Distinguished Fellow of United Services Institution, New Delhi. Festival Director, Valley of Words
Sanjeev Chopra holds a PhD in Management, besides degrees in Law, History and Literature. He is the recipient of the Robert S McNamara Fellowship of the World Bank and the Hubert H Humphrey Fellowship at the University of Cornell. He was also a Guest Scholar at The Brookings Institution, Washington DC and attended the Twenty First Century Trust Fellows Program at Merton College, Oxford. He has written extensively on policy issues in governance and development interventions in rural development, agriculture, marketing reforms, co-operatives and farmer organizations. He has been invited to deliver lectures and talks at IIMs, ASCI, FRI, IGNFA and at symposia and conferences across the country. He has also delivered keynotes at International Cooperative Alliance conferences at Beijing, Abu Dhabi and Ho Chi Minh City.
He has several books to his credit, including ‘At the Crossroads: Development Discourses in India’, ‘Agri-Matters’, ‘Ten Thousand Crores’, besides three edited volumes on Policy Colloquia on Co-operatives in the SAARC Region, and articles in leading papers like E.P.W, Mainstream, Frontier, Encounter, Millennium Post, Garhwal Post etal. He curates a Literature and Arts festival, ‘Valley of Words’ at Dehradun in November every year. He has served as the District Magistrate of Murshidabad, CEO of Himul and Siliguri Jalpaiguri Development Authority (SJDA), ADM of Cooch Behar and SDO at Ghatal, West Midnapore district and Kalimpong in Darjeeling, where he was also posted as Assistant Magistrate for training.
From 2002-2007, he served the Government of Uttarakhand as the Secretary to the Industrial Development and Information Technology Departments. From 2007-2010, he was Principal Secretary to the Government of West Bengal in the Agriculture, Food Processing and Horticulture Departments.
From 2010-2015 he was the Mission Director for the National Horticulture Mission and the National Mission on Micro Irrigation, and Managing Director of the NAFED and National Horticulture Board, besides looking after International Co-operation in the Ministry of Agriculture, Government of India.
Before joining the Academy, on January 1, 2019 he was the Additional Chief Secretary to the Government of West Bengal in the Departments of Industry, Commerce & Enterprises, as well as the Director General of the Administrative Training Institute, Kolkata.
Research Interests:
I am looking at the political economy of the reorganization of internal boundaries of India
Publications:
Weekly column in The Millenium Post on the Mapping of Indian States
Fortnightly column on The state of the State with The Print.com
Fortnightly review in Uday India
Monthly review for Namaste Bharat
