Archives: People

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.