Prof. Ramesh Chand

Prof. Ramesh Chand is currently Member, NITI Aayog, in the rank and status of a Union Minister of State. He has a PhD in agricultural economics from the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI), New Delhi. He is a Fellow of the National Academy of Agricultural Sciences and the Indian Society of Agricultural Economics. He has been involved in policy formulation for the agriculture sector for the past two and a half decades. Prior to joining NITI Aayog, he was Director, National Institute of Agricultural Economics and Policy Research, New Delhi.

Prof. Ramesh Chand is also a Member of the:

• Board of Trustees of CIMMYT (International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center), Mexico; and
• Policy Advisory Council (PAC) of the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR), Australia

In the recent past, he has also held the position of Member, Fifteenth Finance Commission.

Prof. Ramesh Chand has worked in senior academic positions as ICAR National Professor; Professor and Head, Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi University; and Professor at Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana. Prof. Chand has been a Visiting Professor at the University of Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia, and at the Institute of Developing Economies, Chiba Shi, Japan. He has also been a consultant with international organisations such as FAO, UNDP, ESCAP, UNCTAD, Commonwealth, and World Bank.

Prof. Chand has chaired important committees on food and agricultural policies set up by various Ministries of the Government of India. He has served as India’s nodal officer for agriculture for SAARC for 7 years and represented the country in meetings of G20, UNESCAP.

Prof. Chand has authored seven books and published more than 150 research papers in reputed national and international journals in different areas of agriculture such as production, growth, development policy, farmers’ issues, markets, and trade.

He has been presented with the Jawaharlal Nehru Award (1984), Rafi Ahmad Kidwai Award (2006) of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research, and the Atal Bihari Vajpayee Award (2018) by the Indian Economic Association.