Prof. A.C. Bhagabati is Honorary Coordinator and Head of Division, North Eastern Regional Centre of IGNCA, Guwahati. He was formerly the Vice-Chancellor of Arunachal University now known as Rajiv Gandhi University.. He has published about fifty research papers. His area of research is social change, ethnicity and identity and tribal transformation process in North-East India.
Shri Ashoke Chatterjee was the executive director of National Institute of Design (NID) from 1975-85, Senior Faculty Adviser for Design Management and Communication from 1985 to 1995, and Distinguished Fellow at NID from 1995 until retirement in 2001. He has served for many years as the honorary president of the Crafts Council of India and continues to work as a consultant in India and internationally, especially on projects concerned with water management and environmental issues. After more than ten years as an international adviser, in 2000 Ashoke Chatterjee joined the board of directors of Aid to Artisans, a US based non-profit organization that offers practical assistance to artisans worldwide.
Dr Deborah Thiagarajan is the Chairman and Founder of the Madras Craft Foundation (MCF) which she in 1984 and the same year became convener and founder of the Tamil Nadu chapter of the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage, INTACH, a position she held for 14 years. She is also responsible for setting up Dakshina Chitra a heritage museum of living traditions set in an authentic 18th and 19th century architectural ambiance of each state of South India, namely Kerala, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. Apart from her Post Graduate work in Anthropology from the University of Rochester, Dr Thiagarajan holds a host of other degrees and Doctorates from the University of Pittsburgh (Masters in International and Development Education), University of Pennsylvania (Masters in South Asian Studies) and the University of Madras ( Doctorate in Ancient Indian Culture and History).
Prof Ganesh Devy, was educated at Shivaji University, Kolhapur and the University of Leeds, UK. He has been professor of English at the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, a renowned literary critic, an activist ,as well as founder and director of the Tribal Academy at Tejgadh, Gujarat, and director of the Sahitya Akademi's Project on Literature in Tribal Languages and Oral Traditions. Among his many academic assignments, he has held fellowships at Leeds and Yale Universities and has been a Jawaharlal Nehru Fellow (1994-96). He is an active participant in the functioning of Bhasha Academy, which was founded in 1996 for study, documentation and conservation of Adivasi languages, arts and culture. He was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award for `After Amnesia', and the SAARC Writers' Foundation Award for his work with denotified tribals. He has also won the reputed Prince Claus Award (2003) awarded by the Prince Claus Fund for his work for the conservation of the history, languages and views of oppressed communities in the Indian state of Gujarat.
Prof. H. Y. Mohan Ram is a man of myriad interests and talents and, an outstanding botanist. His interest in plants goes back to his childhood days in Mysore. During his scientific career, he has worked and interacted closely with stalwarts in diverse areas of plant sciences. Prof. H. Y. Mohan Ram has worked on a range of areas in plant sciences, discovering and describing a number of intriguing biological mechanisms in plants. The research he has carried out with his students encompasses areas as diverse as endosperm (a special kind of tissue found only in the seeds of flowering plants), its growth and culture,modification of flower sex expression in plants using plant growth regulators, physiology of inflorescences of lupine, gladiolus, chrysanthemum, calendula, marigold and flowers of carnation, lantana, the biologyof Indian aquatic plants and many more.
Shri. Jawhar Sircar is currently Secretary in the Ministry of Culture, Govt. of India, He has done his Masters in Sociology (with Social Anthropology) and then in Ancient Indian History and Culture. He joined the IAS in 1975 in West Bengal, and has served in various positions both at the state and at the Centre. He has worked in the fields of finance, commerce and industries and has undertaken assignments in education and culture. Shri Sircar joined as Secretary, Ministry of Culture in November, 2008 and has had a long stint of more than 3 years. He was recently presented with the first-ever British Museum medal for his contributions in piloting museum reforms in the country.
Dr Kapila Vatsyayan is a leading scholar of classical Indian dance and Indian art and architecture. Dr. Vatsyayan received her M.A. from the University of Michigan and Ph.D. from the Banaras Hindu University. She is the author of many books including The Square and the Circle of Indian Arts, Bharata: The Natya Sastra, and Matralaksanam. She was the founder-director of the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (Indira Kalakendra) in Delhi. She has also served as Secretary to the Government of India and the Ministry of Education, department of Arts and Culture, in which she was responsible for the establishment of many institutions of higher education in India. She served briefly as a Rajya Sabha M.P. in March 2006, and was reappointed to the Rajya Sabha in April 2007 for a term expiring in February 2012.
