Events
Downloads
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Agenda
Abstracts
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Regulation in India: Problems and Solutions
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India's Development Aspirations: A Macroeconomic Perspective
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Macro Perspective of Bihar’s Development: Achievements, Unfinished Agenda, and the Way Forward
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Is Food Processing the Missing Link in Development?
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The Persistence of Contract Labour: Evidence from Indian Manufacturing
Agenda
Day 1
Thursday, August 6, 2026
8:45 am
Registration and Coffee/Tea
9:00 – 9:15 am
Welcome Remarks
Speaker
Suresh Goyal, Director General, NCAER
9:15 – 9:25 am
Lighting of the Lamp
9:25 – 9:45 am
Session 1
IPF Keynote
Speaker
Nandan Nilekani, Co-Founder and Chairman, Infosys; Chairman, NCAER Governing Board
9:45 – 11:15 am
Session 2
Economic Reforms, Growth Agenda, Ease of Doing Business, and Deregulation
Chair
S. Mahendra Dev, Chairman, Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister (EAC-PM)
Speakers
- Ajay Shah (Senior Research Fellow & Co-founder, XKDR Forum)
- Akshay Jaitly (Founding Partner, Trilegal)
Discussants
- Devesh Kapur (Starr Foundation Professor of South Asia Studies, Johns Hopkins University)
- Pravin Krishna (Chung Ju Yung Professor of International Economics, Johns Hopkins University)
- Rana Hasan (Director, Centre for Economic Growth of States, NCAER; formerly Regional Economic Advisor, South Asia Department, Asian Development Bank)
11:15 – 11:35 am
Coffee/Tea
11:35 – 12:00 noon
Session 3
Address & Release of the IPF 2025 Volume
Panel
- Manish Sabharwal (Co-founder, TeamLease Service & Vice Chairman, NCAER Governing Board)
- Franziska Ohnsorge (Chief Economist, Asia, The World Bank)
- Anil K. Sharma (Secretary and Operations Director, NCAER)
- Karthik Muralidharan (Professor, UCSD; Non-resident Senior Fellow, NCAER)
- Pravin Krishna (Professor, Johns Hopkins University)
12:00 – 12:30 pm
Keynote Address
Speaker
Ashok Lahiri, Vice-Chairman, NITI Aayog
12:30 – 1:30 pm
Lunch
1:30 – 3:00 pm
Session 4
India's Development Dreams: A Macro-structural Perspective
Chair
Poonam Gupta, Deputy Governor, Reserve Bank of India
Speakers
- Alok Johri (Professor, McMaster University)
- Amartya Lahiri (Professor, University of British Columbia)
Discussants
- Aurélien Kruse (Lead Economist, World Bank)
- Saumyakanti Ghosh (Group Chief Economic Advisor, State Bank of India)
3:00 – 3:15 pm
Coffee/Tea
3:15 – 4:15 pm
Session 5
Talk & Lectures
Chair
Manish Sabharwal, Co-founder, TeamLease Service & Vice Chairman, NCAER Governing Board
Lecture 1
Lecture on State-driven reform Agenda — Arvind Panagariya (Professor of Economics, Columbia University; formerly, Chairman, 16th Finance Commission)
Lecture 2
Technological, Institutional and Policy Innovations in Era of Significant Global Changes: Lessons from History and Prospects for the Future — Arunava Majumdar (Dean, Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, Stanford University)
4:15 – 5:15 pm
Session 6
Evolving Role of Think Tanks in Evidence-based Policymaking
Chair
Rajendra Pawar, Chairman and Co-founder, NIIT
Panel
- Suresh Goyal (Director General, NCAER)
- Poonam Gupta (Deputy Governor, Reserve Bank of India)
- Shekhar Shah (Chair of Academic Advisory Council and Board Member, Indian School of Public Policy; and Advisory Board Member, Centre for Development Economics and Sustainability, Monash University)
- Suman Bery (Former Vice Chairman, NITI Aayog)
- Rakesh Mohan (President and Distinguished Fellow, Centre for Social and Economic Progress)
- Shashanka Bhide (Honorary Senior Advisor, NCAER)
5:15 – 5:45 pm
Coffee/Tea
6:30 – 7:45 pm
Session 7 • Flagship Lecture
CD Deshmukh Lecture
Chair
Manish Sabharwal, Co-founder, TeamLease Services and Vice Chairman, NCAER Governing Board
Speaker
Nirmala Sitharaman, Hon'ble Minister of Finance and Minister of Corporate Affairs, Government of India
- 6:30 pm Arrival — Suresh Goyal, Director General, NCAER
- 6:35 – 6:40 pm Introduction — Manish Sabharwal
