Akshat Singh (‘21): Economic Policy at CSIS

Akshat Singh has built a career focused on economic policies and security. As an Associate Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), he currently works within the India and Emerging Asia team focused on critical minerals, economic reforms, and media engagement. He graduated from the Sciences Po and Columbia University Dual BA Program in 2021 and then worked at several organizations including the MIT Governance Lab before joining CSIS. 

During Singh’s time at Sciences Po, he studied politics and government with a minor in international finance in Reims. He appreciated the Science Po Bachelor’s curriculum that includes courses in many of the social sciences during the first year, which allowed him to narrow down his areas of interest. Singh further realized the importance of an interdisciplinary approach when working on policy implementation, which includes a necessary knowledge of not just the politics but also law, economics, and sometimes other niche fields. At Columbia, Singh shifted more to the economic side of policy, majoring in econometrics and quantitative economics, where he was glad to obtain a more formal training on quantitative methods.

Sciences Po was a formative period for Singh, with the skills learned having lasting professional impacts. This included the use of deliberation and collaboration as an academic exercise: Singh loved how there was a focus on deep relationships between faculty and students at Sciences Po, including outside the classroom discussions. Another surprising skill taken from Sciences Po is the process of thinking through problems in the French problematique style: going from the problem and its context, to the ‘pro’ and ‘anti’ arguments, and ending in their synthesis. 

At CSIS, the India and Emerging Asia program is the largest India focused team in the world outside of India. His work is based on creating engagements for government and non-government stakeholders in a few key areas. The first area is federal economic reforms, which includes a reform scorecard, where the team creates a list of the top 30 economic reforms that each newly elected Indian government needs to improve employment growth and industrial growth in the country. State governments are also powerful in India and have large populations, so for some areas- like climate change, electric mobility, energy efficiency, etc.- it’s important to engage with states directly for reforms. 

One of Singh’s specific projects at CSIS is on critical minerals, which has led him to studying more science as well. The new subject knowledge needed for his work was not something daunting for him, as he asserts “Sciences Po pretty much taught me not to be afraid of things that you don't know. Just break it down into smaller, easier digestible pieces, and then look at it, which has definitely worked.” 

Understanding India’s position when it comes to mineral diplomacy is important, as Singh explained, “minerals are key for energy transition, for defense, for nuclear energy… and supply chains pose huge risks because of dependence on China, and so there needs to be more emphasis on creating these resilient supply chains to ensure that the energy transition is not being held hostage to the whims of any one country.”

Singh also runs a mentorship program connecting students and people working on South Asian policy with industry experts. His advice to students is to read a variety of primary sources, learn to write effectively and concisely, and when networking focus on learning from people and forming genuine connections.