Shri Kartikeya V Sarabhai is a well known environmentalist and industrialist. Educated in Cambridge, UK (Tripos in Natural Science) Mr Sarabhai went on to do post graduate work in development communication at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He is the founder director of the Centre for Environment Education headquartered in Ahmedabad, with 40 offices across India. He is also the chairman of the Ambalal Sarabhai Enterprises, the pharmaceutical company which was set up by his grandfather Ambalal Sarabhai. He is closely involved in the activities of the Nehru Foundation for Development, of VIKSAT and Ahmedabad's Vikram Sarabhai Community Science Centre. Sarabhai is also a trustee of the Sabarmati Ashram Preservation and Memorial Trust, and the Physical Research Laboratory (PRL). Mr. Sarabhai has served on many committees set up by the Ministry of Environment and Forests and Ministry of Human Resource Development of the Government of India, primarily focusing on the greening of India's formal education system, and initiatives for biodiversity education. He is a member of the Earth Charter International Council.
Prof. Krishna Kumar is the Director of the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), located in New Delhi. Dr Krishna Kumar did his MA at the University of Sagar and later earned his M.A. and Ph.D. in Education from the University of Toronto. Dr. Kumar started his teaching career in 1971 at Kirori Mal College in Delhi University. In 1980, he worked with the late J.P. Naik at the Indian Institute of Education. He joined the Central Institute of Education in 1982 and served as its Head and as Dean from 1988-91. He has also been a North-South Fellow of the IDRC, a Shastri Fellow, and a Visiting Fellow of the Centre for Modern Oriental Studies, Berlin. He was nominated by the Indian Government to serve on the governing councils of several professional institutions, including the Indian Institute of Advanced Studies (IIAS), Simla, and NIEPA (now NUEPA). He has served as a member of the Executive Committee of the National Literacy Mission and the Raja Rammohan Roy Library Foundation and has been involved in several committees set up to draft the educational components of the XIth Plan. Dr. Kumar has also been involved in several non-government organizations and social movements. Dr. Kumar has authored several books including Social Character of Learning, Political Agenda of Education, Learning from Conflict; What is Worth Teaching; The Child's Language and the Teacher, Prejudice and Pride, Battle for Peace, Education and Social Change in South Asia (jointly edited with Joachim Oesterheld) and A Pedagogue's Romance.
Dr. Sitakant Mahapatra is one of the most creative Indian poets and a literary critic in Oriya and English. He was born on 17th September 1937 at village Mahanga in Orissa state. He has been honoured for his rendering of tribal poetry (Santal tribal culture) in English. His notable literary contributions are Sabdar Akash (The Sky of Words), Samudra and Anek Sharat . The awards and achievements obtained by him are Jnanpith in 1993, Kendra Sahitya Akademi Award in 1984 and Homi Bhabha Fellowship in 1975- 1977.
Professor Peter Ronald deSouza is the Director of the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Prior to this he was Senior Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies where he was Co-Director of the Lokniti programme on Comparative Democracy. He has been engaged with unpacking puzzles of democracy and has written on panchayati raj and the 'second wind' of democracy in India, party hopping and the party system in India, electoral violence and its sources, dalits and discrimination, trust and political institutions, and freedom from fear and human security. As a political theorist his abiding interest is on threats to freedom of expression in democratic polities and on issues of righting historical wrong. In addition to numerous articles he has edited two books Contemporary India: Transitions (Sage, 2000) and (with E. Sridharan) India's Political Parties, (Sage, 2006). He has recently been one of the three principal investigators of a five nation study published by Oxford University Press on the State of Democracy in South Asia (2006). Professor deSouza taught in the Political Science department at Goa University for 16 years. He was head from 1996 to 2002. He was a member of the IPSA's RC on Political Philosophy and Political Sociology, and was a member of the University Grants Commission's expert panel on Political Science.
Prof P.S. Ramakrishnan, Founder Director, G. B. Pant Institute of Himalayan Environment & Development is currently attached with the School of Environmental Sciences, at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, as a U.G.C. Emeritus Professor . He has received much national and international recognition, including fellowships of learned academies in India and the Third World Academy of Sciences, and the Honorary Fellowship of the International Association of Tropical Biology (ATB), based in USA.
Shri Pulok Chatterji is a 1974 batch Indian Administrative Service officer from Uttar Pradesh Cadre. He is currently the Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister. Prior to this he was the Executive Director of the World Bank, a position he was holding since 2008. Earlier positions held include Secretary at the PMO and Officer on Special Duty (OSD) to Sonia Gandhi, when she was the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha during the National Democratic Alliance's stint in power at the Centre. He has also worked with the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation.