The Centre for Social and Economic Progress (CSEP) is delighted to invite you to a seminar titled “Letting the Elephant Dance: Unlocking India’s US$500 Billion Export Opportunity” on Friday, May 8, 2026, from 4:00 to 5:30 pm (IST) at the CSEP Auditorium, 6, Dr Jose P Rizal Marg, Chanakyapuri, New Delhi – 110021.

The seminar will feature a presentation by Baran Pradhan, Former Research Analyst, CSEP; Sanjay Kathuria; and T.G. Srinivasan, Visiting Senior Fellows, CSEP. The presentation will be followed by a discussion with Arpita Mukherjee, Professor, ICRIER; Prabir De, Professor, Research and Information System for Developing Countries (RIS) and Pravakar Sahoo, Senior Lead, NITI Aayog and Professor, Institute of Economic Growth. The session will be chaired and moderated by Rakesh Mohan, President Emeritus and Distinguished Fellow, CSEP, and Former Deputy Governor, RBI (TBC).

Please note that this is an in-person event only. If you are in Delhi on the day, we invite you to join us for what promises to be a thought-provoking discussion. The event will be available on the CSEP website and YouTube channel upon completion.

Register here to attend

About the event

The world’s trade networks have become fractured, with many nations, where there has been a mercantilist and even, at times, autarkic turn. India’s export engine, which was coterminous with high growth, has been shadowed by avoidable restraint, which has left vast markets underserved, value chains underused, and jobs unborn. Estimates suggest roughly US$516 billion in unrealised exports in 2022, with the deepest gaps in its near neighbourhood and the big, growing markets of East Asia. This also leads to a shortfall of 24 million jobs, which would have been created otherwise. Though the global headwinds might seem insurmountable, India’s export revival could serve as the balsam, which demands openness, tariff rationalisation for access to cheaper inputs, disciplined standards, deeper market access, and an export-enabling macroeconomic stance.

Chair & Moderator

Rakesh Mohan

Rakesh Mohan is President Emeritus and Distinguished Fellow at the Centre for Social and Economic Progress (CSEP).

He served as President and Distinguished Fellow at CSEP from October 2020 to May 2023. Since October 2021, he has been a member of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council (EAC-PM), and in March 2024, he was appointed to the World Bank Group’s Economic Advisory Panel.

Dr Mohan was part of the team that was instrumental in formulating India’s economic reforms from the late 1980s onwards. His distinguished public service includes positions as Executive Director on the Board of the International Monetary Fund, Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, Secretary of Economic Affairs, and Chief Economic Adviser at the Ministry of Finance, as well as Economic Adviser in the Ministry of Industry.

He has chaired several government committees that produced landmark reports on infrastructure, including The India Infrastructure Report (1996), The Indian Railways Report (2001), and The India Transport Report (2014). Following the North Atlantic Financial Crisis, he co-chaired the G20 Working Group on Enhancing Sound Regulation and Strengthening Transparency (2009), and the CGFS/BIS Working Group on Capital Flows and Emerging Market Economies (2009).

Before joining CSEP, Dr Mohan was Senior Fellow at the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs (2010-11; 2016-20), Yale University and Professor in the Practice of International Economics and Finance at Yale School of Management (2010–12). He has also been Distinguished Consulting Professor at Stanford University (2009) and Distinguished Fellow at Brookings India.

He is the author of three books on urban economics and development, two on monetary policy—Monetary Policy in a Globalized Economy: A Practitioner’s View (2009), and Growth with Financial Stability: Central Banking in an Emerging Market—and the edited volume India Transformed: 25 Years of Economic Reforms.

Dr Mohan holds a BSc (Eng) from Imperial College of Science and Technology, University of London (1969); a BA from Yale University (1971); and an MA (1974) and PhD (1977) in Economics from Princeton University.

Panellists

Arpita Mukherjee

Arpita Mukherjee is a Professor at ICRIER. She has over 30 years of experience in policy-oriented research, working closely with the Government of India and policymakers in the European Commission and its member states, the United States of America (USA), the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and in East Asian countries. She has conducted over 60 sector-specific studies for various governments, international organisations, industry associations, non-government organisations and companies.

Her areas of expertise include trade, investment and trade facilitation, services, agriculture and manufacturing supply chains (domestic and cross-border), and special economic zones/economic corridors. She specialises in sector and product-specific market trends, go-to-market strategy and government policies.

