Prof. Jagdish Bhagwati
University Professor, Columbia University and Senior Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations

Sanjiv Ahuja
CEO,Orange

Shri Arun Shourie
Currently Member of Parliament (Rajya Sabha) and Former Union Minister for Disinvestment in Govt. of India

Dr. Shashi Tharoor
Former Under Secretary General, United Nations

Panel Moderator: Prof. Joseph Stiglitz
Nobel Laureate and University Professor, Columbia University

Tarun Das
Chief Mentor, Confederation of Indian Industry

The Honorable Ronen Sen
India's Ambassador to the United States

Ron Somers
President, US-India Business Council

The Honorable Frank Wisner
United States' Former Ambassador to India and Vice Chairman, American International Group

Dr. Vikram Akula
Founder & CEO, SKS Microfinance

Sanjiv has been the CEO of Orange S.A since March 2004. He was the Chief Operating Officer of Orange from April 2003 to March 2004.

During his leadership, Orange customer base has grown from 43 million to over 100 million customers worldwide, with the footprint expanding to include Poland, Spain, Senegal and Mali. The Orange Brand has also been adapted by France Telecom for its broadband and TV offerings.

Sanjiv’s previous industry experience includes the role of President of Telcordia Technologies (formerly Bellcore), the world’s largest provider of operations support systems, network software and consulting and engineering services to the telecommunications industry. Prior to that, he spent fifteen years at IBM in various executive roles. His last responsibility included leading IBM’s entry into the telecommunications software industry. Most recently, he was CEO of Comstellar technologies, the Californian based technology company.

He is currently a non executive director of Cadbury Schweppes and William Sonoma Inc.

He has a degree in electrical engineering from Delhi University, India, and a masters degree in computer science from Columbia University in New York.

Vikram Akula is the Founder of CEO of SKS Microfinance, one of the leading microfinance institutions in the world. In 2006, Vikram was named by TIME Magazine as one of the world’s 100 most influential people.

Vikram launched SKS Microfinance in 1998 and it is one of the fastest growing microfinance organizations in the world, having provided over $140 million to over 550,000 poor women in impoverished regions of of India . SKS maintained a 165% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) while maintaining a 98% on-time repayment rate.

In addition to rapid expansion, SKS leads the industry in the use of innovative technologies. It is one of the first MFIs in the world to have a fully-automated MIS. SKS also has pioneered the use of Smart-Card technology at the village-level and is currently working with VISA International on a pilot project to develop and deploy wireless POS devices that would automate field operations and significantly reduce transaction costs.

SKS has received numerous awards including the CGAP Pro-Poor Innovation Award, MIT’s Global Indus Technovators Award, the Grameen Foundation USA Excellence Award, the ABN-AMRO/Planet Finance Process Excellence Award, and the Digital Partners SEL Award. SKS is also the only MFI in India to receive the MIX Transparency Certification and to be named in CGAP’s worldwide transparency competition for two consecutive years. Vinod Khosla (founding CEO of Sun Microsystems), Ravi Reddy (Founder of Think Systems), and others have made equity investments in SKS. SKS has also been profiled in numerous publications, including the front page of the Wall Street Journal.

Vikram is a former management consultant with McKinsey & Company. He has over a decade of work and research experience in microfinance. He was a Fulbright Scholar in India, during which he coordinated an action-research project on providing micro-credit for food security. He was also researcher with the Worldwatch Institute, where he wrote articles focused on poverty and development. He has also worked as a community organizer with the Deccan Development Society in India. He holds a B.A. from Tufts, an M.A. from Yale, and has a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. His Ph.D. dissertation focused on the impact of microfinance. He has received several awards for his work with SKS, including the Ernst & Young Start Up Entrepreneur of the Year (India), the Schwab Social Entrepreneur of the Year (India) and the Echoing Green Public Service Entrepreneur Fellowship. He has been featured in media ranging from CNN to the front page of the Wall Street Journal.

Jagdish Bhagwati is University Professor at Columbia University and Senior Fellow in International Economics at the Council on Foreign Relations. He has been Economic Policy Adviser to Arthur Dunkel, Director General of GATT (1991-93), Special Adviser to the UN on Globalization, and External Adviser to the WTO. He has served on the Expert Group appointed by the Director General of the WTO on the Future of the WTO and the Advisory Committee to Secretary General Kofi Annan on the NEPAD process in Africa, and was also a member of the Eminent Persons Group under the chairmanship of President Fernando Henrique Cardoso on the future of UNCTAD.

