Dr. S. S. Meenakshisundaram is a Post Graduate in Mathematics from Loyola College, Madras and holds a Ph.D. in Development Economics from Jamia Milia Islamia National University, New Delhi. He joined the Karnataka cadre of the Indian Administrative Service in 1968. During his career he had held a number of assignments including Secretary, Rural Development and Panchayatiraj department when Karnataka launched its two tier system of panchayatiraj institutions. He was a Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex, United Kingdom for one year. Besides several articles and papers on Governance, Panchayatiraj and Rural Development, he has also published a book on “Decentralization in Developing Countries” during 1994. His second book on “Decentralization and Empowerment for Rural Development” was published in 2015.
After working as Principal Secretary to the Chief Minister of Karnataka and Joint Secretary to three Prime Ministers of India, he served as Adviser in the Planning Commission and Secretary in the Ministry of Rural Development, Govt. of India. He was also the Deputy Chairman of the State Planning Board, Karnataka during 2007-08. Currently he is the Chairman of MYRADA, a voluntary organization in the field of building people’s institutions for development; member of the Karnataka State Planning Board and also Visiting Professor at Institute of Social and Economic Change (ISEC), and National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS), Bangalore and Gandhigram Rural University, Tamilnadu.