Dr Mukherjee has a PhD in Economics from the University of Portsmouth, UK, and prior to joining ICRIER, she worked with the UK-based think-tank Policy Studies Institute and taught at the University of Portsmouth. She has over 80 publications, including in national and international refereed journals, books, book chapters and government reports. Dr Mukherjee is a member of various government committees and policy panels and is on the editorial board of 10 journals. She has presented her work in various conferences and seminars and is on the advisory board of industry associations and non-government organisations. She is a regular contributor to newspapers and magazines.

Prabir De

Prabir De is a Professor at the Research and Information System for Developing Countries (RIS), New Delhi. He has over three and a half decades of full-time research and teaching experience in India and abroad. He works in the field of international economics and has research interests in international trade and development issues. He has been conducting policy research for the Government of India and several national and international organisations, including UN agencies and multilateral development banks. He did his M.Sc. in economics from Calcutta University and PhD in economics from Jadavpur University, Kolkata. He was a Visiting Fellow of the Institute of Developing Economies (IDE-JETRO), Japan; Asian Development Bank Institute (ADBI); Korea Institute for International Economic Policy (KIEP); and Visiting Senior Fellow of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP). He has contributed several research papers to international journals and written books on trade and development. He is also the Founding Editor of the Journal of Asian Economic Integration, published by Sage.

Pravakar Sahoo

Pravakar Sahoo is a Senior Lead at NITI Aayog and Professor at the Institute of Economic Growth, New Delhi, with over two decades of experience in teaching and economic research. His work focuses on international economics, development policy, and trade. He has held research and visiting positions at ICRIER, the University of Antwerp, the Ministry of Finance, Japan, the East-West Center, IDE-JETRO, ADBI, and FMSH Paris. He holds a PhD in Economics from the Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bangalore, and a Master’s degree in Economics from the University of Hyderabad.

Presenters

Baran Pradhan

Baran Pradhan is a former Research Analyst within the Growth Finance and Development vertical. He holds a Master’s degree in Economics from the State University of New York at Stony Brook and a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from Delhi University. His professional background includes an internship at Nathan Financial Advisory Services, as an analyst for the FASAL-RTISA programme at IEG and a role as a short-term consultant at the World Bank, where he contributed to the KNOMAD division’s work on forecasting migration and associated remittances.

Sanjay Kathuria

Sanjay Kathuria is a Visiting Senior Fellow in the Growth, Finance and Development vertical at CSEP. He has vast experience of more than 40 years and is recognised as a pre-eminent thinker and commentator on economic development, growth and integration in South Asia. His research interests and writings have focused on South Asia, economic growth and development, industrial policy and competitiveness, trade and globalisation, regional integration, the economics of small states, and gender issues, among others.

He teaches in both the US and India, as Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University and Visiting Faculty at Ashoka University. He is also a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies at the National University of Singapore. He is also the co-founder of Trade Sentinel. His other affiliations have included Visiting Expert with the United States Institute of Peace and Global Fellow at the Wilson Centre in Washington, DC. Sanjay Kathuria was also a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi. Before that, he was a Lead Economist at the World Bank in Washington, DC, where he spent 27 years working on South Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Eastern Europe, including field assignments in New Delhi and Dhaka. Before joining the World Bank, he was a Fellow at the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations in New Delhi, from 1982 to 1992.

He holds a PhD in Economics from Oxford University as an Inlaks Scholar. He graduated from St Stephen’s College, Delhi, and completed his Master’s at the Delhi School of Economics. Apart from many books and reports published at the World Bank, his writings have featured in Foreign Policy, Hindustan Times, The Indian Express, The Wire, Daily FT (Sri Lanka), Business Standard, among others. He is currently working on a new book on The Future of South Asia.

T.G. Srinivasan

T.G. Srinivasan is a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Social and Economic Progress in New Delhi who has a career centered around trade, macroeconomics, and poverty reduction. Currently, his work is primarily oriented towards trade policy and economic relations within the South Asian region. He is a co-founder of the Trade Sentinel project, an innovative initiative aimed at developing early warning mechanisms for monitoring and analysing trade policy dynamics in South Asian countries.

Before joining the Centre, he made significant contributions to the World Bank as a Senior Economist. During his tenure at the World Bank, he led poverty assessment work for countries like Jordan, Yemen, Nepal, and Bhutan. He also served as the country economist and played a crucial role in coordinating the World Bank’s global macroeconometric forecasting models. He worked in the Ministry of Finance in Oman, where he was involved in the development and implementation of the medium-term economic framework.

All content reflects the individual views of the speakers. The Centre for Social and Economic Progress (CSEP) does not hold an institutional view on any subject.

Please contact Gurmeet Kaur at GKaur@csep.org for general queries and Ayesha Manocha at AManocha@csep.org for media queries.