Santosh Mehrotra, a human development economist, was a Prof of Economics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, and Chairperson, Centre for Labour at JNU. He has lectured at the Universities of Bath UK; Florence, Italy; American University, Cairo; & the Higher School of Economics, Moscow (where he is currently Visiting Prof). After an MA in Econ. from New School for Social Research, New York, and Phd (Economics), Cambridge University (1985), Santosh spent 15 years with the UN(1991-2006) in research positions, heading UNICEF’s global research programme on social policy for developing countries at the Innocenti Research Centre, Florence, and as chief economist of the global Human Development Report New York. He returned to India to head the Rural Development Division and Development Policy Division of Planning Commission (2006-09), and was lead author of several chapters of the 11th & 12th Five Year Plans of India. He was also the Director General (2009-14) of the National Institute of Labour Economics Research, Planning Commission, in the rank of Secretary to the Government of India.
His writings on human development, the capability approach, structural macro-economics, poverty (incl child poverty) and economics of education/vocational training have been translated into Hindi (3 books), Spanish (1 book), French (1 book), Italian, Russian, German and Portuguese. He has published 15 books, including 3 with Cambridge University Press (Planning in the 20th Century & Beyond. India’s Planning Commission & NITI, 2020; Seizing the Demographic Dividend, 2016), 4 with Oxford University Press (Development with a Human Face, 1997; India’s Skills Challenge, 2014; India Human Development Report 2011), Penguin Random House (Reviving Jobs. An Agenda for Growth), and Bloomsbury Press (India Out of Work. Rethinking India’s Growth Story)/. Apart from 100 papers in (most in international peer reviewed) journals, he consults regularly with ILO, Asian Development Bank, UNDP, UNESCO and UNEVOC.
Labour markets worldwide are in profound transition — AI is redrawing roles across industries, demographic shifts are reshaping talent supply, and the skills that command a premium are changing faster than most workforce plans.
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