Discussion | State Capacity: The Missing Ingredient in Economic Development
The Future of Democracy Working Group at the Institute for Public Knowledge and the GovLab at NYU invite you to join a conversation with Dr. Reuben Abraham, founding CEO of the IDFC Institute, a Mumbai-based think/do tank focused on state capacity and political economy.
In this edition of the Future of Democracy Lecture Series, Dr. Reuben Abraham will speak about how the capability of the state is left out in many conversations around economic development, which tend to conflate symptoms of disease with the disease itself. He argues that focusing on the state is critical to building legitimate and effective institutions to improve key economic indicators, strengthen democracy, reduce inequality, and improve people’s lives.
Reuben Abraham is founding CEO at IDFC Institute, a Mumbai based think/do tank focused on state capacity and political economy. He is also a non-resident scholar at the Marron Institute at New York University, a senior fellow at the Milken Institute, and an honorary advisor to the New Zealand government at the New Zealand Asia Foundation. In 2018, he was selected to Open Magazine’s List of 50 Open Minds of India. Before IDFC, he was faculty and Executive Director of the Centre for Emerging Markets Solutions (CEMS) at the Indian School of Business (ISB). In 2012, he was named to Wired Magazine’s “Smart List 2012: 50 people who will change the world.” He was selected as a Young Global Leader for 2009 by the World Economic Forum, where he serves on the Global Futures Council on The Future of Cities and Urbanisation.
He is a member of the international advisory board of Unicredit Bank of Italy; the boards of India’s Centre for Civil Society; Advocata, a Sri Lankan think tank; THNK, The Amsterdam School of Creative Leadership; FHRS, an affordable housing firm; Climate Policy Foundation; the steering committee of GSM Association’s (GSMA) Interact Group; and on the investment committee of Endiya Partners, an Indian deep-tech venture fund. For a decade, he served as an independent director at the Soros Economic Development Fund (SEDF), a global impact investing pioneer.
He completed his M.A., M.Phil and Ph.D. from Columbia University. During his time at Columbia, he was an Associate Fellow in Global Economics at the Council on Foreign Relations, a Fellow of the Public Policy Consortium and a Sloan Foundation/CITI Telecommunications Fellow.