Archives: People
Meghna Raj Saxena
Meghna Raj Saxena is a Research Associate at the National Data Innovation Centre (NDIC), NCAER. She holds a Master’s in Economics from Azim Premji University, Bengaluru, and a Bachelor’s in Economics (Honours) from St. Xavier’s College, Jaipur.
Her research interests lie at the intersection of gender, development economics, and macroeconomic policy. Her Master’s thesis, Defying Norms and Defining Autonomy, examined women’s agency and social norms across life stages among married women in India, using a mixed-methods approach combining NFHS-5 data with field research from Devgadh Baria, Gujarat.
She is skilled in qualitative fieldwork including interviews, participatory tools, surveys, and focus group discussions as well as geospatial analysis using QGIS and advanced statistics using R, STATA,and Python. She has experience working with datasets including NFHS, NCRB, CPHS, RBI, and IMF PortWatch.
Prior to NCAER, she worked as a Research Associate at XKDR Forum, Mumbai, where she evaluated state welfare schemes in Karnataka and Maharashtra using CPHS and DID methods, and tracked the rerouting of global maritime traffic using IMF PortWatch satellite data. Her work spanned across household finance, public finance, urban planning, health economics, and macroeconomy.
She has also interned with the National Foundation for India under the Abhijit Sen Rural Internship, conducting field research on Women’s Autonomy in Devgadh Baria: Role of Social Norms and Women Collectives and with the Budget Analysis and Research Centre Trust (BARC), Jaipur, where she analysed primary survey data from 17 districts in Rajasthan on gender roles in society and family in the post-COVID period, in collaboration with UNICEF.
S. Velmurugan
Dr S. Velmurugan is a Senior Advisor in the NCAER Centre for Economics of Transportation, Mobility and Logistics, funded by the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI). He superannuated as Chief Scientist and Head, Traffic Engineering and Safety Division, from Council of Scientific and Industrial Research-Central Road Research Institute (CSIR-CRRI), New Delhi, in February 2026 after about 32 years of service.
He has more than 33 years of experience in traffic engineering, road safety and transportation planning, transport economics, and public transport evaluation. He was instrumental in the formulation/revision of 18 Indian Road Congress publications during the last 12 years. He has served in the capacity of Project Leader/Coordinator in more than 150 projects sponsored by various organisations including the World Bank, NHAI, state Public Works Departments (PWDs), and private organisations. One of the flagship projects completed by him is the CSIR-funded study titled, ‘Indian Highway Capacity’ in February 2018, wherein he worked in the role of Champion of the project in collaboration with seven academic institutes, including Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), National Institute of Technology (NIT), School of Planning and Architecture (SPA), and state Universities. Recently, he also completed two multidisciplinary projects titled, ‘Intelligent Solutions for Road Safety through Technology and Engineering (iRASTE)’ for the urban as well as inter-urban environs, viz., iRASTE: Nagpur, funded by CSIR, and iRASTE: Telangana, sponsored by International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT), Hyderabad.
He has published more than 150 technical papers in international and national journals and presented papers at more than 100 research forums.
He has a PhD in Transportation Systems Engineering from IIT, Bombay, and Masters in Traffic and Urban Engineering from Anna University, Guindy, Chennai. He also completed two Post-Doctoral Research stints at the University of Antwerp, Belgium, in 1998, and at the University of South Australia, Adelaide, in 2008.