Academic and economic experts discuss India's public policy and growing reforms in the country healthcare system.
CHAIR: Reuben Abraham, Indian School of Business, Hyderabad
Paper 7: Public policy towards healthcare - public and private, Jeffrey Hammer (Princeton)
Paper 8: Myths of Malnutrition, Arvind Panagariya (Columbia)
Discussant 1: Shanta Devarajan, World Bank
Discussant 2: Jishnu Das, World Bank
Bio
Reuben Abraham
Reuben Abraham is founding Executive Director of the Centre for Emerging Markets Solutions at the Indian School of Business (ISB) and serves on its Next Gen Leaders Board. He is also a Member of the Board at the Soros Economic Development Fund and helped set up SONG, an SME fund in India, with Google and the Omidyar Network as co-investors. A 2007 TED Global Fellow, Abraham serves on the boards of the TED Fellows Programme, the Centre for Civil Society, the DLF Foundation. He was also a Member of the Clinton Global Initiative. Abraham has been an Associate Fellow in Global Economics at the Council on Foreign Relations, a Public Policy Consortium Fellow and a Sloan Foundation/CITI Telecommunications Fellow. He was named on Wired Magazine's Smart List 2012 and has been an analyst on CNN's emerging markets show, "Global Exchange". Abraham received his MA, MPhil and PhD from Columbia University. Prior to Columbia, he was involved in co-founding two start-up companies in the media/telecom space.
Jishnu Das
Jishnu Das is a Senior Economist in the Development Research Group (Human Development and Public Services Team) at The World Bank and a Visiting Fellow at The Center for Policy Research, New Delhi. Jishnu's work focuses on the delivery of basic services, particularly health and education. His recent research focuses on child learning, the quality of health care, mental health, information and trust and, in 2011 he was part of the core team on the World Development Report on Gender and Development. He received the George Bereday Award from the Comparative and International Education Society and the Stockholm Challenge Award for the best ICT project in the public administration category in 2006.
Shantayanan Devarajan
Shantayanan Devarajan is the Chief Economist of the World Bank's Africa Region. Since joining the World Bank in 1991, he has been a Principal Economist and Research Manager for Public Economics in the Development Research Group, and the Chief Economist of the Human Development Network, and of the South Asia Region. He was the director of the World Development Report 2004, Making Services Work for Poor People. Before 1991, he was on the faculty of Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. The author or co-author of over 100 publications, Mr. Devarajan's research covers public economics, trade policy, natural resources and the environment, and general equilibrium modeling of developing countries. Born in Sri Lanka, Mr. Devarajan received his B.A. in mathematics from Princeton University and his Ph.D. in economics from the University of California, Berkeley.
Jeffery Hammer
Jeffery Hammer is a Charles and Marie Robertson Visiting Professor in Economic Development at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. Previously, Professor Hammer worked for 25 years at the World Bank. While there he held various positions related to public economics, the last three in the New Delhi Office, and was an author of the World Development Report 2004 "Making Services Work for Poor People". Research interests include economic development, public economics and health in poor countries, particularly in Asia and Africa and more particularly in South Asia. Current research is on the quality of medical care in India, absenteeism of teachers and health workers, determinants of health status and improving service delivery through better accountability mechanisms. Ph.D. Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Arvind Panagariya
Arvind Panagariya is the Jagdish Bhagwati Professor of Indian Political Economy and professor of economics at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs.
A leading authority on the economy of India, he has been the chief economist of the Asian Development Bank and has also work with the world Bank, IMF, WTO, and UNCTAD. He holds a PhD in Economics from Princeton.
According to Fareed Zakaria (editor of Newsweek International), Professor Panagariya has written "the definitive book on the Indian economy," in which he "puts to rest myths and settles debates with balance and fairness."
Arvind Panagariya, the Jagdish Bhagwati Professor of Indian Political
Economy and professor of economics at Columbia University, delves into myths of malnutrition in India by comparing height differences of well fed and malnourished children.
