Dr. Shekhar Shah is the Vice Chair of the Academic Advisory Council and a member of the Board of Directors at the Indian School of Public Policy, New Delhi, and a Non-resident Fellow at the Center for Global Development, Washington, D.C. With nearly  five decades of global experience as a development economist, he has worked on policies related to macroeconomics, trade, fiscal management, labor markets, and service delivery in health and education. As the Director-General of NCAER, India’s oldest and largest independent economic research think tank, he led its institutional transformation and research expansion over ten years, including initiating new research and data collection on land issues. Prior to that, he held key research and operational positions over nearly three decades at the World Bank in Washington D.C. and at the Ford Foundation. Dr. Shah remains keenly interested in policy solutions and evidence on what keeps some people and countries poor, the failure of markets, governments, politics, and development aid, climate change, and the promise and perils of new digital technologies.  He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Columbia University and a B.A. in Economics from Delhi University’s St. Stephen’s College.

Deepak Ray (he/him) is a Senior Scientist in Global Landscapes. Dr. Ray conducts research on local to global scale food security. Among the questions that he has explored are: does the productivity growth in crops track rising food demands and how climate change already impacts crop yields. To answer these and other broad questions he works with colleagues from around the world using high-resolution global crop statistics that he builds. His analysis is geared to help NGOs, industries, international organizations and governments to make more informed policies and take decisions to capitalize on positives, and explore ways to overcome challenges faced in the agriculture and food security sectors. His goal is to explore through the ag

Gita Mittal (she/her) is a distinguished jurist and former Chief Justice of the Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh High Court. Throughout her career—as Chief Justice and earlier as a judge and Acting Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court—she has been deeply committed to strengthening access to justice and making the legal system more people-centered.

Her work spans judicial reforms, gender justice, child protection, and legal aid, with a strong focus on improving court processes and creating safer, more supportive environments for vulnerable groups. She has led key committees on issues such as domestic violence, trafficking, and criminal justice, shaping policies that directly impact communities across India.

B. K. Agarwal is a retired IAS officer of 1985 batch from Himachal Pradesh Cadre. He has worked as Secretary, Government of India and Chief Secretary of Himachal Pradesh. He holds a post-graduate degree in Civil Engineering from IIT Delhi and an M. Phil. in Public
Administration from Panjab University. He has authored a book ‘Land Registration: Global Practices and Lessons for India’ and has co-authored a chapter ‘Technology in Land
Administration in the book ‘Technology and Analytics for Law and Justice’ published by IIT Delhi. His blog ‘Land Law & Administration,’ having a worldwide readership, provides insights into land governance in India and other countries. He has been the chairman of the Expert Committee on the SVAMITVA Scheme to advise the Ministry of Panchayati Raj on implementation of the scheme. He is a member of the Thematic Working Group to develop Indian Standards for land parcels and an Advisor to the National Monitoring Committee on Rehabilitation and Resettlement, Department of Land Resources, Government of India. He frequently delivers lectures on land administration at prominent academic institutes
such as IIM Ahmedabad, Delhi University, the National Law University of Juridical Sciences,
Kolkata and Lal Bahadur National Academy of Administration, Mussoorie.