Trustees
FAS Staff
Collaborators

Trustees

Madhura Swaminathan

Trustee, Foundation for Agrarian Studies

V. Namasivayam

Trustee, Foundation for Agrarian Studies

Parvathi Menon

Trustee, Foundation for Agrarian Studies

V. K. Ramachandran

Trustee, Foundation for Agrarian Studies

Sarita Alexander

Trustee, Foundation for Agrarian Studies

FAS Staff

Sandipan Baksi

Director

Arindam Das

Joint Director

Tapas Modak

Joint Director

Noopur Varma

Honorary Consultant, Human Resources

Pinki Ghosh

Manager (Accounts, HR & Admin)

Sudha N.

Administrative Assistant

Nikita Gupta

Editorial Assistant

J. Jayamary

Office Assistant

Rebecca Rose Varghese

Coordinator (Communication and Events)

Harshan T. P.

Associate Research Fellow

Nikita Gupta

Editorial Assistant

Dona Safui

Research Assistant

Ajil Mankunnummal

Research Officer

Kristy Saikia

Research Officer

Rithika Pulagiri

Research Assistant

Daya Susan Thomas

Research Assistant

Sai Chandan Kotu

Senior Research Assistant

Nagesh Maurya

Research Assistant

Current Research Collaborators

T. Sundararaman

Aardra Surendran

abhinav

Abhinav Surya

Aparajita Bakshi

Aravindhan Nagarajan

Awanish Kumar

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Barbara Harriss-White

Bheemeshwar Reddy

Biplab Sarkar

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Daisuke Sakata

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Daizo Sugimoto

Deepak_Johnson

Deepak Johnson

Fumiko Oshikawa

Jayan Jose Thomas

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Kunal Munjal

T. Jayaraman

Mrityunjay

Niladri Sekhar Dhar

S. Niyati

Pallavi Chavan

R. Ramakumar

Ranjini Basu

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Ritam Dutta

Satheesha B

Shamsher Singh

Shruti Nagbhushan

Soham Bhattacharya

V. Sridhar

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M.Thangaraj

Venkatesh Athreya

R. Vijayamba

Yoshifumi Usami

Our Team

Madhura Swaminathan is Professor and Head, Economic Analysis Unit, Indian Statistical Institute Bangalore Centre. She is one the Trustees of the Foundation. Webpage

Namasivayam is currently a member of the Kerala State Planning Board. He has over 37 years of consulting experience of which over two decades have been spent on leading several large, complex, multi-year reform engagements in various sectors, with a special focus on the electricity sector. He was Deloitte India’s Energy and Resources Industry and Government sector Leader until his retirement in March 2017. Before joining Deloitte, Namasivayam was part of the India leadership team of PwC, and led its Government Reforms and Infrastructure Development service unit and Energy Utility & Mining industries.

 

Parvathi Menon is a writer, and former journalist. She was Resident Editor of The Hindu, Bengaluru, and also served as the London Correspondent of The Hindu.

V. K. Ramachandran is retired Professor and former Head, Economic Analysis Unit, Indian Statistical Institute Bangalore Centre. He currently serves as the Vice Chairperson, Kerala State Planning Board. He is one among the Trustees of the Foundation. He is also the Editor of Review of Agrarian Studies.  Webpage

Sarita is a special teacher and certified trainer in QST for autism spectrum disorders. She has been working at the Spastics Society of Karnataka from 2007, and is currently the Head of the Autism Spectrum Unit.

Sandipan is a historian of Science, with a Ph.D. from Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai. His research interest lies in the history of agricultural science in India. He started his professional career as a Software Engineer and a Business Analyst with the Tata Consultancy Services Pvt. Ltd, before shifting to social science research. He holds an undergraduate degree in Computer Science Engineering, and was a gold medalist for post-graduate studies in School of Development Studies, TISS. He joined the Foundation as the Programme Coordinator in 2016 and became the first Director of the Foundation in 2018. He oversees the work of the Foundation and its various research projects.

Tapas is a Joint Director of the Foundation. He has a Ph.D. in Social Science from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. His research interests include the irrigation economy of India, water policies and institutions, agricultural policy, economics of farming, and rural incomes. He is also interested in the use of spatial technology to study the Indian countryside. He leads the Project on Village-level Spatial Information using Geographic Information System (GIS), and the Pandemic Study Unit of the Foundation that examined the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic in rural India.

Noopur Varma is Honorary Consultant, Human Resources at the Foundation. She has more than 30 years experience in the area of Human Resources. She started her career in Tata Steel, Jamshedpur, where she worked for 14 years and her last corporate job was with Deloitte Bangalore. She is currently an independent consultant taking up projects and assignments for companies. She is involved with Strategic Human Resources initiatives of the Foundation.

Pinki works as the Manager (Accounts, HR & Admin) at the Foundation. She holds a Master’s degree in Financial and Management Accounting from Sikkim Manipal University and a Master’s degree in Economics from University of North Bengal. She is experienced in various accounting software packages. She has also been involved in several field work projects of the Foundation.

Sudha is an Administrative Assistant of the Foundation. She assists the administrative division of the Foundation and also has taken part in fieldwork organised by the Foundation.

Nikita is an Editorial Assistant at the Foundation. She is involved with the coordination of the Review of Agrarian Studies (RAS), the peer-reviewed academic journal of the Foundation. Nikita has extensive experience as a copy editor. She holds a Master’s degree in English from The English and Foreign Languages University (EFLU), Lucknow campus.

Jayamary is our Office Assistant. She assists the administrative division of the Foundation in maintaining office supplies and in upkeep and maintenance of office premises.

