Pratap Bhanu Mehta is a political theorist and intellectual historian of constitutional law, society and politics in India, governance and political economy, and international affairs. After graduating with a BA (first class) in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics from Oxford and a PhD in politics from Princeton, Mehta has taught at Harvard University, Jawaharlal Nehru University, and the New York University School of Law, and more recently, at the Ashoka University. Currently, he is the president and chief executive of the Centre for Policy Research (CPR), New Delhi.

The recipient of the Infosys Prize, the Adisheshiah Prize and the Amartya Sen Prize, Mehta as a scholar does not refrain from public interventions. He served on India’s National Security Advisory Board, the Prime Minister of India’s National Knowledge Commission, and a Supreme Court-appointed committee on elections in Indian universities. A prolific writer, he writes for the Indian Express, Financial Times, the Telegraph, the International Herald Tribune, and The Hindu. He is also on the editorial boards of many academic journals, including the American Political Science Review, the Journal of Democracy, and India and Global Affairs.