School of Social Sciences

Dr. Ravi Bhandari is a distinguished economist whose extensive career has been marked by a relentless pursuit of knowledge and an impact on the world of economics. For over three decades, he has been at the forefront of teaching economic development, international financial markets, and world economic history.

Professor Ravi has taught these subjects at the leading universities around the world where he has earned accolades as an exceptional educator, consistently winning the best teacher award for his outstanding contributions to learning across the social sciences. 

His commitment to excellence transcends borders as he shares a wealth of knowledge with colleagues and students across the globe, teaching and conducting research in a number of countries including India, Nepal, Greece, Costa Rica, and the United States.

Beyond the classroom, Ravi’s  global foresight and analytical insights have earned him widespread international recognition. His timely warnings on economic crises – from the Asian currency crisis of 1997 to the global crisis of 2001 to the Great Recession 2007/2008 —  solidified his reputation in the field. 

Professor Ravi current research focuses on the unholy alliance of the unraveling global debt crisis, retaliatory tariffs/sanctions, and the epic AI bubble. Professionally, he advises clients on how best to avoid and hedge against the upcoming Global Depression, what he calls the mother of all crashes.

Malini Mallikarjun graduated from the National Law School of India University, Bengaluru, in 1995.

For over 20 years, she worked with international accounting firms such as Arthur Andersen and Ernst & Young; she also spent 10+  years as a senior founding member of BMR Advisors, a homegrown entrepreneurial professional services firm. During this time, Malini advised companies from diverse sectors such as manufacturing, infrastructure, media and power generation on indirect tax and regulatory matters. She also represented clients and industry bodies before adjudicating and policy making authorities.

9 years ago, looking for a career in the impact space, Malini joined the Leadership team of the Piramal Foundation. Here, she was a founding team member of the Systems Transformation Program which was aimed at enabling better service delivery by public systems in India. In this role, Malini worked with the Niti Aayog and the State bureaucratic leadership of 5-6 states specifically on improving primary education and public health outcomes in the states; pilots were also launched to better enable access of land rights by marginalised communities. She also launched a specific initiative to provide holistic solutions including policy advisory, process re-engineering and technology solutions, to reduce the litigation burden of State Governments.

In this role, Malini established partnerships with technical partners and other civil society organisations in order to assist States in deploying a multi-pronged approach to solving what are clearly complex societal challenges; she also led large teams to roll-out the initiatives and undertake necessary field work.

Over the 18 months, Malini has also worked with the office of the Advocate General of Karnataka to help improve efficacy of the Government litigation management platform deployed in the state.

In NIAS, she leads BhuSampada, a Centre focussed on undertaking field action research on governance of land and natural resources. 

BhuSampada is an action research center that will work at the inter-section of land, climate resilience, and the attendant governance structures and processes. 

It is BhuSampada's belief that given the intersection between these areas and the inherent challenges in the attendant legal and institutional framework, it is imperative that field led and evidence-based findings are brought to the efforts in policy making. This is best done by an independent agency which can blend both academic rigour and field experience; an agency that collaborates with both grassroots communities and government policymakers to discern the changes that are necessary both in policy and practice. This is the role that BhuSampada hopes to play and to contribute towards shifting legal and institutional systems in a manner that can benefit hundreds of thousands, if not millions of India's poorest citizens while also reducing the strain on governance structures and processes.