Biography
I am a Professor of Public Policy and Campus Director at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Hyderabad. My work proceeds from a defining conviction: public policy is not a spectator discipline — it is a doing verb, one that demands the active design of institutions capable of delivering just, equitable, and sustainable societies. Over two decades, my efforts have been directed across four interrelated domains — institution-building, pedagogy, research, and executive education — each reinforcing the other in service of a single goal: strengthening the quality of policy thought and action in India. I am widely recognised as a pioneer of public policy education in the country. As a founding member of the two-person team at the Jindal School of Government and Public Policy, I helped conceive and launch India's first postgraduate programme in Public Policy in 2012. At TISS Hyderabad, I subsequently built an entire School of Public Policy and Governance from the ground up — designing its intellectual agenda, academic culture, and curriculum architecture for four postgraduate programmes, a forthcoming undergraduate programme in Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE), and three professional certificate courses. The postgraduate programmes I have conceived and launched are the MA in Public Policy and Governance (2014), the MA in Cities and Governance (2021), the Dual Degree MA in Public Policy and International Relations (2024), and the MA in Public Policy and Law (2024). I am also leading a team to design a forthcoming BS in Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE), to be offered from 2026, extending the School's reach to undergraduate My teaching is animated by a distinctive philosophy: students should not merely learn to analyse policy — they must learn to think and act as institutional architects. My courses — on ethics in public action, policy frameworks, regulatory design, and the craft of policy writing — are designed to build capacities that endure well beyond the classroom. My Policy Area Concentration in Regulation and Institutions challenges students to engage with the hardest questions at the interface of markets, the state, and social equity. My research interests sit at a productive intersection: the state and markets, regulatory governance, the sociology of markets, social discrimination, and human development. My books — Dalit Capital: State, Markets, and Civil Society in Urban India (Routledge) and The Indian Middle Class (co-authored with Surinder Jodhka, Oxford University Press) — are contributions to the political economy of contemporary India. My current research explores questions as diverse as the · Feasibility of Universal Basic Income, · The Governance of Death and Dignity, · Definitional Challenges in Defining Urban · Innovation in municipal finance. Beyond the academy, I am frequently invited by India's leading training institutions to design and deliver capacity-building programmes for senior civil servants. I bring to these engagements a practitioner's sensibility, drawing on case studies that illuminate the real-world distance between policy intent and institutional outcome. I also serve in an advisory capacity with several public policy and social science institutions. I hold a doctorate from the Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.