Nitin Desai

Mr Desai is a Special Adviser to the UN for the World Summit on an Information Society and chaired the UN’s Working Group on Internet Governance. He is an Honorary Fellow of the London School of Economics and Political Science, UK and a Visiting Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Global Governance at LSE.

He is on the advisory board of several international NGO initiatives including the organising committee for the World Science Assembly set up by the Royal Institution, UK and the Governing Council of the University for Peace, Costa Rica. In India he is an Honorary Professor at the Indian Council for Research in International Economic Relations, a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) and a Trustee of the Delhi Policy Group. He writes a monthly column for the Business Standard, an Indian daily.

Mr Nitin Desai has had a long and distinguished career in the Government of India and the United Nations. In the Government of India Mr. Desai worked at senior levels in the Planning Commission from 1973 to 1987. His principal work there was in establishing and managing the system for the cost-benefit analysis of public investment projects. He was also the Secretary of the National Commission on the Development of Backward Areas and a Member-Secretary of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister. From 1988 to 1990 Mr Desai was the Chief Economic Adviser and Secretary in the Department of Economic Affairs in the Ministry of Finance. Most recently he has been asked by the Planning Commission to chair a Committee on Venture Capital and Technology Innovation.

Mr Desai’s international involvment has been most prominent in the development and promotion of sustainable development as the goal of policy, first as Senior Adviser and principal draftsman for “Our Common Future”, the Report of the Brundtland Commission on Environment and Development and then as Deputy Secretary-General for the Rio Earth Summit, the manager of the Commission on Sustainable Development for its first decade and as the Secretary General for the Johannesburg Summit. He was also responsible for the organisation of the Copenhagen Summit on Social Development, the Monterrey Summit on Finance for Development and many other global events. He helped to increase greatly the involvement of NGOs in the work of the UN. After a decade of service he retired from the UN in 2003 as the Under-Secretary General for Economic and Social Affairs.

He received a bachelor's degree from the University of Bombay in 1962, and in 1965 earned a master's degree in Economics from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

He is married and has two children.