Research

Forthcoming and Published Papers

Decentralization and Spatial (Mis-)Allocation of Irrigation Water (with Souvik Dutta) [SSRN] [Publication Link]
Agricultural Economics (2025)

Synchronized Elections Strengthen Party Salience: Evidence from a Decentralized Democracy (with Vimal Balasubramaniam and Apurav Yash Bhatia) [SSRN] [Publication Link]
[Ideas for India] [India in Transition: Bengali, English, Hindi, Tamil]
Media/report mentions: [Mint] [Anandabazaar Patrika] [Carnegie Endowment Report]
Journal of Comparative Economics (2025)

When Do Gender Quotas Change Policy? Evidence from Household Toilet Provision in India (with Sugat Chaturvedi and Kanika Mahajan) [SSRN] [Publication Link]
Economic Development and Cultural Change (2025)
Awarded best development economics paper in Econometric Society Winter School Conference (DSE) 2020

Does Affirmative Action in Politics Hinder Performance? Evidence from India (with Abhiroop Mukhopadhyay and Rajas Saroy)
[IZA DP No. 11093] [Published Version] [Publication Link]
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization (2023) 

Political Institutions and Policy Responses during a Crisis (with Gaurav Chiplunkar) [Published Version] [Publication Link]
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization (2021) 

Political Economy of Third Party Interventions (with Souvik Dutta and Abhirup Sarkar) [Published Version] [Publication Link]
 Journal of Public Economics (2021)

(Don’t) Leave Politics Out of It: Reflections on Public Policies, Experiments, and Interventions [Published Version] [Publication Link]
World Development (2020)

Working Papers

Democratic Backsliding in the World’s Largest Democracy [SSRN]
Presented at NBER SI Development Economics Meeting 2023

The paper has received a lot of critical commentary on social media. I wish to address them substantively. I have been working on a response document to that effect, while simultaneously revising the paper with additional robustness checks and other analyses. All updates will be posted here.

Inequality in Hierarchies [SSRN]

Group Size and Political Representation Under Alternate Electoral Systems  (with Sugat Chaturvedi) [Download PDF]

Credit Groups, Women’s Political Engagement and Public Goods Provision (with Pushkar Maitra and Paromita Sanyal) [Download PDF]

Whom are you doing a favor to? Political Alignment and Allocation of Public Servants  (with Gaurav Sabharwal) [Download PDF]  

Efficacy of “Town Hall” Meetings in Electoral Democracy: Theory and Evidence from Indian Village Councils [Download PDF]  [Ideas for India]

Policy Pieces

Dispute Resolution Mechanisms in Bihar (with M. R. Sharan) [Download PDF]
Seminar, March 2023

The Coronavirus Pandemic: Are we in it for the long haul? (with Abhinash Borah, Aparajita Dasgupta, Ashwini Deshpande, Kanika Mahajan, Bharat Ramaswami, Anuradha Saha, and Anisha Sharma) [Download PDF] [Ideas for India Part I and Part II] [The Wire Part I and Part II]