Iqbal Dhaliwal
Iqbal Singh Dhaliwal (इकबाल सिंह धालीवाल) is the Global Executive Director of J-PAL and former Indian Civil Servant. He is the Topper of Indian Civil Services Exam,1995.
Personal Life
Dhaliwal was born in 1972 in Bangalore. His father was in the BSF and his mother ran her own school. He has one sister who is a Doctor. He did his schooling from the Mothers International School with Sciences (Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics and Computers) in 1989. He completed B.A.(Honours) in Economics from Sri Venkateswara College, Delhi University in 1992 and M.A. in Economics from the Delhi School of Economics in 1994.
He is married to Gita Gopinath who is the Chief Economist of the International Monetary Fund(IMF).
Iqbal Dhaliwal and J-PAL
He works with the Board of Directors to develop the organization’s strategic vision, and with the leadership of the six regional offices to coordinate J-PAL’s worldwide research, policy outreach, capacity building, and operations. He is also the Co-Scientific Director with Esther Duflo of J-PAL’s South Asia regional office, Co-Chair with Abhijit Banerjee of the Innovation in Government Initiative (IGI), and Co-Chair with Shawn Cole of the Innovations in Data and Experiments for Action Initiative (IDEA). He is a board member of J-PAL and the NGO Noora Health.
Based at the economics department of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Iqbal has held a number of positions at J-PAL, including Deputy Executive Director (2013–2017), founding Director of the Policy and Communications group (2009–2017), interim Director of the Research, Education, and Training vertical (2016–2017), and Co-Chair of the Governance Initiative (2010–2014). He is the co-author with Rema Hanna (Harvard) of a very large, five-district randomized evaluation on improving health outcomes and service provider attendance in rural India.
Before joining J-PAL in 2009, Iqbal was a director in the economic analysis practice of a consulting firm in Boston where he managed numerous engagements involving antitrust issues, regulation, and strategy; and before that an analyst in a strategy consulting firm outside of Washington D.C. He began his career in public service as a member of the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), in which he served as a Deputy Secretary in a state government, director of a statewide welfare department, and CEO of a publicly owned company. As the sub-collector of one of the state’s largest administrative divisions, he led a large bureaucracy that implemented numerous development programs in the field.
Iqbal stood first in the nationwide Civil Services examination and also received the Director's Gold Medal at India's National Academy of Administration. In 2019, the Government of Punjab, India awarded him the Guru Nanak Devji Achievers Award for his "contributions to the field of economics and poverty alleviation." He received the Dean's Fellowship at Princeton University and the gold medal for standing first in the college in his undergraduate program. He has a BA in economics from the University of Delhi, an MA in economics from the Delhi School of Economics, and an MPA in international development from Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.