- 6:40 – 7:00 pm Lecture: Viksit Bharat: Our Ambition and Destiny — Nirmala Sitharaman, Hon’ble Minister of Finance; and Minister of Corporate Affairs, Government of India
- 7:00 – 7:35 pm Q&A — Manish Sabharwal
- 7:35 – 7:40 pm Vote of Thanks: Suresh Goyal
7:45 pm
Drinks & Dinner at NCAER Campus
Day 2
Friday, August 7, 2026
8:45 am
Registration and Coffee/Tea
9:00 – 10:30 am
Session 8
Macro Perspective of Bihar’s Development: Achievements, Unfinished Agenda, and the Way Forward
Chair
Arvind Panagariya, Professor, Columbia University; formerly Chairman, 16th Finance Commission
Speakers
- Ratna Sahay (Professor, NCAER)
- Santosh Kumar Gautam (Professor, University of Notre Dame)
- Aakash Dev (Fellow, NCAER)
Discussants
- Karthik Muralidharan (Tata Chancellor's Professor of Economics, University of California, San Diego; Non-resident Senior Fellow, NCAER)
- Pratyaya Amrit (Chief Secretary, Bihar - TBC)
10:30 – 10:50 am
Coffee/Tea
10:50 – 12:15 pm
Session 9
Is Food Processing the Missing Link in Development?
Chair
Avinash Purushottam Das Joshi, Secretary, Ministry of Food Processing
Speaker
Shoumitro Chatterjee, Assistant Professor, Johns Hopkins University
Discussants
- Mekhala Krishnamurthy (Associate Professor, Ashoka University)
- Shilpa Aggarwal (Associate Professor, Indian School of Business)
- Harish Damodaran (National Editor, The Indian Express)
12:15 – 1:30 pm
Session 10
Talk: Industry Innovation and Allied Sectors
Chair
Ashish Dhawan, Founder, TCF; Member, NCAER Governing Board
Keynote
Anuradha Thakur, Secretary, Department of Economic Affairs
Speaker
Ufuk Akcigit, Arnold C. Harberger Professor of Economics, University of Chicago
1:30 – 2:15 pm
Lunch
2:15 – 3:45 pm
Session 11
The Persistence of Contract Labour: Evidence from Indian Manufacturing
Chair
Vandana Gurnani, Secretary, Ministry of Labour
Speakers
- Rahul Singh (Assistant Professor, SP Jain Institute of Management and Research)
- Vidhya Soundararajan (Assistant Professor, Centre for Advanced Financial Research and Learning (CAFRAL))
Discussants
- Farzana Afridi (Visiting Professor, NCAER; Professor, Indian Statistical Institute, Delhi)
- Ritam Chaurey (Assistant Professor, School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University)
- Radhicka Kapoor (Senior Employment Specialist, Decent Work Team for South Asia, International Labour Organization (ILO))
- Reshma Anand (Regional Director, Ford Foundation)
3:45 – 4:00 pm
Coffee/Tea
4:00 – 5:30 pm
Session 12
Panel: Growing Impact of AI and DPI
Moderator
Manish Sabharwal
Panel
- V. Anantha Nageswaran (Chief Economic Advisor, Government of India)
- Jean-Louis Arcand (Professor, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (TBC))
- Ravi Bapna (Curtis L. Carlson Chair Professor in Business Analytics and Information Systems, University of Minnesota)
- Shankar Maruwada (Co-founder and CEO, EkStep Foundation/Co-founder and CEO, Centre for Digital Public Infrastructure)
- Sanjay Jain (Director – Digital Public Infrastructure, Gates Foundation)
5:30 – 6:00 pm
Coffee/Tea
6:00 – 7:30 pm
Session 13 • Memorial Lecture
TN Srinivasan Memorial Lecture (Title: TBD)
Chair
Suman Bery, Former Vice Chairman, NITI Aayog
Speaker
Chang-Tai Hsieh, Phyllis and Irwin Winkelried Distinguished Service Professor of Economics and PCL Faculty Scholar, University of Chicago
7:30 – 7:45 pm
Vote of Thanks
Speaker
Anil K. Sharma, Secretary and Operations Director, NCAER
8:00 pm
Dinner
Day 3
Saturday, August 8, 2026
9:30 – 9:45 am
Inaugural Opening Remarks
Speaker
CEO, NITI Aayog
9:45 – 10:00 am
Keynote Address
Speaker
Vice Chairman, NITI Aayog
10:00 – 10:15 am
Address by
Speaker
Suresh Goyal, Director General, NCAER
10:30 – 11:30 am
Session 1
State Governance and Finances
Chair
Arvind Panagariya, Professor, Columbia University; formerly, Chairman, 16th Finance Commission
Panel
- Alok Johri (Professor, McMaster University)
- Amartya Lahiri (Professor, UBC)
- Ravi Bapna (Professor, University of Minnesota) — Governance challenges in context of technology (10 min)
- Suresh Goyal (Director General, NCAER) — Asset Monetisation (10 min)
- Closing Remarks by Chair (10 min)
11:40 – 12:30 pm
