Mr. Ashish Kumar has joined Pahle India Foundation as a Distinguished Fellow. He is currently a Senior Fellow at the NITI Aayog, pursuing a project on the estimation of size and composition of digital economy using digital supply use tables. He is also a Visiting Professor at the Institute for Studies in Industrial Development, New Delhi and a Statistical Advisor to the UNICEF project on participation and empowerment of women in the MNREGA of the Government of India in the states of Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and West Bengal-focusing on inter-district comparison.
He completed his Masters in Mathematical Statistics from University of Lucknow, before going on to get a PG Diploma in Business Administration from University of Delhi and another Masters in Development Economics from University of East Anglia, UK.
Prior to joining the NITI Aayog, Mr. Kumar was the Director of the UN Statistical Institute for Asia and the Pacific where he was involved in the preparation of training materials and delivery of training programs, related to economics statistics. Before that, he was employed with the Indian Statistical Service, Government of India for over 38 years in various capacities. In his long and illustrious career he has been involved in the preparation of Supply Use Tables, digitization of data collection mechanism for the Annual Survey of Industries, collection and processing of socio-economic survey data, policy formulation and implementation of programmes for empowerment of persons with disability and much more.
He has authored numerous reports and research papers which have been published in the Journal of Indian Association for Research in National Wealth, the Journal of National Sample Survey Organization, as the Handbook of Social Statistics 2007, etc.