Chennamaneni Hanumantha Rao is an Indian economist and writer. He was a member of the National Advisory Council from 2004 to 2008 and chaired the Technical Committee on Drought prone Areas Programme and Desert Development Programme of the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices.
Awards: Padma Bhushan
Rao was born in Karimnagar of present-day Telangana, India.[6] He completed his B.A in 1955 at Nizam College, Hyderabad, M.A.(Economics) in 1957 at Osmania University, Hyderabad and his PhD (Economics) in 1962 at the University of Delhi; He was also Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Department of Economics, University of Chicago, 1966–67. He published 48 works in 167 publications in 2 languages and 3,034 library holding . Defending smaller states for equal development of regions, such as Telangana, he states” The role of the state has changed dramatically from that of the main provider of investment in infrastructure in the pre-liberalisation period to a facilitator of private investment in the post-liberalisation period. The earlier role had a moderating influence on regional disparities insofar as backward regions also benefited to some extent from investments in infrastructure, whereas the new role is fraught with adverse consequences for these regions within larger States. This is because private investment and technology flow basically to the regions where physical and social infrastructure is already well-developed. In Maharashtra, for example, which has been among the top few States attracting private investments on a large scale in the post-reform period, the developed Pune-Nasik belt has received disproportionately large investments when compared to the backward Vidarbha and Marathwada regions.