Mr. Subramanian is a member of the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) with 37 years of experience in key senior roles with the Government of India. A commercially astute policy maker, Mr. Subramanian has significant expertise in Energy, Infrastructure, Industrial Development and Finance. He is currently an advisor and board member of a number of private, and public sector enterprises and industry associations.

In his Union Government roles, he has served as the Secretary Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, wherein he led the country’s policy-making and regulation in this sector. Prior to this, he was the Financial Advisor in the Ministry of Civil Aviation and Director in Ministry of Finance, Government of India. During his tenure with the Government of West Bengal, Mr. Subramanian served as the Secretary, Department of Power, as the Secretary, Department of Labour, and as the Managing Director, West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation.

Mr. Jha was in the Indian Revenue Service for 36 years and has served as the Chairman, Central Board of Excise and Customs, Ministry of Finance, Government of India. He has led the formulation, implementation, and enforcement of Indirect Tax policy/laws, trade facilitation and harmonization of trade procedures; dealing with personnel matters of a workforce of over 72,000 employees; successful countrywide automation of various business processes through EDI, ICES, and ACES.

Mr. Jha has led country delegations for international trade negotiations, represented India in international forums like WCO, WTO, and UNCTAD; has specific experience of working with SAARC countries; and has had sustained interaction with government leaders, administrators in India and abroad, public and private sector chiefs and transnational corporates on all indirect tax matters. He has remained closely associated with the formulation of Goods and Services Tax (GST) policy. Mr. Jha is an Independent Director of SAIL (Steel Authority of India Limited) and consults with the Federation of Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) as an Expert Advisor on selected public policy matters.

Partha, former Partner of PricewaterhouseCoopers and KPMG in India is a professional with 30 years of experience; first 8 years in the industry and next 15 years in consulting, last 5 years of which as a Partner in PwC and KPMG. In DEX-DEFT, he is conceptualizing and directing key advisory and research projects. Earlier, he has:

1. built and led consulting business unit with P&L responsibility to deliver programs for corporate clients, public sector units, governments and funding agencies;

2. advised government and public sector clientele on strategic reforms and institutional strengthening, regulatory consulting, solution development, and its implementation;

3. managed large, multidisciplinary, multi-stakeholder public sector projects with ensuring proper task planning, optimum scheduling, budgeting, and successful completion

4. conducted primary and secondary research, conceptualized and delivered consulting solutions, synthesized and independently written reports, and presented to boards and senior executives;

Partha has authored thought papers throughout his career, some of which have won awards, and has been an active speaker at professional forums. He has also worked with a number of international funding agencies like the World Bank, ADB, DFID, UNDP, and various regulatory agencies within as well as outside India.

Partha holds a B.Tech (Hons) from IIT Kharagpur, Master of Business Management from IIT Kharagpur, and Ph.D. from IIT Delhi. He is a Project Management Professional (PMP) from Project Management Institute (PMI), USA, and Diploma in Business Finance from the Institute of Chartered Financial Analysts of India.

Rama Krishna is a fellow member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India and graduated in Law and Commerce from Andhra University with a top rank. At present, he is President of Finance in NSL Power. Previously he has worked with PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) as the national practice leader for small, medium, and growing businesses in India. He has also been the leader of PwC India infrastructure practice for Assurance Line of Service. His experience of more than 25 years in the profession includes functional expertise in transaction support services, financial and legal due diligence, risk management practices, data management, and quality assurance. His clientele includes public sector, large corporate and family businesses. He has worked for clients to raise equity or debt from public markets in India, USA, and London . Rama Krishna is a regular speaker in various industry forums like FAPCI, CII, ASCI, and management institutions of repute.

Balram is a member of the Indian Economic Service since 1993. He has a total experience of 32 years of which 12 years was in senior management positions. A qualified and seasoned economist, he has performed many significant roles for the National Labour Bureau and National Planning Commission, India. In his most recent appointment, he was the Director of, Labor Bureau. In this role, he was in-Charge of the All India Annual Employment-Unemployment Survey covering 130,000 households to estimate State-wise labour force participation and unemployment rate. He has successfully led the survey for three years. His professional expertise lies in Labor Market Analysis, Economic surveys and statistics, Economic policy and planning, and Project Appraisals and Monitoring.

