Senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Former chief economic adviser to the Indian government from 2014 to 2018. He doubts India's official growth figures, arguing they understate how much growth is actually a rise in prices and overstate improvement in the informal economy.
Co-author, with Devesh Kapur of Johns Hopkins University, of "A Sixth of Humanity", an ambitious book re-examining India's growth record, social divisions and state apparatus over 75 years. The book describes India's "precocious" model of development: its democracy outpaced its development, its skilled service industries outran its labour-intensive manufacturing, and it prioritised universities before schools, hospitals before clinics, and cash transfers before public amenities. The authors argue that the "deep mystery" of Indian development is why industrialisation has not kept up—India's manufacturing plants remain too small ("midgets making widgets")—and identify distinct models of success confined to a handful of states, including Gujarat, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Haryana.
"Every man has his price. Mine is $3.95."