V. K. Malhotra is presently Member Secretary, Indian Council of Social Science Research, New Delhi. His research interests include Governance and Economic Development, Corporate Governance and Performance of various industries, Intellectual Property Rights and India’s concerns, Foreign Trade and Investments etc. He is on the Board of Indian Council of World Affairs, and a Visitor’s nominee to the Court of Jawahar Lal Nehru University, Delhi. He is also a Member of the Board of many renowned Social Science Research Institutes of the country and is also part of the Executive of many International Research Bodies/Associations.R. Lalitha S. Fernando serves as a Professor in Public Administration, Faculty of Management Studies and Commerce of the University of Sri Jayewardenepura in Sri Lanka. She was awarded the prestigious Commonwealth Academic (internal) Scholarship to pursue Postgraduate Diploma in Development Studies leading to Masters in Development Administration and Management at the University of Manchester, U.K for the period of 1990 to 1992. She has published a number of papers related to public management and governance in both national and international journals.Nivedita P. Haran, Indian Administrative Service (Rtd.), Former Additional Chief Secretary, Government of Kerala who spearheaded the first Kerala State Disaster Management Authority. She has more than three decades of rich professional experience with the IAS in India and in the state of Kerala where she served in several senior positions of leadership and decision making. She held crucially important positions as a District Planning Officer, as a Head of Revenue Administration, Land Administration, Land Records Management, Renewable Energy in Public Offices, coping Climate Change Strategies, and post-Tsunami Rehabilitation project. She also held the position of Deputy Secretary in the Department of Administrative Reforms & Public Grievances, Ministry of Personnel, Government of India, New Delhi. As the Home Secretary, she brought some meaningful innovations such as the digitization of police records, simplification of procedures, bringing transparency and accountability through the use of new cost-effective technological innovations such as Video Conferencing and other ICT applications. She has also been the Director of The Centre for Innovations in Public Systems at Hyderabad. Her most passionate project with the NAPSIPAG (Network of Asia Pacific Schools and Institutes of Public Administration and Governance, JNU) was the creation of NYSAF (Network of Young Scholars and Administrators Forum) by bringing academic research closer to administrators and enable them to work together for the country’s development.
