I am a Ph.D. candidate in sociocultural anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles. My dissertation, titled “Seeds of Hope, Fruits of Failure: Scaling Climate-Smart Agriculture in India,” ethnographically traces the material, imaginative, and technological work by tech-entrepreneurial actors and agricultural research and bureaucratic institutions to ensure economic and ecological sustainability in Indian agriculture. While farmers have always faced the vagaries of the weather and market, the intersection of climate change and liberalized commodity markets has transformed smallholder agriculture into a highly precarious gamble. Against this backdrop, my dissertation examines how aspirations to solve the ecological crisis urgently and at scale intersect with complex environmental, social, economic, political, and cultural relationships in agriculture. Decolonizing anthropology means focusing on the needs of the people we study. My research highlights the needs of 100 million Indian farmers, most of them smallholders, who are increasingly encountering climate-smart agriculture (CSA) technologies while dealing with economic and environmental challenges.

My research has been published in the Economic & Political Weekly, Scroll.in, Wire.in, The Indian Express, and India in Transition. Prior to beginning my graduate studies in 2019, I finished my B.Tech. in computer science from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi in 2015 and my M.A. in Sociology from the Delhi School of Economics in 2018. I also worked as a Chief Minister’s Fellow in Haryana for a year (2018-19). Please see my CV here.