Professor Bhagwati has published more than three hundred articles and has authored or edited over fifty volumes; he also writes frequently for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Financial Times, as well as reviews for The New Republic and The Times Literary Supplement. Professor Bhagwati is described as the most creative international trade theorist of his generation and is a leader in the fight for freer trade. His most recent book, In Defense of Globalization (Oxford, 2004), has attracted worldwide acclaim. Five volumes of his scientific writings and two of his public policy essays have been published by MIT press. The recipient of six festschrifts in his honor, he has also received several prizes and honorary degrees, including awards from the governments of India (Padma Vibhushan) and Japan (Order of the Rising Sun, Gold and Silver Star).

A native of India, Professor Bhagwati attended Cambridge University where he graduated in 1956 with a first in Economics Tripos. He then continued to study at MIT and Oxford returning to India in 1961 as Professor of Economics at the Indian Statistical Institute, and then as Professor of International Trade at the Delhi School of Economics. He returned to MIT in 1968, leaving it twelve years later as the Ford International Professor of Economics to join Columbia. He is married to Padma Desai, the Gladys and Ronald Harriman Professor of Comparative Economic Systems at Columbia University and a scholar of Russian and other former socialist countries' transition problems. They have one daughter, Anuradha Kristina.

For further biographical details, including honorary degrees, prizes, and awards, please visit www.columbia.edu/~jb38.

Tarun Das has spent his entire working career in industry associations, starting with the predecessor body of CII in November 1963 and was the Chief Executive since April 1974 when CII (formerly AIEI) was formed through a merger of 2 Associations, till June 2004. He is currently the Chief Mentor of CII.

He is an Honours Graduate in Economics and Commerce from Calcutta University, India and Manchester University, UK. He has been awarded an Honorary Degree of Doctorate in Science by The University of Warwick, UK and has been conferred an Honorary CBE by Her Majesty the Queen for his contribution to Indo-British relations. He is also the recipient of the `Blackwill Award’ by US India Business Council for his contribution to Indo-US Economic co-operation. Mr. Das has also been conferred with the 2004 Singapore National Award (Public Service Medal) by the Singapore Government for his contribution to strengthening economic ties between India and Singapore. Mr Das has been awarded the Padma Bhushan in 2006, one of the highest Civilian Government Awards, for his contributions in the field of Trade and Industry, by the President of India.

Mr Das is the non-executive Chairman of Haldia Petrochemicals Ltd, India; non-executive Director on the Boards of John Keells Holdings Ltd. (Sri Lanka), GIVE Foundation. He is the Chairman of Task Force on Skills Development, Government of India. He is also a member of the Board of Trustees of The Aspen Institute, USA; and East West Centre, USA; President, Aspen Institute India; Member of the International Advisory Board of The Coca Cola Company Ltd., USA; Asian Strategic Leadership Institute (ASLI), Malaysia. He is the Co-chairman of the Management Board of the NAM Business Council. He is also a member of the International Council of Asia Society, New York.

Mr. Das is the Managing Trustee of Indian Business Trust for HIV/AIDS.

Mr. Sen was born on 9 April, 1944. After graduation, he joined the Indian Foreign Service in July 1966. From May 1968 to July 1984, he served in Indian Missions / Posts in Moscow, San Francisco and in Dhaka and in the Ministry of External Affairs, and had also been Secretary to the Atomic Energy Commission of India.

From July 1984 to December 1985, Mr. Sen was Joint Secretary in the Ministry of External Affairs. He was thereafter Joint Secretary to the Prime Minister of India from January 1986 to July 1991, responsible for Foreign Affairs, Defense and Science & Technology.

Mr. Sen was Ambassador to Mexico from September 1991 to August 1992; Ambassador to the Russian Federation from October 1992 to October 1998; Ambassador to Germany from October 1998 to May 2002; and High Commissioner to the United Kingdom from May 2002 to April 2004.

Mr. Sen participated in summit meetings in the United Nations, Commonwealth, Non-Aligned Movement, Six Nation Five Continent Peace Initiative, South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, IAEA, G-15 and other forums and also in over 160 bilateral summit meetings. He had several assignments as Special Envoy of the Prime Minister of India for meetings with Heads of State or Government of neighboring and other countries.

Mr. Sen is married and the couple have one daughter.

Mr. Sen assumed charge as Ambassador of India to the United States of America in August 2004.

Dr. Arun Shourie is a former Union Minister of the Government of India and presently a sitting member of the Upper House of the Indian Parliament (Rajya Sabha) and the India Co-Chair of the US India Business Alliance (USIBA), the business initiative of the US India Political Action Committee (USINPAC) with a mission to improve investment and trade between the US and India.

From 1999–2004, Dr. Shourie held several significant ministerial portfolios. As the Minister of Disinvestment, he undertook the difficult task of privatizing a number of public sector companies and is well known as the privatization czar of India. The procedures developed by him for disinvestment are now being emulated in other parts of the world. As Minister of Communications and Information Technology, he implemented policies that helped the telecommunication industry in India to grow rapidly and quadrupling the use of cellular phones.

