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.