Pradesh – supporting its Data Analytics Unit. He will also be pursuing his research interests in macro-financial forecasting reviewing global and domestic developments, MSME sector, digital public infrastructure in banking, financial and insurance sectors, and urbanization.