Field of Study India: Economics

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.