The Trustees of the Foundation for Agrarian Studies take pleasure in announcing the appointment of Sandipan Baksi as the first Director of the Foundation for Agrarian Studies.

Sandipan, who was Programme Coordinator of the Foundation from January 2016 through March 17, 2018, has managed the expanding set of administrative and substantive tasks at the Foundation with skill, commitment, and sensitivity. He has introduced a new project-based work-flow system in the Foundation.

Sandipan qualified as a Bachelor of Engineering in Computer Science, following which he worked as a software engineer and business analyst at Tata Consultancy Services for more than three years. He then joined the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, for an M. A. and M. Phil in Development Studies. The title of his M. Phil dissertation was “Attitudes To Modernizing Agriculture in The Colonial Era: A Study of Hindi Periodicals, 1876-1947.” He is now working on his Ph D. The title of his thesis is “Modernisation of Agriculture in the Colonial Era: The Case of the United Provinces, 1890-1945.”

Sandipan has presented papers in the field of the history of agricultural science at conferences in India and abroad. He is co-editor, with Madhura Swaminathan, of How do Small Farmers Fare? Evidence from Village Studies (Tulika Books, 2017). Sandipan has also worked on migration and urban development.