Shri. Gurucharan Gollerkeri

Director — School of Social Sciences & School of Law

Shri. Gurucharan Gollerkeri served in the IAS and retired as Secretary, to the Government of India, in December 2016. He has over three decades of experience in progressively senior roles in government; is an articulate and persuasive communicator; a strong negotiator with experience in international and multi-lateral settings; has expertise in policy formulation and program management on both national and multinational scale; multi-disciplinary research experience in policy, empirical and analytical research; and is a regular contributor to a newspaper column ‘Empire of the Mind’ that is widely read and appreciated.

Gurucharan is currently the Director of the School of Social Sciences and the School of Law at the MS Ramaiah University of Applied Sciences (MSRUAS), Bangalore. In this capacity, he oversees academic and research activities for undergraduate and graduate students across disciplines and provides strategic direction to the schools in engaging with governments, corporates and civil society organisations.

Prior to joining the MSRUAS, he served for six years as the Director and Chief Functionary of the Public Affairs Centre (PAC), Bangalore, a not-for-profit think-tank engaged in action research at the intersection of sustainable development and public governance.

Gurucharan is also a prolific writer. His books include:

• India – The making of a Nation: Pivotal people, ideas, and institutions (Cambridge Scholars Publishers, London, 2024)
• Migration Matters: Mobility in a Globalizing World (Oxford University Press, London, 2016),
• A Migration Praxis Framework for India (India Centre for Migration, New Delhi, 2014) and
• Fiscal Responsibility and the States (Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore 2005)

In 2004-05, Gurucharan was a visiting fellow at the Centre for Public Policy at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore.