Provided

At a book-presentation ceremony Jan. 21 in New Delhi were, from left, Vivek Mehra, managing director and CEO, Sage India; Isher Judge Ahluwalia, chairperson, Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations and co-editor; Manmohan Singh, prime minister of India; P.K. Mohanty, co-editor and chief secretary for the Government of Andhra Pradesh; and Cornell professor Ravi Kanbur, co-editor.

The Dyson School’s Ravi Kanbur is a co-editor of the newly published “Urbanization in India: Challenges, Opportunities and the Way Forward” (Sage Publications, January 2014).

With 11 essays in three thematic sections, the book proposes managerial and policy reforms for better planning, financing alternatives and enlightened governance for improved service delivery and affordable housing.

Other editors are Isher Judge Ahluwalia, chair of the board of the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations, and P.K. Mohanty, an officer of the Indian Administrative Service and chief secretary to the state government of Andhra Pradesh.

The book was presented to the Prime Minister of India, Manmohan Singh, at a ceremony in New Delhi Jan. 21.

“We endeavored to address the important facets of urbanization,” Kanbur notes, “including the state of urban infrastructure and planning in India, with due attention to sustainability, the role of finance in urban development and its dependence on governance, as well as methods to generate good governance in public institutions, and the impact on housing and climate change.”

At Cornell Kanbur is the T.H. Lee Professor of World Affairs; the International Professor of Applied Economics and Management; and professor of economics in the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management at the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. He is president of the Society for the Study of Economic Inequality and served on the senior staff of the World Bank.