Board of Advisors

Krishna V Rajan, I.F.S

He is a retired diplomat and former member of the Indian Foreign Service. He has served in senior diplomatic assignments, including as ambassador in France, the US, the UK, Zambia, Algeria and Nepal. He has also held senior positions in the Ministry of External Affairs, and served as the prime minister's special envoy. He is presently also chairman of International Trade and Exhibitions India (ITEI) and resides in New Delhi.

Mrs. Sheela Rani Chunkath, I.A.S.

She has served in various positions in the Tamil Nadu government including Home, Health and Family Welfare, Chairperson and Managing Director of TamilNadu Polluction control Board (TNPCB), The Tamilnadu Industrial Investment Corporation Ltd. (TIIC) and at present she is the Additional Chief Secretary / Chairperson and Managing Director, Tamil Nadu Handicrafts Development Corporation Limited. She has been a contributor to The Hindu, The New Indian Express, Economic and Political Weekly and Frontline.

Karumuttu T Kannan

He is the Chairman and Correspondent of Thiagarajar College of Engineering, Madurai, one of the leading colleges in Tamil Nadu. He is the Managing Director of Thiagarajar Mills Limited, an export oriented yarn manufacturing textile mills in Madurai. He is a former Chairman of CII – South India Chapter and a past member of Tamil Nadu Planning Commission. For the past 7 years Chairperson of Board of Trustees that governs the world renowned Sri Meenakshi Sundareshwarar Temple in Madurai.

Sashi Kumar

He is a journalist, film-maker, media thinker and initiator who launched the Asianet TV channel and subsequently founded, and chairs, the not-for-profit public trust Media Development Foundation, which runs the Asian College of Journalism.

Nitayanand Jayaraman

He did his engineering in Coimbatore and went on to do his Masters in Journalism at the Ohio University in the US. He was with the Greenpeace for sometime and then began a website 'Corpwatch India' that tracks corporate behaviour. He is presently a writer and researcher based in Chennai. He writes on environment-based issues for various magazines and newspapers and is a visiting faculty at the Asian College of Journalism. He investigates and reports on corporates abuses of environment and human rights, and is a part of a movement called Vettiver Koottamaippu (Collective). This movement has previously helped with the mercury poisoning in Kodaikanal and Koodankulam protests.

Ringa Raudla

She is a senior research fellow in Ragnar Nurkse School of Innovation and Governance. She teaches courses on public finance, public sector financial management, Law & Economics and research methods. Her main research interests are budgeting, fiscal governance and fiscal policy, social insurance, institutional economics and constitutional political economy. She is also currently working as an advisory expert to the Ministry of Finance, the National Audit Office and Praxis on different issues (strategic management, performance management and performance budgeting, fiscal rules, budget transparency and citizen’s guide to budget). Her articles have been published in several journals and she had co-authored two books