Rebecca is the Coordinator (Communications and Events) at the Foundation. She holds a Master’s degree in Sociology from the Delhi School of Economics. A former data journalist with The Hindu, her expertise lies in data research and analysis. Rebecca’s interests include gender and health, politics, and rural development.

Harshan is an Associate Research Fellow at the Foundation. He holds a Ph.D. in Social Science from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai, specialising in climate change and disaster studies. His research focuses on the socio-economic impacts of environmental shocks and disasters. He also has extensive experience in research and policy-making, having worked with the Kerala State Planning Board, where he contributed to policy documents, economic reviews, and five-year plan formulations.

Sethu is a Senior Research Assistant at the Foundation. He holds an Integrated Master’s degree in Development Studies from Indian Institute of Technology Madras. He has experience of coordinating a field survey of two villages in Nagapattinam district, Tamil Nadu in 2019. He is proficient in R programming language for statistical analysis. His interests include rural development, poverty, and the agrarian question with a specific focus on Tamil Nadu, as well as emerging small towns in the countryside.

Dona is a research assistant at the Foundation. She holds a Master’s degree in Development from Azim Premji University . Her research interests include studying agrarian relations, and land tenancy in rural India. She had extensive work experience as a software developer, before shifting to the social sciences.

Ajil holds an M.Phil. in Applied Economics from the Centre for Development Studies, Thiruvananthapuram, Jawaharlal Nehru University, and is in the final stages of his doctoral research. His doctoral study focuses on the impact of government regulation on the technological developments in, and performance of, the chemical fertiliser manufacturing industry in India. His research interests include agriculture and the fertiliser sector, innovation, public policy, and decentralisation.

Kristy is a Research Officer at the Foundation. She holds a Master’s degree in Development Studies from IIT Guwahati and has previously worked with various civil society organisations. Her research interests include women and gender, rural development, and WaSH (water, sanitation, and hygiene).

Rithika is a research assistant at the Foundation. She holds a Master’s degree in Applied Economics from Christ (Deemed to be University), Yeshwanthpur Campus, Bengaluru. Her research interests include, agricultural economics and the public policy.

Sai Chandan Kotu is a Senior Research Assistant at the Foundation. He holds a Master’s degree in Economic Growth, Population & Development from Lund University, Sweden, and an Integrated Master’s in Development Studies from Indian Institute of Technology Madras. He has previously worked with FAS as an intern and is currently working on the entry and processing of data collected through our recently concluded survey in two Uttar Pradesh villages. Sai is interested in studying farm mechanisation and technology adoption in Indian agriculture.

T. Sundararaman is an Independent Consultant and Adjunct Faculty at the JIPMER International School of Public Health, Puducherry. A former Professor of Medicine at the Jawaharlal Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education & Research (1984–2002), he has served as Director of the State Health Resource Centre, Chhattisgarh and Executive Director of the National Health Systems Resource Centre. He was Professor and Dean of the School of Health Systems Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, and faculty at the Centre of Social Medicine and Community Health, Jawaharlal Nehru University. He is also a founder-convenor of the People’s Health Movement, and has authored several books and journal articles on health systems and health policy.

 

Assistant Professor, Department of Liberal Arts, Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad

 

PhD Fellow, Centre for Development Studies, Thiruvananthapuram.

Independent Researcher

Senior Lecturer, School of Development, Azim Premji University, Bengaluru

British Academy Newton International Fellow, University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom

Emeritus Professor and Fellow, Wolfson College, University of Oxford

Assistant Professor, Department of Economics and Finance, BITS Pilani, Hyderabad Campus

Associate Professor, Department of Management Studies, PES University, Bengaluru

Associate Professor, Kanagawa University, Japan

Professor, Department of Economics, Meijo University, Japan

JSPS Postdoctoral Researcher, Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University

Professor Emeritus, Kyoto University

Associate Professor of Economics, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi

Senior Research Fellow, Economic Analysis Unit, Indian Statistical Institute (ISI), Bengaluru, and Ph.D. Scholar, Department of Liberal Arts, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Hyderabad.

Senior Fellow, Climate Change, M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation, Chennai

Research Scholar, School of Economics, University of Hyderabad, and

Technical Assistant, Office of the Vice Chairperson, Kerala State Planning Board

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Associate Professor, Bihar Institute of Public Finance and Policy, Patna, Bihar.

Postdoctoral Fellow – Gender Research, Sustainable Impact Platform, International Rice Research Institute (IRRI)

Independent Researcher

Professor, School of Development Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai

Garware Post-Doctoral Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Institute for Advanced Study of India, and

Non-Resident Visiting Scholar at the Centre for Advanced Study of India, University of Pennsylvania

Senior Research Fellow, Economic Analysis Unit, Indian Statistical Institute (ISI), Bengaluru, and PhD Scholar, Department of Economics, M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF), University of Madras.

Research Fellow, Azim Premji University, Bangalore

Assistant Professor – Sociology, FLAME University, Pune

Research Scholar, Department of Development Studies, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London

Post Doctoral Researcher, Moturi Satyanarayana Centre for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences, KREA University.

Former Associate Editor, Frontline magazine, Bangalore.

Former ICSSR National Fellow, Former Professor and Head :
1. Department of Economics, University of Madras

2. Dr. Ambedkar Centre for Economic Studies, University of Madras

Consultant, M. S. Swaminathan Research Foundation, and Retired Head of Department, Department of Economics, Bharathidasan University.

Research Fellow, Centre for Sustainable Employment, Azim Premji University, Bengaluru

Retired Professor, Osaka Prefecture University