ശ്രീ. വരുൺ സന്തോഷ്

Varun Santhosh is a policy analyst and strategic advisor to state governments and companies, working across political economy, institutional design and communications for over 15 years.

Until January 2024 he was a senior staffer to the Chairman of Parliament’s Standing Committee on Science and Technology, Environment, Forests and Climate Change. He drafted and edited Committee reports on the expansion of cancer care, DNA technology regulation and wildlife protection. Across four Union Budgets from 2020-21, he analysed the Demands for Grants of seven ministries and departments.

He has been associated with the Indian National Congress for over a decade. For the 2024 general election he served as Vice Chairman of the Organisational War Room, and contributed to the drafting of the national manifestos of 2024 and 2019. He was a core team member of the Bharat Jodo Yatra. In June 2021 he was a key contributor to the party’s White Paper on the Union government’s management of COVID-19. He edited and led the research team behind ‘The Real State of the Economy’ report, released by Dr Manmohan Singh in January 2017. In 2014 he helped set up the party’s parliamentary research wing.

His start in the public sphere was in civic activism in Bengaluru and field research in the Western Ghats. In 2010 he studied the impact of tourism in forest areas, contributing to the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel chaired by Dr Madhav Gadgil. He began his career as a business analyst at HSBC in 2008, and was selected for the bank’s International Climate Champion Programme.

He has contributed book chapters and research papers on India’s election law and public funding of elections, and writes in the national press. He has lectured and spoken at the University of California, Berkeley, Georgetown University, Ashoka University and the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad. He holds a B.Tech in metallurgical and materials engineering from the National Institute of Technology Karnataka, Surathkal.