Luis Miranda takes over as Chairman of the Board at Centre for Civil Society

Former Private Equity leader Luis Miranda takes over as Chairman of the Board at Centre for Civil Society

New Delhi-based Centre for Civil Society (CCS) has named Luis Miranda, former Chairman of IDFC Private Equity as the Chairman of its Board of Trustees. Luis takes over from Ashish Dhawan, Founder and CEO of Central Square Foundation (CSF) who formerly ran private equity fund, ChrysCapital.

Luis founded IDFC Private Equity in 2002 and served as the Chief Executive Officer and President at the firm until 2010. He was earlier a senior member of the start-up team at HDFC Bank. He is Senior Advisor, Morgan Stanley Infrastructure and is involved with various non-profits related to human rights, education and health care. Luis got his MBA from Chicago Booth, where he was influenced by Chicago School economists George Stigler, Gary Becker and Gene Fama.

Talking about the strategic role of think-tanks like Centre for Civil Society, Luis said “India still ranks abysmally low on a number of world rankings on important indicators like ease of doing business, economic freedom, competitiveness and innovation; in fact, it’s ranking has declined over the last few years. Modi’s recently launched ‘Make in India’ campaign, Jan Dhan Yojana for financial inclusion of hitherto unbanked Indians and the abolition of Planning Commission are welcome steps towards ensuring ‘maximum governance, minimum government’. However, this ecosystem needs to be complemented by organisations like Centre for Civil Society, which could potentially offer interventions to change systems in India and work on public policy solutions to make the country more market-oriented.”

In his new role as Chairman of Board of Trustees of CCS, Luis will provide strategic direction and energize CCS’ initiatives in education, livelihood and policy training as the organisation works toward promoting choice and accountability across private and public sectors.

On his appointment, Luis said “CCS has always stood for the basic right to freedom and choice. What is unique about CCS, is that we continue to relentlessly raise these ideas to ensure that they do not get lost in public policy discourses where individual rights are trampled upon, where markets are undermined and big government leads to inefficient allocation of resources. We remain focused on engaging more meaningfully with policy and opinion leaders to bring about social change through sound public policies.”