The Centre for Social and Economic Progress (CSEP) hosted a webinar titled “India@2047: Climate Transition and Development Aspirations” on Friday, September 20. The event was jointly organised by CSEP and the The Fletcher School, Tufts University.

The webinar featured a conversation between Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Distinguished Fellow, CSEP & Former Deputy Chairman, Planning Commission, Government of India; Shivshankar Menon, Distinguished Fellow, CSEP & Former National Security Advisor, Government of India; Sunita Narain, Director General, Centre for Science and Environment, India; Ulka Kelkar, Executive Director, Climate, WRI India; and Laveesh Bhandari, President & Senior Fellow, CSEP, India. Bhaskar Chakravorti, Dean – Global Business, The Fletcher School, Tufts University, USA was the moderator.

The event was live streamed on Zoom and CSEP’s YouTube channel.

About the event

As India approaches its centenary of independence in 2047, the nation stands on the cusp of a transformative journey to become a “Viksit Bharat”— a developed country by 2047. With ambitious goals to lead the global Green Transition and achieve Net Zero emissions by 2070, the road ahead is inspiring, complex and challenging.

The expert panel explored the critical trends and key challenges across four pivotal pillars—Green, Technology, Political, and Geopolitical — mapping out the pathways that will guide the nation to its 2047 vision. Together, we will examine what is necessary for India to become a developed, green economy and how to strategically navigate the challenges ahead.