Some other significant and relevant assignments completed by Balram are i) Estimation of employment rate in the country to assess the impact of economic development/slowdown on a quarterly basis ii) Economic monitoring and analysis of State level development plans and budgetary issues iii) Periodic assessment, reporting and impact assessment of employment, wages, social conditions and implementation of statutory obligations in different industries, sectors, gender and social groups. Apart from these Balram has been instrumental in planning and designing routine survey outcomes which are useful for policy formation and deciding on various labour development schemes and budget outlays. He was responsible for survey design, coordinating the administration, data structuring, interpretation and analysis, report writing, and presentation of the survey outcome.

Mr. Mitra is from the Indian Economic Service with 35 years of experience with the Government of India; much of it in Labour Policies, Regulations, Program Monitoring, Social Justice, and Empowerment. His key roles with the Government of India in the last ten years were: (a) Principal Labour and Employment Advisor, Ministry of Labour and Employment, (b) Chief Economic Advisor, Ministry of Rural Development, and (c) Joint Secretary, Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment.

His key works include: (i) Policy design of the implementation of Socio-Economic Caste Census (SECC) Ministry of Rural Development to map the socio-economic profile of various communities for their overall development.  The programme was implemented through state governments, public sector undertakings and the National Informatics Centre. At the central level, he played a key role in assessing the quality of information, and analysis of the results. (ii) Scholarship, schemes for Scheduled Caste, Other Backward Class students for economic, educational empowerment of depressed sections of society. Besides, he was a Board Member of National Corporations to uplift Scheduled Castes, Other Backward Classes (iii) Evaluation of Studies on major rural development programmes: assessing Rural employment, skill generation, rural road connectivity suggesting policy changes based on the evaluation, (iv) Designing policies and legislations on minimum wages, occupation safety, and health and employment generation ensuring all India coverage of sectors, particularly the informal sector for minimum wages and occupation safety and health, (v) Implementing National Career Services portal to facilitate job creation, overseeing Employment / Unemployment survey of Labour Bureau.

In DEX-DEFT, he has been an advisor to the ILO’s Child Labour policy action project and peer-reviewed the key outputs and reports submitted.

Kamal is a public sector specialist, with a grounding in civil services and over 18 years of experience, focusing on policy, strategic and operational transformation of government entities at all levels using technology, processes, legislation, and capacity building as enablers. Kamal has worked for nine years in leading global consulting firms PwC and Deloitte where he was a Director. Over the last 13 years, he has worked as an eGovernment and ICT for Development expert with Indian and international clients in Asia, Africa, and Europe including government bodies at all tiers of governance and donor institutions like the World Bank, African Development Bank, UNDP, and others.

Included among the assignments Kamal has successfully led are the National ICT Strategy for Mauritius (2007-11), eGovernment strategic roadmaps for Namibia and Serbia, recommendations for the use of ICT in public services delivery across countries in Africa, and ICT4D action points for Latin American countries. Kamal is a B.Tech in Mechanical Engineering from IIT, Kanpur, and is currently also pursuing a doctoral programme at IIT, Delhi on the use of ICT for the construction industry.

Anshu is a Chartered Accountant in practice. Prior to this, she was with PricewaterhouseCoopers for 5 years providing professional service to several multinational clients of the firm. Her work included statutory audits, tax advisory, management, and internal audits, special assignments, accounting support, and related services

Anshu is currently engaged with DEX-DEFT as a financial expert. She worked as an associate on an ADB assignment to prepare the Project Completion Report for Madhya Pradesh Power Sector Investment Program. In this project, she performed a financial and economic analysis in order to estimate the economic return of the USD 106 Million investment programme. Further, in an ADB assignment for conducting a study of the power sector of Cambodia, she assisted the lead researcher in analysing financial data. She was also part of a research study to understand sector specific market opportunities and challenges in the State of Andhra Pradesh pertaining to the policy framework for the supply of solar energy through open access and constraints. Completely at ease with numbers and financial modeling, Anshu has worked on various projects in the labour market space as a financial expert namely for the Iron and Steel Sector Skill Council, Mining Sector Skill Council, and multiple skill development and vocational training providers.

Saloni holds a Master in Economics. Her areas of interest include Econometrics. She is skilled in economic modeling, data analysis, and reporting. As a Research Associate at the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, New Delhi, she has evaluated the role of tariffs and Free Trade Agreement policies, demand and supply patterns of exportable goods, the effect of trade on industries, and recommended strategies to improve industrial performance in the domestic and international market. Besides these, she has also managed and analysed wide-ranging data on poverty, inequality, employment, and crimes against women.

In DEX-DEFT, she analyzed the national survey data of TVET trainers in India followed by reporting of findings to recommend measures to improve training effectiveness. At present, she is working on COVID-19 impact analysis on labour markets.