Dr. Shourie has won several awards including the Padma Bhushan, Magsaysay Award, Dadabhai Naoroji Award, Astor Award, International Editor of the Year Award and others. Having received his doctorate in economics from Syracuse University in Syracuse , New York , Dr. Shourie served as an economist with the World Bank between 1967 and 1978. He also worked from 1972 to 1974 as a consultant to the Indian Planning Commission.As one of India's most renowned and uncompromising journalists, Dr. Arun Shourie is well known for introducing a new style of aggressive, independent investigative journalism to India. Dr. Shourie has authored a number of seminal books and is very well known for his insightful writings on a range of subjects. He is also acclaimed as one of the "World Press Freedom Heroes" by the International Press Institute, a "Star of Asia" by Business Week and "Business Leader of the Year" by the Economic Times jury.

Ron Somers is the President of the U.S.-India Business Council, established in 1975, and comprised of more than 215 of the top U.S. companies investing in India, joined by global Indian companies promoting economic reforms with an aim to deepen trade relations and broaden commercial ties between the two countries.

He serves as the Council's CEO, leading advocacy initiatives on Capitol Hill as well as in New Delhi. Ron also heads the Manhattan India Investment Roundtable in New York, comprised of the top 20 Fortune 500 financial service institutions, banks and insurance companies investing in India.

Ron recently served as Unocal Corporation's chief executive in India, developing commercial opportunities in India’s emerging energy market. Previously, Ron served as Managing Director for India on behalf of Cogentrix Energy, tasked with setting up a 1000 MW electric power project in the Indian state of Karnataka.

A seasoned India-hand having spent 11 years resident in India, Ron has served on the Board of Directors of Hindustan Oil Exploration Company (HOEC), India's first private sector oil exploration company, as well as on the Board of the United States Educational Foundation in India, which oversees the country's Fulbright Scholarship endowment.

Ron holds a Masters of Arts degree, where he studied at Lincoln College, Oxford University, and an Honors degree from Middlebury College in Vermont.

Joseph E. Stiglitz was born in Gary, Indiana in 1943. A graduate of Amherst College, he received his PHD from MIT in 1967, became a full professor at Yale in 1970, and in 1979 was awarded the John Bates Clark Award, given biennially by the American Economic Association to the economist under 40 who has made the most significant contribution to the field. He has taught at Princeton, Stanford, MIT and was the Drummond Professor and a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. He is now University Professor at Columbia University in New York and Chair of Columbia University's Committee on Global Thought. He is also the co-founder and Executive Director of the Initiative for Policy Dialogue at Columbia. In 2001, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics for his analyses of markets with asymmetric information.

Stiglitz was a member of the Council of Economic Advisers from 1993-95, during the Clinton administration, and served as CEA chairman from 1995-97. He then became Chief Economist and Senior Vice-President of the World Bank from 1997-2000.

Stiglitz holds a part-time appointment at the University of Manchester as Chair of the Management Board and Director of Graduate Summer Programs at the Brooks World Poverty Institute.

Stiglitz helped create a new branch of economics, "The Economics of Information," exploring the consequences of information asymmetries and pioneering such pivotal concepts as adverse selection and moral hazard, which have now become standard tools not only of theorists, but of policy analysts. He has made major contributions to macro-economics and monetary theory, to development economics and trade theory, to public and corporate finance, to the theories of industrial organization and rural organization, and to the theories of welfare economics and of income and wealth distribution. In the 1980s, he helped revive interest in the economics of R&D.

His work has helped explain the circumstances in which markets do not work well, and how selective government intervention can improve their performance.

Recognized around the world as a leading economic educator, he has written textbooks that have been translated into more than a dozen languages. He founded one of the leading economics journals, The Journal of Economic Perspectives. His book Globalization and Its Discontents (W.W. Norton June 2001) has been translated into 35 languages and has sold more than one million copies worldwide. Other recent books include The Roaring Nineties (W.W. Norton), Towards a New Paradigm in Monetary Economics (Cambridge University Press) with Bruce Greenwald, and Fair Trade for All (Oxford University Press), with Andrew Charlton. His newest book, Making Globalization Work, was published by WW Norton and Penguin/ Allen Lane in September 2006. <

Dr. Shashi Tharoor was the official candidate of India for the succession to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in 2006, and came a close second out of seven contenders in the race. He mostly recently served as the United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information. His career began in 1978, when he joined the staff of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Geneva, and included key responsibilities in peace-keeping after the Cold War and as a senior adviser to the Secretary-General.

Dr. Tharoor is also the award-winning author of nine books, as well as hundreds of articles, op-eds and book reviews in a wide range of publications, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the International Herald Tribune, Time, Newsweek and The Times of India. He has served for two years as a Contributing Editor and occasional columnist for Newsweek International. Since April 2001 he has authored a fortnightly column in The Hindu and since January 2007 in The Times of India.

