Projects
Longitudinal studies, administrative capacity observatories, and diagnostic field research examining ground implementation friction across India.
Fiscal Federalism and the Dynamics of Centrally Sponsored Scheme Rationalisation
Investigating the political economy of scheme rationalisation committees (from B.K. Chaturvedi to NITI Aayog Sub-Groups) and why national scheme proliferation persists despite formal consensus on consolidation.
Identify the political and administrative incentives that drive central line ministries and states to maintain fragmented scheme categories.
Fiscal analysis of Union Budget Demands for Grants (1998–2025), content analysis of state memoranda to Finance Commissions, and political economy modeling.
Comprehensive policy brief for state finance departments and academic working paper on federal budget allocation games.
District Administrative Capacity Observatory
Granular field studies tracking how administrative workload, reporting mandates, and contractual staffing affect the delivery of core public programmes at the district and block tier.
Provide rigorous empirical diagnostics on frontline bureaucratic bandwidth, quantifying time spent on real delivery versus compliance paperwork.
Time-use surveys with block development officers and scheme coordinators, administrative telemetry analysis, and process tracing across diverse district profiles.
Bi-annual District Administrative Bandwidth Index, open-source field measurement protocols, institutional dialogue roundtables.
The Policy Transition Archive: Mapping 30 Years of Central Scheme Changes
A multi-year research initiative systematically documenting the lifecycle of discontinued, replaced, merged, and restructured public policies in post-1991 India.
Construct an authoritative, non-partisan institutional database detailing why major national policies were changed, what evidence guided transitions, and what institutional lessons remain for modern governance.
Triangulation of Parliamentary standing committee reports, CAG performance audits, executive gazette notifications, expenditure budget documents, and retrospective oral histories with retired civil servants.
Comprehensive online open-access archive, analytical transition monographs, state-level comparative implementation briefs.