Dr. C.K.Mathew, a retired Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer of the 1977 batch of the Rajasthan cadre was former Chief Secretary of the State. He has held several important assignments such as District Collector, Secretary / Principal Secretary to the Departments of IT, Irrigation, Mines, Power, Disaster Management and Education, apart from being Principal Secretary to the Chief Minister for five years. He has also held several posts in the Finance Department, including Additional Chief Secretary, Finance.

Post-retirement, he was Senior Fellow in the Public Affairs Centre, Bangalore, for four years, and was the principal investigator for a series of 3 annual reports (2016-18) on the measurement of governance in the states of India, known as the Public Affairs Index.  He was also Special Rapporteur for the Southern States under the National Human Rights Commission. He is the author of two novels and was awarded Ph.D for his thesis on symbolism in the poems of Emily Dickinson. He writes regularly for his blog, accessible at https://mathewspeak.wordpress.com.

He is currently Visiting Professor at the Azim Premji University, Bangalore in the school of Public Policy and Governance.