Profile

Professor Arjun K. Sengupta (b. 1937)  has had a very distinguished and multi-faceted career as an academician, economic policy administrator, diplomat and parliamentarian.  He occupied high positions in academic institutions, Government of India and international organizations.

Professor Sengupta is at present Member of Parliament (Rajya Sabha); Chairman  (in the rank of Cabinet Minister), National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganized Sector, Government of India; Chairman, Research and Information System (RIS), New Delhi; Chairman, Centre for Development and Human Rights, New Delhi; Independent Expert on Human Rights and Extreme Poverty, Human Rights Commission Geneva.  Professor Sengupta is a former Professor at the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University  and former Adjunct Professor of Development and Human Rights in the Faculty of Public Health, Harvard University, FXB Center, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston; and former UN Independent Expert on the Right to Development.

Professor Sengupta has held numerous positions of high office in the Government of India.  In the 1980s he was Economic Adviser to the Prime Minister of India. Subsequently, he was an Executive Director of the IMF in Washington DC, and India’s Ambassador to the European Union.

In his capacity as Independent Expert on the Right to Development, Professor Sengupta reported to the Open-Ended Working Group on the Right to Development at each of its sessions on the current state of progress in the implementation of the right to development as a basis for a focused discussion, taking into account, inter alia, the deliberations and suggestions of the Working Group.  From 2008, he has been elected Chairman of the Inter-Governmental Working Group on the Right to Development, Human Rights Council, Geneva.