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My teaching and
research focus primarily on the theme of human development, broadly
defined. While the focus of much of my empirical work has
been on South Asia, my current teaching and research
focus on the broader theoretical issues related to development - and
in particular the epistemology of development. Another area of my
research examines the relationship between the corporate economy,
globalization and human development. My most recent book Human Development
and Social Power: Perspectives from South Asia, (part of a
series on Human Development being produced by OXCIS, Oxford University, UK) (Routledge, London and New York 2008).
The book attempts to develop a critical conceptualization of human
development by focusing on the three dimensions of political-economy,
difference and agency.
Drawing upon the
conceptualizations I developed in this book, I have now begun work on a
project entitled The Business of "Development": Problematizing
the questions of justice and agency. In this project I hope to bring
together the two major themes I have examined in my work so far: corporate
capital and 'development'. I am very grateful to the Faculty of Arts at York for supporting this research with a
fellowship for 2006-7.
For the last three
years I have also been serving as director of the International
Secretariat for Human Development (ISHD), an organization
that I helped to create along with some other colleagues in Canada and Italy. ISHD's main objective is to stimulate the production of
new forms of knowledge for human development where disciplinary barriers
are dissolved, the divide between scholar and practitioner is overcome, and
academic benefits of research are accompanied by concrete social
benefits. All of ISHD's
work stems from a vision of the university as an engaged social actor,
whose task is not only to produce and disseminate knowledge but to
foster non-exclusionary methods of knowledge production, to
acknowledge the multiple sites of knowledge production and
to open up potential alternative practices.
I obtained my Ph.d (Economics and Public Policy) from the University of Southern
California, Los Angeles USA and my MA in Economics from Calcutta, India. I have
studied and taught in India, Germany, Hungary and the U.S. My recent
publications include Corporate Capitalism in Contemporary South Asia:
Conventional Wisdoms and South Asian Realities (Palgrave-Macmillan, UK 2003); Perspectives on India ’s Corporate Economy: Exploring The Paradox of Profits, (Macmillan, UK 2001); and a
number of articles in international journals. In 2001, I co-authored
a study for the Canadian International Development Agency which
examined the interconnections between human security and human
development. A more detailed description of
my work is available here.
I
have been actively involved in establishing the International Development
Studies program at York and is a member
of its executive. I am also a core faculty member in the MA in
Development Studies at York
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