Speakers

• Montek Singh Ahluwalia, an economist, and civil servant, was former Deputy Chairman of Planning Commission, Government of India. He joined the Government in 1979 as Economic Adviser in the Ministry of Finance, after which he held a series of positions including Special Secretary to the Prime Minister; Commerce Secretary; Secretary in the Department of Economic Affairs; Finance Secretary in the Ministry of Finance; Member of the Planning Commission and Member of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister. In 2001, he was appointed as the first Director of the newly created Independent Evaluation Office of the International Monetary Fund. He resigned from that position in 2004 to take up the position of Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission which he held from 2004 to 2014.Mr Ahluwalia has been a key figure in Indian economic policy. He writes on various aspects of development economics and has been published in prominent Indian and international journals and books. He co-authored Re-distribution with Growth: An Approach to Policy, which, published in 1975, was a path-breaking book on income distribution. In February 2020, he published his book, Backstage: The Story Behind India’s High Growth Years, an insider’s account of policymaking from 1985 to 2014.For his outstanding contribution to economic policy and public service, he was conferred the prestigious ‘Padma Vibhushan’ in 2011, India’s 2nd highest civilian award for exceptional and distinguished service.Mr Ahluwalia graduated from Delhi University and holds an MA and an MPhil in Economics from Oxford University. He is an Honorary Fellow of Magdalen College Oxford.
• Shivshankar Menon is a Distinguished Fellow at CSEP, Visiting Professor at Ashoka University and Chair of the Ashoka Centre for China Studies. Menon served as National Security Advisor to the Indian Prime Minister (2010-2014); Foreign Secretary of India (2006-2009); and as Ambassador and High Commissioner of India to Israel (1995-1997), Sri Lanka (1997-2000), China (2000-2003) and Pakistan (2003-2006). He has served in the mission to the IAEA in Vienna and in the Department of Atomic Energy in Mumbai.He was also a Distinguished Fellow with Brookings India. He has published Choices: Inside the Making of Indian Foreign Policy in 2016 and India and Asian Geopolitics: The Past, Present (Brookings Press USA, & Penguin Random House India) in April 2021.Menon has been a Richard Wilhelm Fellow at the Center for International Studies at MIT and Fisher Family Fellow at the Belfer Center, Harvard University. In 2010, he was chosen by Foreign Policy magazine as one of the world’s “Top 100 Global Thinkers.” He attended the Scindia School, Gwalior and St. Stephens College of the University of Delhi, where he studied ancient Indian history and Chinese. He speaks Chinese and some German.
• Sunita Narain is an environmentalist and writer, and presently serves as the director-general of the New Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) and Editor of the fortnightly magazine, Down To Earth. Ms Narain through her research and advocacy has been influential in building public opinion on the challenges and solutions for environment, particularly in countries of the South. She has in her over 4 decades of work conducted in-depth research on the governance and management of the environment and directed campaigns on air pollution control, community water management, pesticide regulation and sustainable urbanization. Her effort to combine science-based evidence and solutions with a pro-poor perspective to mainstream environmental concerns in public policy and society has been richly awarded in India and internationally. Her ideas are built on the premise that environment and development are two sides of the same coin and that sustainable development is not possible without inclusive and equitable growth.For her lifelong and distinguished work in this area, she was awarded the Padma Shri by the Government of India. She was a member of the Prime Minister’s Council for Climate Change that decides on actions to address climate change impacts. In 2005, she chaired the Tiger Task Force at the direction of the Prime Minister, to evolve an action plan for conservation in the country after the loss of tigers from a protected reserve. She was also a member of the National Ganga River Basin Authority set up by the then Prime Minister to develop effective measures to conserve and clean up the river. She was awarded the Stockholm Water Prize in 2005 and the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation Award for her work to build a water literate society that values every raindrop and teaches society to learn from the frugality of our ancestors, to build a water prudent world. She was twice on the list of the world’s top 100 public intellectuals put out by Foreign Policy/Prospect, and in 2016, Time Magazine featured her as one of the 100 most influential people in the world for her advocacy on poor and the environment and climate change. Narain received “The Order of the Polar Star” award from the Swedish Government in 2017 and the Edinburgh Medal in 2020. She continues to serve on national and international committees on environment and work to research and build awareness about the urgency of action on environment and development.
• Ulka Kelkar is Executive Director, Climate, WRI India. She is an economist with 24 years’ experience in climate change research, outreach and capacity building. She works on low-carbon development pathways, sub-national climate action, and just transition in small industry.Ulka is a co-chair of the Think20 taskforce on clean energy and green transitions, an official engagement group of India’s G20 presidency. She is co-chair of the fair share, equity, and justice working group of the UN-backed Race to Zero campaign. She has served on the Government of India’s long term low emissions development strategy task group on transport, national committee for carbon neutral village awards, and science technology and innovation policy thematic group on energy, environment and climate change. She was on The Earthshot Prize expert advisory panel.She previously worked as a consultant climate assessment specialist for the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and fellow at The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI). She conducted field work in seven Indian states to assess how rural communities can adapt to climate change. She collaborated with architects and financial analysts to devise business models for climate-resilient housing in Bangladesh and Nepal. She used behavioural economics to understand what might motivate urban households to switch to renewable energy. She worked with the corporate sector on clean development mechanism (CDM) projects. Her policy contributions include the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) roadmap for regional cooperation on climate change, National Strategy Study on CDM in India, Maharashtra State Action Plan on Climate Change, and the first national communications of India and Bhutan to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Her research has been published in journals like Annual Review of Environment & Resources, Global Environmental Change, Climate Policy, and Mitigation & Adaptation Strategies for Global Change. She has a master’s degree in economics from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.
• Laveesh Bhandari is President and a Senior Fellow at CSEP.  Dr Bhandari has published widely on subjects related to sustainable livelihoods, industrial, economic, and social reforms in India, economic geography, and financial inclusion. He received his PhD in economics from Boston University for which he was awarded the Best Thesis in International Economics. He has taught economics at Boston University and IIT Delhi. Apart from applied economics research, Dr Bhandari has built, seeded, and exited from three companies in the research, analytics, and digital domains, including Indicus Analytics, a leading economic research firm. Currently, he is conducting research on issues of inclusion, India’s energy transition, and how it will impact the government as well as the economy.

Moderator

• Bhaskar Chakravorti is the Dean of Global Business, Executive Director of the Institute for Business in the Global Context, and Chair of Digital Planet, at The Fletcher School, Tufts University. He is also a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at CSEP.He leads education, research and organising thought leadership and dialogue on the issues at the intersection of global business, technology and international affairs, for example geo-politics, digital economies/resources/ food/energy/national security, law, diplomacy, through the Institute.Dr Chakravorti writes extensively. His book The Slow Pace of Fast Change: Bringing Innovations to Market in a Connected World (Harvard Business School Press, 2003) has been well received. His forthcoming book co-edited with Joel Trachtman is titled Defeating Disinformation (Cambridge University Press, 2024). He has written for top academic/scientific journals including the Journal of Economic Theory and the Journal of Mathematical Economics. Dr Chakravorti regularly contributes to The Washington Post, Harvard Business Review, Foreign Policy, Indian Express, World Economic Forum Agenda. Formerly, he served as a partner at McKinsey & Company, on the faculty of Harvard Business School, as a Distinguished Fellow at the Legatum Center at MIT and on the global agenda council on innovation at the World Economic Forum.Dr Chakravorti received his Ph.D. and M.A. in Economics from the University of Rochester, Rochester, NY. He holds a M.A. in Economics from the Delhi School of Economics, India and a B.A. in Economics (Honors) from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi University, India.

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

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.

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