Board of Trustees
Dr Praveen Jha is Professor (Retd) and a distinguished economist whose work is rooted in political economy and development. He served as the Sukhamoy Chakravarty Chair Professor of Economics at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. His research engages with questions of labour, agriculture, development, natural resources, public finance, education, and the history of economic thought. Over a distinguished academic career, he has contributed significantly to critical debates on development and political economy and has held academic and research positions in India and abroad.
Praveen Jha
Sandeep Chachra is a social anthropologist, activist, and human rights defender with over three decades of experience in India and across the Global South. He is the Executive Director of ActionAid Association, Managing Editor of Agrarian South: Journal of Political Economy. His work focuses on land and commons, Indigenous rights, agriculture, labour, housing, and urban issues, with a strong emphasis on grassroots movements, policy engagement, and building international networks for social transformation.
Sandeep Chachra
Dr Archana Prasad is Professor at the Centre for Informal Sector & Labour Studies (CISLS), School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Her research focuses on Adivasi livelihoods, labour and resistance, women and labour, and environmental and labour history. Her work brings together questions of agrarian change, political economy, ecology and social movements, with particular attention to the historical experiences and contemporary struggles of marginalised communities. She has authored and edited several books and contributed extensively to scholarship on Adivasi societies, labour, environmentalism and social change.
Archana Prasad
Dipali Sharma is a development worker, currently serving as the Director of Organisational Effectiveness and Partnerships at ActionAid Association India. Her expertise extends to areas such as organisational development and design, strategy development and reviews, gender and diversity audits, designing and implementing training and capacity building programmes.
Dipali is also part of advisory committees, POSH committees and POCSO committee in different institutions.
Dipali Sharma
Venketswar Nayak
Ambitabh Behar
Honorary Visiting Fellows
Dr Avanindra Nath Thakur is Professor of Economics at the Jindal School of Government and Public Policy, O.P. Jindal Global University. His research focuses on development economics, agricultural economics, labour, rural livelihoods, and structural transformation, with particular emphasis on employment, agrarian change, and socio-economic inequalities in India.
He has extensive experience in applied econometrics and data science. His research has been published in leading national and international journals, with his work also engaging closely with questions of agriculture, labour, rural development, and public policy.
Avanindra Thakur
Dr Gurpreet Singh is Associate Professor at the Jindal School of Government and Public Policy, O.P. Jindal Global University. His research focuses on agrarian change, rural employment, public finance, and rural non-farm economies, with particular interest in changing patterns of livelihoods across regions and social groups.
He previously served as Thematic Lead for Agriculture at the Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability (CBGA), New Delhi, and holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Jawaharlal Nehru University. His research has involved collaborations across India, Europe, and Africa, and has been published in national and international journals.
Gurpreet Singh
Dr Manish Kumar is Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics at the Delhi School of Economics. His research lies at the intersection of agriculture, labour, development, and political economy, with a particular focus on the Global South. His work explores agricultural value systems, agrarian change, labour and rural livelihoods, agricultural markets, and the political economy of development. He has published on agricultural policy, rice value chains, labour, migration, development, and economic policy in reputed journals of Economics.
Manish Kumar
Research Associates
Pushpa Choudhary
Ratanja Yadav