Nirupam Bajpai is Senior Development Advisor and Director, South Asia Program, Center on Globalization and Sustainable Development, The Earth Institute at Columbia University. Before joining Columbia University, he worked at MIT and Harvard. He currently serves as an informal advisor to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. He has served as informal advisor to former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee as well as several cabinet ministers in the UPA and NDA governments. He was awarded the Padma Shri in 2008. He has co-edited India in the Era of Economic Reforms (1999).
