Siddiqur Rahman Osmani is a Professor of Economics at the University of Ulster, United Kingdom. He obtained Ph.D. in Economics from the London School of Economics and worked at the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS), Dhaka and at the World Institute for Development Economics Research (WIDER), Helsinki before joining the University of Ulster. He has published widely on issues related to employment, poverty, inequality, hunger, famine, nutrition, the human rights approach to development, globalization, and development problems in general. His publications include Economic Inequality and Group Welfare: A Theory of Comparison with Application to Bangladesh, When Endowments and Opportunities Don't Match: Understanding Chronic Poverty, Poverty and Vulnerability in Rural Bangladesh etc.

David Hulme is Professor of Development Studies at the University of Manchester. He is the Executive Director of the Global Development Institute and CEO of the Effective States and Inclusive Development Research Centre. He has worked on rural development, poverty and poverty reduction, microfinance, the role of NGOs in conflict, peace and development, environmental management, social protection and the political economy of global poverty for more than 30 years. His main focus has been on Bangladesh but he has worked extensively across South Asia, East Africa and the Pacific. His publications include - Global Poverty: Global Governance and Poor People in the Post-2015 Era, Governance, Management and Development: Making the State Work, Understanding Poverty and Well-Being etc.