Ramachandra Guha is a historian and columnist living in Bangalore. He has taught at the universities of Yale, Stanford, and Oslo, and at the Indian Institute of Science. In 1997 and 1998 he was the Indo-American Community Chair Visiting Professor at the Univesity of California at Berkeley. His books include Savaging the Civilized (University of Chicago Press, 1999) Environmentalism: A Global History (Addison Wesley Longman, 2000); A Corner of a Foreign Field (Picador, 2002); and India after Gandhi (Macmillan, 2007). In 2008, Foreign Policy and Prospect magazines named him as one of the world’s one hundred most influential intellectuals. In January 2009 he was awarded the Padma Bhushan.

Nandan Nilekani is currently the chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), in the rank of Cabinet minister. Previous to this, Nilekani was co-chairman of the board of directors of Infosys Technologies Limited, which he co-founded in 1981. Serving as director on the company’s board since its inception to July 2009, he held various posts at Infosys, including chief executive officer and managing director, president, and chief operating officer. His many awards include the Joseph Schumpeter prize (2005) and the Padma Bhushan (2006). Time magazine listed him as one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2006 and 2009. He is the author of Imagining India, published by Penguin in 2008.

Ramachandra Guha serves as the Managing Trustee of the New India Foundation.

The Trustees are assisted by a ‘Board of Advisers’ whose members are Professor André Béteille, Professor Niraja Gopal Jayal, Dr Vijay Kelkar, and N. Ravi.

André Béteille is widely regarded as India's most distinguished sociologist and social anthropologist. A former Chairman of the Indian Council of Social Science Research, from 1972 to 1999 he was Professor of Sociology at the Delhi School of Economics. He has been Commonwealth Visiting Professor at the University of Cambridge, and Tinbergen Professor at Erasmus University. His many books include Caste, Class and Power (University of California Press, 1965); Inequality among Men (Blackwell, 1977); and Equality and Universality (Oxford University Press, 2003). He is a Fellow of the British Academy and a recipient of the Padma Bhushan.

Niraja Gopal Jayal is a professor at the Centre for the Study of Law and Governance, Jawaharlal Nehru University. An Inlaks scholar, her books include Democracy and the State (Oxford University Press, 1999) and Representing India (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006). She is also one of the two editors of the Oxford Companion to Indian Politics. She has been a consultant to the Government of India, the United Nations Development Programme, and the World Bank. In November 2009 she delivered the prestigious Radhakrishnan lectures at Oxford University.

Vijay Kelkar's most recent assignment was as Chairman of the Finance Commission, with the rank of a Cabinet Minister in the Government of India. After taking his Ph.D from the University of California at Berkeley in 1970, Dr Kelkar went into public service. The positions he has held include Secretary, Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister; Finance Secretary, Government of India; and Executive Director at the International Monetary Fund. Dr Kelkar has published widely on trade policy and on economic reforms, and has lectured at a number of universities, including Cornell, Harvard, and Heidelberg.

N. Ravi was Editor of The Hindu from 1991 to 2011. His previous assignments in the newspaper included leader writer, Washington correspondent, and associate editor. Mr Ravi's awards include the G. K. Reddy Memorial Award for excellence in journalism (1993) and the BREAD Role Model Award (2000). He has been Chairman of the Press Trust of India. He has also been a Visiting Fellow at the Harvard Law School.