Trustees
Niraja Gopal Jayal
Avantha Chair, King’s India Institute
Niraja Gopal Jayal is Avantha Chair at King’s India Institute, King’s College London; Centennial Professor, Department of Gender Studies, London School of Economics, and formerly Professor at the Centre for the Study of Law and Governance, Jawaharlal Nehru University.
Her most recent book (edited) is Re-Forming India: The Nation Today (Penguin Random House, 2019). Her book Citizenship and Its Discontents (Permanent Black & Harvard University Press, 2013) won the Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy Prize of the Association of Asian Studies in 2015. She is also the author of Representing India: Ethnic Diversity and the Governance of Public Institutions (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006) and Democracy and the State: Welfare, Secularism and Development in Contemporary India (OUP, 1999). She has co- edited The Oxford Companion to Politics in India (2010) and edited, among others, Democracy in India (OUP, 2001).
She delivered the Radhakrishnan Memorial Lectures at All Souls College, Oxford (2009) and was Vice-President of the American Political Science Association (2011-12). She has held visiting appointments at, among others, King’s College London, EHESS Paris and Princeton University.
Srinath Raghavan
Historian and Professor, Ashoka University
Srinath Raghavan is Professor of History and International Relations at Ashoka University. He is also a Senior Fellow at Carnegie India. He took his PhD in War Studies from King’s College London, where he also taught for many years. Prior to entering academia, he spent six years as an infantry officer in the Indian Army.
Raghavan’s books include War and Peace in Modern India: A Strategic History of the Nehru Years (Permanent Black & Macmillan, 2010); 1971: A Global History of the Creation of Bangladesh (Permanent Black & Harvard University Press, 2013); India’s War: The Making of Modern South Asia, 1939-1945 (Penguin Allen Lane & Basic Books, 2016); and Fierce Enigmas: A History of the United States in South Asia (Penguin Allen Lane & Basic Books, 2018). In addition, he has co-authored and edited another four volumes on Indian foreign policy, strategy and contemporary history.
Raghavan is a regular commentator on international affairs and politics. He has served as a member of the National Security Advisory Board and as the Chief Editor of the Kargil War History for the Ministry of Defence. He is a recipient of the K. Subrahmanyam Award for Strategic Studies (2011) and the Infosys Prize for Social Sciences (2015).
Manish Sabharwal
Chairman and Co-founder, Teamlease Services
Manish Sabharwal is the co-founder and Vice Chairman of Teamlease Services, India’s largest staffing and human capital firm. Teamlease also operates India’s first vocational university national PPP apprenticeship program. Manish is a member of the National Skill Mission, Central Advisory Board of Education and various state and central government committees on education, employment, and employability. He also served as an Independent Director on the Board of the Reserve Bank of India. He got his MBA from the Wharton School and is an alumnus of Shriram College of Commerce, Delhi and Mayo College, Ajmer.
Manish Sabharwal serves as the Managing Trustee of the New India Foundation.
Nandan Nilekani
Co-founder and Non-Executive Chairman, Infosys
Nandan Nilekani is the co-founder and Non-Executive Chairman of Infosys. He is the Co-founder and Chairman of EkStep, a not-for-profit effort to create a learner-centric, technology-based platform to improve basic literacy for millions of children. He has been the Chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) in the rank of a Cabinet Minister.
Born in Bengaluru, Nilekani received his Bachelor’s degree from IIT, Bombay. Fortune magazine conferred him with “Asia’s Businessman of the year 2003.” In 2005 he received the prestigious Joseph Schumpeter Prize for innovative services in the economy, economic sciences, and politics. In 2006, he was awarded the Padma Bhushan. He was also named Businessman of the Year by Forbes Asia. Time magazine listed him as one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2006 & 2009. Foreign Policy magazine listed him as one of the Top 100 Global thinkers in 2010. He won The Economist Social & Economic Innovation Award for his leadership of India’s Unique Identification initiative (Aadhaar). In 2017, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from E & Y. CNBC- TV 18 conferred the India Business Leader Award of 2017 for his outstanding contribution to the Indian Economy; he also received the 22nd Nikkei Asia Prize for Economic & Business Innovation 2017.
Nandan Nilekani is the author of Imagining India: The Idea of A Renewed Nation (Penguin, 2010) and co-authored his second book with Viral Shah Rebooting India: Realizing a Billion Aspirations (Penguin, 2015). His latest book, co-authored with Tarun Bhojwani, is The Art of Bitfulness: Keeping Calm in the Digital World (Penguin, 2022).
(Trustee Emeritus)
Ramachandra Guha
Historian and Columnist
Ramachandra Guha is a historian and columnist who has held visiting professorships at the universities of Yale, Stanford, and Oslo, the London School of Economics, and the Indian Institute of Science. His books include Savaging the Civilized (University of Chicago Press, 1999) Environmentalism: A Global History (Addison Wesley Longman, 2000); A Corner of a Foreign Field (Picador, 2002); India after Gandhi (Macmillan, 2007); and Gandhi Before India (Penguin, 2013). In 2008, and again in 2013, Prospect magazine named him as one of the world’s most influential intellectuals. In January 2009 he was awarded the Padma Bhushan. His latest book is Rebels Against the Raj: Western Fighters for India’s Freedom (Penguin, 2022).
(Trustee Emeritus)