His five non-fiction books include: Reasons of State (1981), a study of Indian foreign-policy making; India: From Midnight to the Millennium (1997), which was cited by President Clinton in his address to the Indian Parliament; Nehru: The Invention of India (2003), a biography of India's first Prime Minister, and a collection of literary essays, Bookless in Baghdad (2005). His three novels are the classic The Great Indian Novel (1989) which is required reading in several courses on post-colonial literature; Riot (2001), a searing examination of Hindu-Muslim violence in contemporary India, and Show Business (1992) which received a front-page accolade in the New York Times Book Review and has since been made into a motion picture, "Bollywood". Shashi Tharoor's books have been translated into French, German, Italian, Malayalam, Marathi, Polish, Romanian, Russian and Spanish.

Born in London in 1956, Dr. Tharoor was educated in India and the United States, completing a Ph. D. in 1978 at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, where he received the Robert B. Stewart Prize for Best Student. At Fletcher, Shashi Tharoor helped found and was the first Editor of the Fletcher Forum of International Affairs, a journal now in its 31st year.

In January 1998, Dr. Tharoor was named a "Global Leader of Tomorrow" by the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. He is the recipient of several awards, including a Commonwealth Writers' Prize, and was named to India's highest honour for Overseas Indians, the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman, in 2004. He serves on the Board of Overseers of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, the board of trustees of the Aspen Institute India, and the Advisory Board of the World Policy Journal. He is also a Fellow of the New York Institute of the Humanities

Frank G. Wisner joined the American International Group as Vice Chairman, External Affairs on August 27, 1997.

Before joining AIG, Wisner was a member of the United States Foreign Service and held the personal rank of Career Ambassador, the highest grade in the Foreign Service. From August 1994 until July 1997, Mr. Wisner served as Ambassador to India. Before New Delhi, his most recent assignment was as Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, from January 1993 to June 1994. Prior to that, he served as Under Secretary of State for International Security Affairs from July 1992 until January 1993. Mr. Wisner represented the United States in the Philippines as Ambassador from August 1991 until June 1992; served as Ambassador to Egypt from August 1986 until June 1991. Mr. Wisner was Senior Deputy Assistant Secretary for African Affairs from April 1982 to April 1986, a period of intense diplomatic engagement in Southern Africa at a time of conflict in Angola, Mozambique and Namibia and in the history of the end of Apartheid in South Africa. He served as Ambassador to Zambia from August 1979 to April 1982.

Secretary Condoleezza Rice appointed Mr. Wisner Special Representative to the Kosovo Status Talks in December, 2005.

Frank G. Wisner joined the State Department as a Foreign Service Officer in December 1961, and after Western Arabic Language training in Morocco, was assigned to Algiers immediately after independence from France. In 1964, he was detailed to the Agency for International Development in Vietnam. He remained in Vietnam in the pacification program until 1968, serving in succession as Staff Aide to the Deputy Chief of Mission, Special Assistant to the Director of the Office of Civil Operation, and Senior Advisor to the Vietnamese province of Tuyen Duc.

Returning to Washington in December 1968, Mr. Wisner was Officer in Charge of Tunisian Affairs in the State Department, where he remained until July 1971, when he was named chief of the Economic-Commercial Section at the American Embassy in Tunis. He then serviced as chief of the Political Section in Dhaka, Bangladesh, shortly after independence, from July 1973 until March 1974. From March 1974 until April 1975, Mr. Wisner was Director of Plans and Management in the Bureau of Public Affairs in Washington. He then joined the President's Interagency Task Force on Indochina - - the agency responsible for evacuating and then settling nearly one million refugees. He was Special Assistant to the Under Secretary for Political Affairs, Joseph Sisco, from August 1975 until July 1976. Mr. Wisner was named Director of the Office of Southern African Affairs in July 1976 and worked with Secretary Kissinger to launch negotiations over Zimbabwe and Namibia. At the beginning of President Carter’s administration, he joined Secretary Vance’s staff as Deputy Executive Secretary of the Department of State.

Currently, he is on the board of the U.S. India Business Council. Frank Wisner is a member of the Boards of Directors of EOG Resources and Ethan Allen, American Life Insurance Company (ALICO) and Office Tiger. He is Vice Chairman of the Business Council on International Understanding. His non-profit board affiliations include Rockefeller Brothers Fund, UNA-USA, the American University of Beirut, the American University in Cairo, the American School of Tangiers, Refugees’ International, United Service Organization, The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Business Committee, Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown, Princeton University’s Middle Eastern Affairs advisory board and the advisory board at Columbia University’s SIPA.

Frank Wisner was born in New York in 1938. He graduated from Princeton University with a B.A. degree in 1961. He is married to the former Christine de Ganay. They have four children and four grandchildren.