Session 2
Industrial Policies
Chair & Moderator
Franziska Ohnsorge, Chief Economist for Asia, The World Bank
Panellists
- Nagesh Kumar, Director and Chief Executive, Institute for Studies in Industrial Development
- Laveesh Bhandari, President and Senior Fellow, Centre for Social and Economic Progress (CSEP)
- Shekhar Aiyar, Director and Chief Executive, Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER)
- Chang-Tai Hsieh, Phyllis and Irwin Winkelried Distinguished Service Professor of Economics and PCL Faculty Scholar, University of Chicago
- Anil K. Sharma, Secretary and Operations Director, NCAER
12:30 – 2:00 pm
Networking Lunch
2:00 – 3:10 pm
Session 3
SDGs – Mapping Budgetary Expenditure to Outcomes
Chair
R. Balasubramaniam, Member, NITI Aayog
Panel
- Rajib Kumar Sen, PD (SDG) Setting the context
- Santosh Kumar Gautam, Professor of Development and Global Health Economics, University of Notre Dame
- Topic of presentation to be indicated
- Sonalde Desai, Professor and Director, NCAER-National Data Innovation Centre (NDIC) Topic of presentation to be indicated
3:10 – 4:00 pm
Session 4
Valedictory: A representative from the State Government - to be Identified On key takeaways from the conference
Panel
K.V. Raju, Member, NITI Aayog Topic to be decided
Vote of Thanks
Suresh Goyal, Director General, NCAER
4:00 – 4:30 pm
Networking High Tea
IPF 2026 - Research Paper Abstracts
Paper 1
Regulation in India: Problems and Solutions
Regulation in India: Problems and Solutions
Author(s)
Akshay Jaitly (TrustBridge Rule of Law Foundation and Trilegal) and Ajay Shah (XKDR Forum)
Regulation is all over the Indian economic landscape, and it is often conducted by ‘statutory regulatory authorities’. In this paper, we examine regulation in India through the lens of public economics, public administration, and the rule of law. Under conditions of market failure, there can be a case for state intervention through regulation. State failure in regulation can deliver various kinds of suboptimal outcomes including deficiencies on the rule of law, central planning and market failure. When regulatory organisations are constructed without adequate checks and balances, state personnel respond to incentives that yield arbitrary power, central planning, and organisational failure. Progress necessitates a departure from output-level engagements with regulatory staff. Root cause solutions require structural reforms to the laws governing regulators. The analysis delineates a framework for regulatory design grounded in the rule of law, separation of powers, and state capability. We need to go from the why of regulation (the economic ideas of market failures) to the how of regulation (which harnesses political science, law and public administration).
Paper 2
India's Development Aspirations: A Macroeconomic Perspective
India's Development Aspirations: A Macroeconomic Perspective
Author(s)
Alok Johri (McMaster University) and Amartya Lahiri (University of British Columbia)
The paper reviews India's macro-development experience since 1980 and conducts a growth decomposition exercise. Our analysis reveals that the post-liberalization growth pick-up in India was mostly due to capital accumulation. Total factor productivity (TFP) growth remained tepid throughout and actually becoming negative post-2016. We show that at comparable levels of economic development countries like China and Korea grew much faster which was mostly sparked by rapid TFP growth. To understand India's growth challenge better we formalize a three-sector model with factor market and output market distortions. Using counterfactual exercises on the calibrated model, we find that labor market wedges significantly reduced aggregate output in India by distorting production away from Industry and Services. The measured output loss due to labor market wedges is over 30 percent. We also conduct projections for India in 2047. Unfortunately, even under the most optimistic TFP growth assumptions, the projected GDP of India falls well short of the $30tn target. Our results underscore the importance of ushering in labor market reforms and easing business conditions urgently.
