Research

Publications & Papers in Revision

• Women Political Leaders, Corruption, and Learning: Evidence from a Large Public Program in India
  with Farzana Afridi and Vegard Iversen
  Economic Development and Cultural Change
  Coverage: Ideas for India
• Learning to Govern: The Impact of Politicians’ Peer Networks
  with Apurva Bamezai, Siddharth George and Siddharth Hari
  Phase-1 Acceptance · Journal of Development Economics (based on pre-results review)
• The Short- and Long-Run Distributional Consequences of Political Reservation
  with Chinmaya Kumar
  Revise & Resubmit · Journal of the European Economic Association
  Coverage: Ideas for India
• The Impact of Women’s Self Help Groups on Political Entry: Evidence from India
  with Iman Sen
  Revise & Resubmit · Economic Journal
• Two Hundred and Fifty Thousand Democracies: A Review of Panchayati Raj in India
  with Siddharth George and Vijayendra Rao
  Forthcoming · Cambridge Companion to Indian Politics and Society · World Bank Working Paper version
  Coverage: Business Standard · ThePrint

Working Papers

• Do Elected Leaders Add Value? Evidence from a Natural Experiment in India
  with Abhishek Arora, Siddharth George, Nivedita Mantha and Vijayendra Rao
  Submitted
  Coverage: Ideas for India
• Safe Spaces or Elite Networks? Experimental Evidence on What Empowers Disadvantaged Groups
  with Apurva Bamezai, Siddharth George, Siddharth Hari and Munish Sharma
  August 2026
• Complaint Resolution Systems and Local Governance: Experimental Evidence from Rural India
  with Chinmaya Kumar
  Under revision · Previously circulated as “Something To Complain About”
  Coverage: VoxDev · World Bank Development Impact · ThePrint
• Does the Graduation Program Scale? Evidence from India
  with Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, Andrés Orduña Correcher, Jyoti Mukhopadhyay and Shagun Sabarwal
  May 2026
• The Determinants and Consequences of Political Selection in the Developing World: Evidence from India
  with Apurva Bamezai, Siddharth George and Borui Sun
  March 2026 · Previously circulated as “Who Becomes a Local Politician?”
• Who, Not How Many: Local Council Design and Workfare Delivery in Rural India
  with Siddharth George and Nandini Gupta
  September 2025

Works in Progress

• Affirmative Action, Attitudes and Social Networks: Evidence from Caste-Based Reservation in India
  with Emily Breza and Arun Chandrasekhar
  Fieldwork underway
• Collective Action and Public Service Delivery: Experimental Evidence from a Social Movement in India
  with Niharika Singh
  Experiment complete
• Local Taxation and Development Outcomes
  with Abhishek Arora, Siddharth George and Vijayendra Rao
  Draft in preparation

Other Publications

• Making the Bihar Caste Census Better
  The India Forum, 2023
• Dispute Resolution Mechanisms in Bihar
  with Sabyasachi Das
  Seminar, 2023
• The National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme in Rajasthan: Rationed Funds and Their Allocation across Villages
  with Himanshu and Abhiroop Mukhopadhyay
  Economic and Political Weekly, 2015 · EPW page
• Identifying BPL Households: A Comparison of Competing Approaches
  Economic and Political Weekly, 2011, pp. 256–262 · EPW page
• Survey Evidence of Excess Mortality in Bihar in the Second COVID-19 Surge
  with Apurva Bamezai, Murad Banaji, Aashish Gupta, Shivani Pandey, Kanika Sharma and Chanchal Kumar Singh