Kaushik Basu is Chief Economic Adviser, Ministry of Finance, Government of India. He is on leave from Cornell University where he is Professor of Economics and the C. Marks Professor of International Studies. Until 2009 he was Chairman of the Department of Economics and during 2006-9 he was Director of the Center for Analytic Economics at Cornell.

Earlier he was Professor of Economics at the Delhi School of Economics, where in 1992 he founded the Centre for Development Economics and was its first Executive Director. He is also a founding member of the Madras School of Economics.
He is currently (the 4th) President of the Human Development and Capabilities Association, which was founded by Amartya Sen. He has held advisory posts with the ILO, the World Bank, the Reserve Bank of India and was, for several years, a member of the steering committee of the Expert Group of Development Issues set up by the Swedish Government. He is currently a member of the Board of Directors of the Exim Bank of India.

In May 2008 he was awarded one of India’s highest civilian awards, the Padma Bhushan, by the President of India.