Naresh (NC) Saxena has had a distinguished career in the Indian Civil Service, rising to Secretary of the Planning Commission and of the Ministry of Rural Development. His professional interests include natural resource management, rural livelihoods, poverty alleviation, food security, community forestry, watershed and drinking water programmes, governance, decentralisation, and peoples’ participation. He has undertaken numerous short-term assignments in India and south-east Asia.

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Experience outside The Policy Practice

India: Appraisal of a SIDA funded World Bank proposal to set up a new Social Development Unit - 2005

Member, DFID Watershed Mission, Orissa - 2005

• Paper: Land Management in India’ for World Bank & DFID, 2004

Member, Evaluation of CIDA activities in India - 2004

Adviser, World Bank, proposed forestry project, Jharkhand - 2004

Water and sanitation reviews in India: water & sanitation programmes in Bihar for Unicef - 2004

Reviewed ICDS programme in Jharkhand, and ICDS and immunisation programmes in Bihar, for Unicef - 2004

Development and poverty reduction in south-east Asia, including: review of ADB’s strategy for poverty reduction in Vietnam, Laos & Cambodia (2004); and preparation of a paper on “Poverty Assessment in Tonle Sap (Cambodia)”, presented in a World Bank/ADB workshop at Phnom Penh - 2004

Wrote for SIDA the background paper and facilitated the donor workshop in India on ‘New Government Policy on Bilateral Aid,’ - 2003

Public services, India: Analysis of budget and program delivery for poor states in India for Unicef; Peer Review of a World Bank study on Centrally Sponsored Schemes; Peer Review of a World Bank document on Program Delivery in India (2005); Policy note on service delivery & governance in Kerala for ADB; Member of the World Bank Mission on Punjab on governance - 2003

Review of health and drinking water interventions of Unicef in Orissa - 2002

Review of school sanitation in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka for Unicef - 2002

Preparation of a paper on Peoples’ Participation and Civil Society, India, for Danida - 2001

Reviewed for SIDA the progress of Centre for Science and Environment, India - 2001

NRM Specialist for a DFID/IFAD Mission on Orissa - 2001

Development and poverty reduction in India, including: assistance to the World Bank in writing the Development Policy Review for India (2003); preparation of a paper on Poverty and Environment in India for UNDP (2002), and a paper for IFAD on ‘Rural Poverty, Gender & NRM in Meghalaya’ - 2001