Trainings

Swaminathan S. Anklesaria Aiyar is an Indian journalist and columnist. He is a consulting editor for the Economic Times and was formerly Editor of two of India's biggest economic dailies, Financial Express from 1988-90 and The Economic Times from 1992-94. He is also a Research Fellow at the Cato Institute and the elder brother of Mani Shankar Aiyar, who is a senior Congress leader.

Barun is the founder and director of the Liberty Institute, www.InDefenceofLiberty.org, a nonprofit, independent public policy research and advocacy organization, based in New Delhi, India. Liberty Institute is dedicated to enhancing individual freedom in economic and political domains. Among the recognition the Institute has received was the Templeton Award for social entrepreneurship in 2003. Barun Mitra also received the 2005 Julian L. Simon Award for his contribution in environmental policy debates from the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Amit Kaushik was a civil servant for 20 years, joining the Indian Railway Accounts Service in 1987. During his time in the service, he held a variety of challenging assignments, including as Director in the Ministry of HRD, Government of India, where he was associated with the implementation of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), as well as the drafting of the Right to Education Act. He has consulted widely, with multilateral agencies like UNESCO and UNICEF, and has extensive experience of educational planning in India and other developing countries.

Since leaving government, he has worked with organisations like SRF, the NGO Pratham, Educomp Schools and IPE Global. He is currently the CEO at the Australian Council for Educational Research (India).

"PoD has been an enriching experience. It has encouraged me to look at things from a liberal and rational point of view. Instead of looking at the state as a provider of everything, the course has encouraged me to look at every human as a self-interest maximising individual and how incentives in the free market can help achieve the optimal outcome."

It has helped me rethink incentives and using them to achieve the required outcomes. It has also helped me rethink the role of a State and the need for libertarian values in the same.

I was more of a person who spoke about the problem but could never give a solution. This course helped me challenge that and work towards finding solutions. It also helped me think critically about those problems

The online course conducted by CCS on the Education Policy of India helped me understand the current education situation in India. Previously, I had a very constricted view of the education sector but after completing the course and the externship, I feel there are several shortcomings in the education sector that needs to be addressed. This course helped me understand the importance and the role of Education in the development of a country and its citizens. Overall, it was an excellent experience.

This course has helped me to inculcate the theory and practice of community based research along with community partners which would not have been possible in a classroom setting alone.
It has also given me an idea and knowledge about financing and partnerships, with emphasis on local collaboration in the education sector.
This course has motivated me to think about the critical gaps  in the education space.
Further, it has also helped me to learn the strategies of consultation and collaboration to deal with various stakeholders and government agencies.

The course that we did on Education Policy was really helpful. I gathered a lot of useful information. This course wouldnt have possible it CCS wouldnt have been there.
I have learned so much from the course and I look forward to learning more. Thank you for being a remarkable teacher.
Thanks to CCS

Dr. Parth J Shah is the President of Centre for Civil Society (CCS), a public policy think tank advancing personal, economic and political freedoms. In a latest survey, CCS was ranked the number 1 think tank in India and 81 globally.

Dr. Shah's research and advocacy work focus on the themes of economic freedom, choice and competition in education, property rights approach for the environment, and good governance.

Avani is a Fellow at the Centre for Policy Initiative and the Director of Accountability Initiative - a research group at CPR focusing on governance, state capacity and implementation of key social sector programmes. The focus of her work has been in building evidence for policy advocacy to strengthen transparency and accountability in public financial management for service delivery and ensure greater citizen engagement in governance systems. At AI, she has also been anchoring the publication of the annual budget brief series and implementation of fund tracking surveys on key social sector schemes including education, health, sanitation, nutrition. She is a Tech4Good Fellow and an Alumna of the London School of Economics and Smith College, Massachusetts.

Amit Kaushik was a civil servant for 20 years, joining the Indian Railway Accounts Service in 1987. During his time in the service, he held a variety of challenging assignments, including as Director in the Ministry of HRD, Government of India, where he was associated with the implementation of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), as well as the drafting of the Right to Education Act. He has consulted widely, with multilateral agencies like UNESCO and UNICEF, and has extensive experience of educational planning in India and other developing countries.

Since leaving government, he has worked with organisations like SRF, the NGO Pratham, Educomp Schools and IPE Global. He is currently the CEO at the Australian Council for Educational Research (India).

Prof. Kingdon holds the Chair of 'Education Economics and International Development' at UCL Institute of Education, University College London. She has worked for 10 years as faculty at the Department of Economics, University of Oxford. Her research is based mostly on statistical analysis of education datasets. Based on this research, she advises governments and donor agencies such as the World Bank, European Union (EU) and the UK's Department for International Development (DFID) on their education-related aid to developing countries.

She has frequently been a member of the Union Human Resource Development Ministry's 'Joint Review Missions' of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and of the Secondary education programme (the Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan), a member of the Uttar Pradesh Secondary Education Board (Madhyamik Shiksha Parishad), and also serves on the Government of UP's Advisory Committee on Basic Education.

In 2013, Professor Kingdon was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by Kingston University London for "her outstanding contributions to education and development".

An Indian author, commentator and public intellectual. Gurcharan Das graduated with honours from Harvard University in Philosophy. He later attended Harvard Business School (AMP), where he is featured in three case studies. He was CEO of Procter & Gamble India and later managing director, Procter & Gamble Worldwide (Strategic Planning). In 1995, he took early retirement to become a full-time writer. He writes periodic pieces for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, and Newsweek.

Sridhar Rajagopalan is a co-founder of Educational Initiatives Pvt. Ltd. (EI), a company that has helped change the way student learning outcomes are seen in India. EI offers ASSET, India's leading private school assessment and Mindspark, a personalised learning program that has featured as a Harvard Business Study case. Sridhar has been a member of various central and state government committees related to education including the committee for devising model rules for the Right to Education Act in Gujarat. He is currently based in the US and heads EI's US subsidiary.

Vimala Ramachandran, has been working on elementary education, girls' education and women's empowerment. She conceptualized and launched Mahila Samakhya, a women's education program of Government of India program based in the Department of Education, MHRD. She was the Managing Trustee of HealthWatch – a network of researchers and activists engaged with women's health.

She established Educational Resource Unit in 1998 as a network of researchers and practitioners working on education and empowerment.

She has published extensively on education policy and practice, gender issues and women's empowerment.

Yamini Aiyar is the President and Chief Executive of CPR. Her research interests are in the field of social policy and development. In 2008, Yamini founded the Accountability Initiative at CPR. Under her leadership, the Accountability Initiative has produced significant research in the areas of governance, state capacity and social policy.

Yamini's own research on social accountability, elementary education, decentralisation and administrative reforms has received both academic and popular recognition.

Aiyar is an Alumna of the London School of Economics, St. Edmund's college Cambridge University, and St Stephen's College, Delhi University.