Book | Articles & chapters | Work in progress
My research is focused on local citizen-state relations and their consequences for human and social welfare. My work is motivated by two basic questions. How can governments – and local officials in particular – be held more accountable, to better respond to and serve the needs of citizens? And how can citizens actively and effectively engage and make demands on the state, between and beyond elections?
Books
Claiming the State: Active Citizenship and Social Welfare in Rural India. Cambridge University Press. 2018.
- Awarded the 2018 Joseph W. Elder Prize by the American Institute for Indian Studies for the “best first book in the Indian social sciences.”
- Featured in: India Ink, Grand Tamasha, Rocking Our Priors, Slice of MIT, India in Transition.
- Reviews: Economic & Political Weekly, Commonwealth & Comparative Politics, Pacific Affairs, Asian Studies.
Manuscripts in progress
Pandemic Inequality: Citizens, States, and Covid-19 in India (Ed., with Poulami Roychowdhury). Under contract, Oxford University Press.
Articles and chapters
“Social Brokerage: Accountability and the Social Life of Information.” Comparative Political Studies, 55(14), 2022.
[Pre-publication accepted version]
- Featured in MIT GOV/LAB news.
“Policing in patriarchy: An experimental evaluation of reforms to improve police responsiveness to women in India" (with Sandip Sukhtankar and Akshay Mangla). Science, 377 (6602), 2022.
- Featured in Hindustan Times (op-ed), Nature News, The Print, J-PAL, VoxDev.
Great Expectations, Great Grievances: The Politics of Citizen Complaints in India. Comparative Politics, 54(1), 2021.
- Featured in Governance Uncovered.
State–Society Synergy at COVID-19’s Invisible Front Lines, with Dyuti Saunik, Avani Kapur, & Jessica Mayberry. Economic & Political Weekly (Engage), 56(32), 2021.
The Geography of Citizenship Practice: How the Poor Engage the State in Rural and Urban India, with Adam Auerbach. Perspectives on Politics, 18(4), 2020.
- Featured in Ideas for India, ThePrint.
The Pursuit of Social Welfare: Citizen Claim-Making in Rural India. World Politics, 70(1): 122-163 (2018). (Corrigendum.)
- Awarded the 2019 Luebbert Article Prize by the Comparative Politics section of the American Political Science Association for the “best article in comparative politics in the past two years”)
Seeking the Local State: Gender, Caste, and the Pursuit of Public Services in Post-Tsunami India. World Development, 39(7): 1143-1154 (2011).
Promoting Sustainability, Building Networks: A Green Entrepreneur in Mexico. In M. Shaper (Ed.), Making Ecopreneurs: Developing Sustainable Entrepreneurship. Routledge (2010).
Work in progress
“Seeing Gender: Representation, State Capacity, and Police Reform in India” (with Akshay Mangla and Sandip Sukhtankar). Working paper.
“Democratizing Democracy: Citizen Claim-making and Local Government Responsiveness in Rural India” (with Tanu Kumar). Working paper.
“COVID-19 in the Village: Citizens, States, and Hybrid Local Actors ” (with Avani Kapur and Dyuti Saunik). Draft book chapter in Pandemic Inequality.
“Claim-Making: An Understudied Form of Political Participation” (with Janice Gallagher and Whitney Taylor). Research Note.