About me
Santosh Mehrotra, a human development economist, was a Prof of Economics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, and Chairperson, Centre for Labour at JNU. He has lectured at the Universities of Florence, Italy; American University, Cairo; & the Higher School of Economics, Moscow. After an MA in Econ. from New School for Social Research, New York, and Phd (Economics), Cambridge University (1985), Santosh spent 15 years with the UN(1991-2006) in research positions, heading UNICEF’s global research programme on social policy for developing countries at the Innocenti Research Centre, Florence, and as chief economist of the global Human Development Report New York.
He returned to India to head the Rural Development Division and Development Policy Division of Planning Commission (2006-09), and was lead author of several chapters of the 11th & 12th Five Year Plans of India. He was also the Director General (2009-14) of the National Institute of Labour Economics Research, Planning Commission, in the rank of Secretary to the Government of India.
He was the lead author of the second-ever India Human Development Report, Oxford University Press, 2011, written when he was DG of Planning Commission’s research institute.
His writings on human development, the capability approach, and economics of education have been translated into Hindi (3 books), Spanish (1 book), French (1 book), Italian, Russian, German and Portuguese. He has published 14 books, including 3 with Cambridge University Press, 4 with Oxford University Press, and with Penguin Random House, and Bloomsbury Press, London.
He consults regularly with ILO, Asian Development Bank, UNDP, UNESCO and UNEVOC.
