CSAS Lecture Series | The Indian State that Fails and Delivers

Devesh Kapur, is the Starr Foundation South Asia Studies Professor and Director of Asia Programs at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University. His research has focused on five broad areas that examine the political and institutional determinants of economic development: international financial institutions; political and economic consequences of international and internal migration; the effects of market forces and urbanization on the well-being of socially marginalized groups in India; governance and public institutions; and higher education. He is the coauthor of The World Bank: Its First Half Century; Public Institutions in India: Performance; and Design and Against the Odds: The Rise of Dalit Entrepreneurs. His work on international migration examines the effects at a global level (Give us your Best and Brightest: The Global Hunt for Talent and Its Impact on the Developing World); on the country of emigration (Diaspora, Democracy and Development: The Impact of International Migration from India on India) and the country of immigration (The Other One Percent: Indians in America, co-authored with Sanjoy Chakravorty and Nirvikar Singh). His recent books include Navigating the Labyrinth: Perspectives on India’s Higher Education; Rethinking Public Institutions in India; The Costs of Democracy: Political Finance in India and Regulation in India: Design, Capacity, Performance. Prior to joining the University of Pennsylvania, he held appointments at the Brookings Institution, Harvard University and University of Pennsylvania. He holds a B. Tech in Chemical Engineering from IIT (BHU) Varanasi; an M.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Minnesota; and a Ph.D. in public policy from Princeton.