Former DG, Ministry of Statistics & Programme Implementation, Government of India and Former Director, UN SIAP, Japan
He completed his Master’s in Mathematical Statistics from the University of Lucknow, before going on to get a PG Diploma in Business Administration from University of Delhi and another Master’s in Development Economics from University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK.
He started his professional career as an officer of Indian Statistical Service (ISS) in 1977 and served for over 38 years in various capacities in Government of India and retired as Director General, Ministry of Statistics & Programme Implementation.
In his long and illustrious career, he has been involved in the base revision of national accounts and other economic statistics. He spearheaded digitization of data collection system of the Annual Survey of Industries. He worked in the National Sample Survey organization covering various functions right from data collection to data processing and economic analysis of the data. He also worked in the Ministries of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, Social Justice & Empowerment, Commerce & Industry (Tariff Commission), Home Affairs (North Eastern Council).
He was a Senior Fellow at the NITI Aayog, pursued projects on the estimation of size and composition of digital economy and measurement of knowledge economy.
Prior to joining the NITI Aayog, Mr. Kumar was the Director of the UN Statistical Institute for Asia and the Pacific (UN SIAP) in Tokyo Japan where he was involved in the strategic planning for capacity building of national statistics offices in the Asia and the Pacific region, organization of short term, long term and e-learning training programmes on various aspects of official statistics including SDG Indicators, use of administrative, mobile and other non-traditional sources of data for monitoring of development.
Ashish is President, Centre of Data for Economic Decision-making & Chief Statistician, Pahle India Foundation, a think tank.
He is also an Advisor and Consultant on One Trillion Dollar (OTD) Project of Government of UP.
He heads various Committees of Government of India and the state governments of UP and Orissa.
He has been consultant on monitoring and evaluation and official statistics for various International and national organizations like International Fund for Agriculture Development (IFAD), Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), UNICEF, National Foundation of India (NFI) etc.
He has authored numerous reports and research papers which have been published in the Journal of Indian Association for Research in National Wealth, the Journal of National Sample Survey Organization, the Handbook of Social Statistics 2007, Economic & Political Weekly etc. He regularly writes in newspapers on issues on economic statistics and governance.