Ashok Kundra

Ashok Kundra, a career civil servant, retired from the Indian Administrative Service in 2003. He has held many key assignments in the area of economic policy formulation in the Union government and the state of Punjab.

Apart from being Secretary to Government of India in the Ministry of Mines, he has been Chairman of Tariff Commission and ex-officio Secretary, Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion, Principal Adviser in the Planning Commission and Special Secretary in the Ministry of Environment and Forests.

He also had a long stint as Development Commissioner, Noida Export Processing Zone. In the state of Punjab, he has been Secretary Industries and chair-man of various joint venture companies promoted by the State government.

He did his Masters' in Economics from the Punjab University and holds a PhD from School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.

The present study is a sequel to his earlier comparative work on Export Zones of India and China. The study has been undertaken as a senior fellow of Indian Council for Social Science Research.