Professor S. Mahendra Dev is the Chairman, Commission for Agricultural Costs and (CACP), Ministry of Agriculture, Government of India. Earlier, he was Director of Centre for Economic and Social Studies at Hyderabad . He got his Ph.D. in Economics from Delhi School of Economics and did postdoctoral research at the Economic Growth Centre, Yale University , USA . He served the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai, for more than a decade. He was a senior fellow at Rajiv Gandhi Foundation during 1996–97 and Visiting Professor at University of Bonn , Germany in 1999. He has written extensively on agricultural development, poverty and public policy, food security, social security systems and allied areas. He was instrumental in formulation of the policy for Inclusive Agricultural Growth in India for the XI Five-Year Plan. He has been a member of several committees including Prime Minister's Task Force on Employment, and the Committee on ‘Financial Inclusion', etc.