Paper 3
Macro Perspective of Bihar’s Development: Achievements, Unfinished Agenda, and the Way Forward
Macro Perspective of Bihar’s Development: Achievements, Unfinished Agenda, and the Way Forward
Author(s)
Ratna Sahay (NCAER), Santosh Gautam (University of Notre Dame), Nishith Prakash (Northeastern University), and Aakash Dev (NCAER)
Bihar’s development is central to India’s ambition of Viksit Bharat—to become a developed economy by 2047, given that Bihar has the second largest population and remains the poorest state. This paper provides a macroeconomic assessment of Bihar’s development trajectory, achievements so far, remaining challenges, and reform priorities. Bihar’s development story until the mid-2000s is complex—a combination of history, bad luck, and policy failures. This paper traces the reasons for the state’s decline under colonial rule and during the post-Independence period, followed by the post-2005 turnaround associated with a reform-minded government that came to power with the mandate to focus on development and governance. We document the positive results under the new government yet find that the reforms so far are incomplete to deliver high, inclusive, sustainable, and stable growth. The paper then highlights the remaining challenges and identifies six priority areas that are fundamental and interconnected to make a big push: education, health, governance and law and order, mitigation of recurring floods, private sector development, and women’s empowerment. These reforms are essential for raising productivity, accelerating structural transformation, and creating high-quality jobs for its young population. Recognising the scale of the required investment, the paper assesses Bihar’s public debt dynamics and sustainability and quantifies the fiscal effort needed to finance alternative reform scenarios through stronger own-revenue mobilisation, more efficient and effective spending, additional support from the central government, and, if needed, further borrowing. Bihar’s recent progress, favourable demographics, rising aspirations, natural resources, and scope to mobilise its large diaspora provide grounds for optimism, but sustained and coordinated reforms are necessary to achieve convergence with other states and realise its development potential.
Paper 4
Is Food Processing the Missing Link in Development?
Is Food Processing the Missing Link in Development?
Author(s)
Shoumitro Chatterjee (Johns Hopkins University, CEPR, ICRIER, and the Carnegie Endowment)
India is one of the world’s largest producers of many agricultural commodities, yet it captures only a small share of global processed-food exports. This paper asks whether export-oriented food processing can provide a missing link between agricultural abundance, structural transformation, and better rural employment. Combining cross-country evidence on trade and productivity with Indian factory data, commodity-level comparisons, and case studies, it shows that processed food is a global market comparable in scale to apparel and has historically supported early industrialization. India nevertheless underperforms sharply: it holds about 14 percent of global arable land but less than 2 percent of processed-food exports, implying an annual export gap of roughly $50–110 billion. This underperformance reflects weak productivity growth in both cultivation and processing, unusually small formal plants, high energy costs, fragmented farm supply, inadequate quality-control systems, and unstable trade policy. Yet India’s success in shrimp, frozen French fries, and table grapes shows that firms and producer organizations can build competitive clusters by coordinating technology, inputs, standards, and procurement. The paper argues for policies that target the entire farm-to-export chain—linking processors, production bases, finance, infrastructure, affordable power, traceability, and stable market access—while ensuring that farmers share in the gains.
Paper 5
The Persistence of Contract Labour: Evidence from Indian Manufacturing
The Persistence of Contract Labour: Evidence from Indian Manufacturing
Author(s)
Rahul Singh (SP Jain Institute of Management Research) and Vidhya Soundararajan (Center for Advanced Financial Research and Learning)
Contract labour in India is increasingly evolving from an instrument of labour cost arbitrage into a mechanism for labour intermediation and workforce management. Using establishment-level data spanning 2001–2023, we document a broad-based rise in contract labour, with contract workers accounting for more than 40 percent of manufacturing employment. Contrary to the traditional view of contract labour as low-wage and precarious employment, we find a substantial narrowing of the wage gap between con-tract and regular workers, together with improvements in minimum wage compliance. The expansion of contract labour is concentrated among larger, technologically advanced, more productive, and capital-intensive establishments. Reforms that increased flexibility in direct hiring did not reduce firms’ reliance on contract workers. Instead, districts with a stronger pre-existing staffing industry experienced larger increases in contract labour following reforms to the hiring of contract labour. Firms more exposed to higher formalisation and compliance requirements also experienced larger increases in contract worker shares. Overall, the evidence suggests that the continued growth of contract labour reflects the expansion of organised labour intermediation and has important implications for labour market policy.