Dr. Mihir Shah is Distinguished Professor at Shiv Nadar University.
He is one of India’s leading scholars, activists and policymakers on water management and rural livelihoods. From 2009 to 2014, he was Member, Water Resources, Planning Commission, Government of India and was chiefly responsible for drafting the paradigm shift in the management of water resources enunciated in the 12th Five Year Plan. From 2019 to 2021, he chaired the Government of India’s Committee to draft the new National Water Policy.
He is one of the Founding Signatories of the Geneva Actions on Human Water Security, which aim to secure environmentally sustainable water services for those people who are least able to afford them and ensure, as a first priority, that investments from the Global Human Water Security Fund meet the basic water needs of disadvantaged and vulnerable people.
For three decades now, Dr. Shah has lived and worked with India’s tribal communities, in the remote hinterlands of central India, forging a new paradigm of sustainable development, which also strengthens democracy at the grassroots, based on the leadership of women.