Introduction
Professor Aasha Kapur Mehta is a Visiting Professor at Institute for Human Development, Delhi. Prior to this, she worked as a Professor of Economics at Indian Institute of Public Administration for a few decades. She studied at Delhi School of Economics and Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi and Iowa State University, USA. She has conducted a large number of research and consultancy assignments for the Ministry of Rural Development, Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, Ministry of Women and Child Development, National Commission for Women, Ministry of Tribal Affairs, Ministry of New and Renewable Energy etc., as well as for international organisations such as UNDP, UN Women and World. She led the multi-institutional Chronic Poverty Research Centre in India for over a decade. This was part of the global CPRC funded by DFID and headquartered at University of Manchester and ODI. Based on her research she was invited to serve on several Committees constituted by Government.
Among the large number of books, monographs and articles that she has authored, edited and co-authored are “Poverty, Chronic Poverty and Poverty Dynamics: Policy Imperatives, Springer 2018; "The Missing Women in India’s Workforce", The Hindu Business Line, 26 January 2019; "Half-baked efforts at Poverty Reduction", The Hindu Business Line, 29 October 2018; “India Chronic Poverty Report: Towards Solutions and New Compacts in a Dynamic Context”, CPRC-IIPA 2011; “Chronic Poverty and Development Policy in India”, Sage 2006; and “Gendering the Twelfth Plan: A Feminist Perspective”, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol 42 No 17, April 21-27, 2012. In order to draw attention to persistence of poverty and dynamics of poverty CPRC India has published 51 working papers in the CPRC-IIPA working paper series to draw attention to these issues. Later versions of many of these papers have been published in books as well as journals such as World Development, Journal of Human Development and Margin. Her work on Reviewing Flagship Programmes from a Gender Lens: ICDS, was published by UN Women in 2012. She has also critiqued several welfare programmes in the context of their implications for gender and for those in poverty. Her books, articles and working papers are on poverty, poverty dynamics, drivers, maintainers and interrupters of poverty, human and gender development indicators, gender budgeting, deprivation and data gaps.
Expert
Professor Aasha Kapur Mehta has served on several committees constituted by Government of India. She was one of the two experts who were requested to assist NITI Aayog in preparing the chapter on Rural Economy for the Vision, Strategy and Action Plan Document (2016). She was a Member of the Core Group of the Ad-hoc Task Force constituted by India’s Cabinet Secretariat for reviewing the performance targets of Government Ministries/Departments in their Results-Framework Documents in 2012-13, 2013-14 and 2014-15. She was also a Member of the Planning Commission Working Group of Feminist Economists for India’s Eleventh and Twelfth Plans. She chaired the Subgroup on Gender Mainstreaming and Effective Accountability Mechanisms for the 12th Plan and the Subgroup on Gender and Agriculture for the 11th Plan. She is a Member of the Standing Committee on improvement of human resources in States/UTs for Rural Development programmes (2018) and Member, Fourth Common Review Mission to review programmes of Ministry of Rural Development (2018). Ministry of Women and Child Development requested her to serve on the Task Force for preparing a Handbook and Manual on Gender Budgeting. She was part of the UN Women delegation to the meetings of the 63rd Commission on the Status of Women in New York in March 2019 and the regional meetings at Bangkok in February 2019.
She led the work of the Chronic Poverty Research Centre in India for more than a decade. Her books, articles and working papers are on poverty, poverty dynamics, human and gender development indicators, gender budgeting, deprivation and data gaps.
Fields of expertise: Agriculture and rural development