Field of Study India: Economics

Tanika Chakraborty

Dr. Tanika Chakraborty is an Associate Professor of Economics at the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, specializing in Development Economics. Before joining IIM Calcutta, she worked at IIT Kanpur and DIW Berlin, after completing her PhD at Washington University in St. Louis. She is affiliated to IZA Bonn, CESifo Munich, and the Global Labor Organization.

Dr. Chakraborty’s research primarily focuses on informing policies that address human capital inequality. Her work has been featured in the Journal of Development Economics, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Demography, and the Journal of Comparative Economics, among others. In addition to publishing in academic journals, she writes for print media and policy platforms such as VoxDev, Project Syndicate, and Ideas for India to reach out to a wider policy audience. She has also partnered extensively with various government bodies in India and served as an expert on the Minimum Wage committee of the Government of India.

During her Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence (Research and Teaching) Fellowship at City College, City University of New York, Dr. Chakraborty is expanding on her ongoing research, exploring effective ways of reducing inequalities in health, a key component of human capital. She is examining the widespread shift in healthcare delivery models, from direct public provision to public-private partnerships. She will engage with students to develop a course on health policy that combines perspectives from the US and India. The goal is to contribute to the global dialogue on rising healthcare costs and growing health inequalities.

Khadija Aslam

Khadija Aslam is a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Economics, Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi. She has completed her Masters in Economics from Jawaharlal Nehru University and her B.Sc. in Economics from Presidency university. She has previously received the Ford Foundation fellowship for academic excellence in her master’s programme and has qualified the UGC-NET exam for assistant professorship in India. She has also been a recipient of the JRF and the SRF fellowship.

Khadija’s interest lies at the intersection of behavioural economics and development economics. How difference in religious beliefs and cultural practices transcends into varying social choices and economic outcomes prompted her research on the influence of religion on borrowing behaviour. In her earlier work, she has explored the differential impact socio-religious groups have on child health outcomes. Through her research, Khadija aims to understand how the tenets of Islam can influence a Muslim’s preference and the institutions that may then emerge as an outcome of this interaction. She believes that while religious or cultural norms may be perceived as hard to rationalize or too outdated to internalize, what economists often oversee is that these set of traditions when followed by a sizeable group of people and over a long period, in itself may trigger alternative structures conducive to existing institutions thereby generating a sub-economy.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Doctoral Research Fellow at Barnard College, Columbia University, Khadija examines the impact of residential segregation on intergenerational mobility in educational outcomes. Drawing on historical data on urban planning within cities, her research investigates how patterns of segregation and class dynamics shape access to opportunities and produce long-lasting effects across generations.

Besides Economics, Khadija enjoys good conversations, good food and sitcoms.

Subhankar Mukherjee

Dr. Subhankar Mukherjee is Assistant Professor at the Department of Industrial & Management Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur. He joined IIT Kanpur in 2019, after completing his Ph.D. from the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, Kolkata with specialization in economics. Dr. Mukherjee obtained his undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering from Jadavpur University, Kolkata, and worked in the corporate sector for nearly 10 years before joining his Ph.D..

Dr. Mukherjee’s research interests are in the areas of economics of development and applied microeconomics. His research has been published in journals, such as The European Journal of Development Research, Applied Economics, Indian Growth and Development Review, and Economic & Political Weekly. He has also written articles for media outlets, such as The Hindu, Business Line and Ideas for India.

During his Fulbright-Nehru Postdoctoral Research fellowship, Dr. Mukherjee is analyzing the factors behind low utilization of crop insurance products among Indian farmers. Specifically, he is focusing on the role of awareness-building programs in improving the utilization rate of these products, and the differential impact of such programs on various caste-based groups and their take-up decisions.

Asad Tariq

Asad Tariq is a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. He completed his MA in economics with distinction from Jamia Millia Islamia, and BA from the University of Allahabad. His research interest lies at the intersection of development economics, politics, and religion. His work aims to document the discrimination against marginalised groups in India and investigate possible policy measures that aid their upliftment and development.

During his Ph.D., he has been awarded the Commonwealth Split-Site Scholarship in 2023 which sponsored 12 months of research at the Imperial College London. He is also a recipient of the Junior Research Fellowship by the University Grants Commission, India. He has presented his work at multiple national and international conferences. He has also been a part of multiple research projects under the Department of Science and Technology (Government of India) and Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research among others.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Doctoral Research fellow at Brown University, Providence, RI, Asad is evaluating the influence of Members of Legislative Assembly from religious minority backgrounds in India on the provision of public goods targeted towards minorities. He also hopes to compile a collection of essays employing econometric methods to illuminate the challenges faced by Indian marginalized groups. When he is not crunching numbers using econometric models, Asad can be found at a picket, savouring nihari-paya in the labyrinthine alleys of Purani Dilli and Okhla, or reading Allama Iqbal’s poetry.

Anjana Thampi

Dr. Anjana Thampi is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Jindal Global Law School, O. P. Jindal Global University, Sonipat, Haryana. She received her BA (Hons.) from the University of Delhi in 2009, and MA from the University of Hyderabad in 2011. She completed her MPhil in 2014 and PhD in 2019 from the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University, under the supervision of Prof. Jayati Ghosh. Her doctoral thesis explored the impact of two food provisioning programmes on child nutrition and inequality in India. She was awarded the UGC Junior Research Fellowship in 2013.

Her areas of research include food security and nutrition, climate and sustainability, inequality, gender, and labour. She has published journal articles and book chapters and contributes opinion pieces on contemporary issues. She has also presented her work at national and international workshops and conferences.

