Mr. Gurcharan Das - Author, Commentator and Public Intellectual

Mr Gurcharan Das is an author, commentator and advisor. He is on a number of Indian and global boards, including the global advisory board of Wal-Mart, and a regular speaker to the managements of some of the major corporations in the world. He writes regular columns in five Indian newspapers, including The Times of India, and periodic guest columns for the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Foreign Affairs and Newsweek. Mr Das’ other literary works include a novel titled A Fine Family, a book of essays titled The Elephant Paradigm and an anthology titled Three Plays.

In 1995, after a 30-year-long career, he took early retirement to become an author. He was CEO, Procter & Gamble (P&G) India, and, later, Managing Director, Procter & Gamble Worldwide (Strategic Planning). Prior to P&G, he was Chairman and Managing Director, Richardson Hindustan Limited. He is the author of two international bestsellers. The first one is titled India Unbound(Penguin, 2000), whichis a narrative account of India from the Independence to the global information age and has been published in 17 languages and filmed by the BBC. The second book, The Difficulty of Being Good: On the subtle art of dharma (Penguin, 2009) examines the moral failure, bad governance and corruption in our modern world. His latestbook, India Grows at Night: A liberal case for a strong Statewas published in late–2012.

Mr Das graduated with honours from Harvard University and later attended Harvard Business School (AMP), where he is featured in three case studies.