Dr. Thampi’s postdoctoral project, supported by the Fulbright-Kalam fellowship, would assess the potential of a strengthened employment guarantee programme to address the climate and livelihoods crises in India. The study would estimate the green jobs created through a universal employment guarantee in India, its budgetary requirement, and suggest ways to finance it. The global Green New Deal, green job guarantee proposals in the United States, and international experiences of job guarantee would be compared with the experiences of the rural job guarantee in India. This project would have policy implications for India and the global project to address the climate crisis.

Digvijay Singh Negi

Prof. Digvijay S Negi is an A ssistant P rofessor at the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research (IGIDR), Mumbai, Maharashtra. Before joining IGIDR, he was a postdoctoral F ellow at the Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi, New Delhi. Prof. Negi obtained his Ph D in E conomics from the Indian Statistical Institute, New Delhi, and a Master’s in Economics from the Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi.

His introduction to academic research happened at the ICAR-National Institute of Agricultural Economics and Policy Research as a research associate. Ever since then, he has been interested in seeking solutions to multiple policy challenges faced by Indian agriculture. His primary research areas are agricultural economics, international trade, risk and insurance, and development economics. More recently, pushed by student collaborators at IGIDR, he has started venturing into other related areas of research which include health and nutrition and issues in cultural norms and gender.

Prof. Negi has published several research articles in reputed national and international journals. He also won a graduate student travel grant from the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association (AAEA) to attend the annual AAEA (2018) conference in Washington DC; and travel support from the International Association of Agricultural Economics to attend the 30th International Conference of Agricultural Economists (2018), Vancouver, Canada.

For his Fulbright-Nehru project, he plans to study the viability and applicability of satellite imagery and remotely sensed data in designing index-based crop insurance contracts suitable for Indian farmers.

Balaji Sedithippa Janarthanan

Dr. Balaji Sedithippa Janarthanan is a s cientist at the ICAR-National Institute of Agricultural Economics and Policy Research (NIAP), New Delhi. His research work revolves around agricultural growth, transformation and development in India. His current work focuses on farmers’ income, governance impacts and agricultural trade. He has been part of the research team contributing to the Committee on Doubling Farmers’ Income, and has coordinated the research of a network of institutions in the project Structural Transformation, Regional Disparity and Institutional Reforms in Agriculture at NIAP. He obtained his Ph D for his thesis titled ‘Agricultural Growth, Rural Non-Farm Employment and Poverty in India’, from the Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi. He was a Visiting Fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute, Washington DC. He received R.T. Doshi Award in 2021 and 2018, Young Agricultural Economist Award in 2020, Uma Lele-AERA (India)-AAEA Mentorship Award in 2018, and Best Research Paper Presentation Award in 2015.

As a Fulbright- Nehru Postdoctoral Research Fellow, at the University of Georgia, Dr. Balaji SJ will focus on the means of achieving inclusive income growth in agriculture and reducing poverty among the Indian farmers. He will explore the spatial income characteristics at a highly disaggregated level for about two decades in the country, and will develop a model to explain how technology, resource use, market, and policies shall enhance farmers’ income across space, notably the poor.

Tarun Jain

Dr. Tarun Jain is an Associate Professor of Economics at the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad. Previously, on the faculty at the Indian School of Business, he earned his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Virginia. His research focuses on understanding causes and consequences of human capital formation (for instance, with education and health), especially in the context of fast-growing developing countries. Gender is a topic of special research interest given that women face persistent barriers in economic advancement. His research has received funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the International Growth Centre, and the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation, published in peer-reviewed journals such as the American Economic Review, the Review of Economics and Statistics and the Journal of Public Economics, and featured in the New York Times, The Economist, the Times of India and Indian Express. He has written for media outlets such as the Economic Times, New Indian Express, Ideas for India, The Hindu and Mint, and been a speaker for TEDx IIM Ahmedabad.

During his Fulbright-Nehru Research Fellowship, Dr. Jain will analyze the impact of a gender attitude change curriculum taught in government schools on the life outcomes of young adults. Specifically, he will investigate the long-term impact of the program on gender-related attitudes during adulthood, female participants’ higher education, labor force participation and age of marriage, and marital choices made by married male participants, such as their wives’ education and employment status, and the gender division of domestic work.

Lalitagauri Kulkarni

Dr. Lalitagauri Kulkarni is Director, Centre for Excellence in Entrepreneurship and Development at Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics, Pune. Her recent books, co-authored with Vasant Chintaman Joshi, include Inclusive Banking in India: Re-imagining the Bank Business Model (2021), and The Future of Indian Banking (2022) published by Palgrave Macmillan. These books examine the possibilities for a more inclusive business model for banks in a digitalized environment. As Director of the deAsra Centre of Excellence in Nano entrepreneurship, she researches policy alternatives for problems of nano businesses in India.

Dr. Kulkarni’s Ph.D. on secondary market trading in life insurance was an investigation into how the institutionalization of unregulated money lending could prevent the exploitation of poor policyholders. She has published papers on inclusive development, finance, and banking policy and has been involved in several research and consultancy projects.

Dr. Kulkarni’s Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence fellowship project aims to understand how financial technology has helped remove credit barriers for low-income women entrepreneurs in the United States. Dr. Kulkarni is examining how US FinTech innovations can be adapted in India to reduce the gender gap in financial inclusion. Applying quantitative and qualitative techniques, her research indicates how the positive externalities of FinTech can be maximized in financing women-led micro businesses in both countries. Through her findings, she aims to help the emerging FinTech industry in India in designing suitable business models for financing women’s micro businesses. Her research also proposes a roadmap for Indian policymakers to take affirmative action to reform the “one-size-fits-all” policy of digitalization.