Education

• PhD (Economics) at Centre for Development Studies, Thiruvananthapuram; Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi - August 2001.
• Title of Dissertation: Industrial formation under conditions of flexible accumulation: the case of a global knitwear node in Southern India.
• M.Phil. (Applied Economics) at Centre for Development Studies, Thiruvananthapuram; Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi - July 1992.
• M.B.A, National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirapalli.- May 1990
• B.E. (Instrumentation and Control) at Government College of Technology, Coimbatore; Bharathiar University, Coimbatore - May 1988.

Work Experience

• July 2017 - Present - Professor, Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai
• August 2015 - June 2017: Associate Professor, Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai
• January 2003 - October 2015: Assistant Professor, Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai
• June 18-July 7 - 2018, Visiting Professor, Institute of Geography and Sustainability, University of Lausanne, Lausanne.
• May 1-21, 2107 - Visiting Professor, Institute of Geography and Sustainability, University of Lausanne, Lausanne.
• May 1-31, 2015 - Visiting Professor, École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), Paris
• August 2009 - May 2012: Guest Faculty, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Madras
• January - April 2004: Charles Wallace Visiting Fellow, School of Oriental and African Studies, London
• August 2001 - December 2002: Research Fellow, Indian Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore

Areas of Research

• Political Economy of Regional Development
• Agrarian and Rural Change
• Rural-Urban Interactions
• Industrialization
• Value Chains and Labour Processes

Awards / Grants

• January - April 2004, Charles Wallace Fellowship in Contemporary Indian Studies, United Kingdom.
• July 2002-June 2003, Research Grant from Foundation for Urban and Regional Studies (FURS), Essex University to work on Diffusion of Information and Communication Technologies and Local Labour Market Impacts: Evidence from India.
• August 2006 -December 2007, Research Grant from DRC, IDS, Sussex, to work on Neighbourhood Associations as Urban Collective Actors: A Comparative Study of Bangalore and Chennai.
• August 2008 - Research /grant from ESRC/DFID, UK to work on Transforming livelihoods: work, migration and poverty in the Tiruppur garment cluster, India.
• May 1994- April 1999, Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Doctoral Fellowship.

Memberships Academic/Professional Bodies

• Member, Editorial Advisory Board, South Asia Multi-Disciplinary Academic Journal (SAMAJ)
• Member, Editorial Advisory Board, Oxford Development Studies
• Permanent Member, Indian Society of Labour Economics
• Member, Working Group on 'Labour Migration into Kerala', State Planning Board, Kerala, Labour and Employment, 2015-
• Core member, Network for Rural and Agrarian Studies
• Expert Member, M.A Programme on Labour and Development (IGNOU)

Books and Journals Special Issues

• 2020- (co-ed.), Rethinking Social Justice, Hyderabad: Orient Blackswan (with Anandhi, Karthick Ram Manoharan and A. Kalaiyarasan).
• 2017 - Human Development Report Tamil Nadu, Government of Tamil Nadu, Edited Government of Tamil Nadu Academic Foundation (Coordinator)
• 2016 - with A.R Vasavi Changing Countryside: A Symposium on New Trends in the Rural Landscape Seminar, Special Issue
• 2012 - with Coelho. K and Kamath L (eds.), Participolis: Consent and Contention in Neoliberal Urban India, N. Delhi: Routledge.
• 2011-With Moriki Ohara and Hong Lin (eds.) Industrial Dynamics in China and India: Firms, Clusters and Different Growth Paths, Basingtoke: Palgrave MacMillan and IDE-JETRO)
• 2008- With Saith. A and Gayathri. V (eds.) ICTs and Indian Social Development: Diffusion, Governance, Poverty, London, New Delhi, Sage.
• 2005- With Saith. A (eds.) ICTs and Indian Economic Development: Economy, Work, Regulation, London, New Delhi, Sage.
• 2002- Labour in the New Economy: The Case of the Indian Software Labour Market, with S. Rothboeck and Gayathri.V, (2001), International Labour Organization (ILO): New Delhi.

Research Papers in Journals

• 2020- Relational approaches to poverty in rural India: social, ecological and technical dynamics, Contemporary South Asia, DOI: 10.1080/09584935.2020.1785394 (with Divya Sharma, Ajit Menon & Saurabh Arora)
• 2020, ‘Introduction: The Legacy of a Dravidian Scholar’, pp: 1-12, in Rethinking Social Justice, (cited above).
• 2020, ‘Emerging Labour Regimes and Mobilities in Tamil Nadu’, pp:206-230, in Rethinking Social Justice, (cited above).
• (2019). Sustainable Development through Diversifying Pathways in India. Economic & Political Weekly, 54(46), 32-37.(with Arora, S.Sharma, D., & Stirling, A)
• 2019, “Emerging Vulnerabilities in India’s Plantation Economy”, in Syam Sundar K. R. (ed.), Globalization, Labour Market Institutions, Processes and Policies in India: Essays in Honour of Lalit K. Deshpande, Singapore, Palgrave Macmillan, p. 167-186. DOI: 10.1007/978-
• 981-13-7111-0_6 (with P.K Viswanathan)
• 2019, ‘Adverse Incorporations and Subnational Welfarism, in Handbook of Internal Migration in India, ed. By S. Irudaya Rajan and Sumeetha M. -, Sage: 2019. (chapter 38, pp.530-544).(with M. Suresh Babu, Mansi Wadhwa)
• 2019- The Tamil Nadu Healthcare Model: Flaws of Insurance-based Healthcare Provision, Economic and Political Weekly 54:2 (18-21), (with Gayathri Balagopal)
• 2018- Agricultural Revival and Reaping the Youth Dividend, Economic and Political Weekly, 53:26-27 (8-16), (with Sudha Narayanan and Sharada Srinivasan)
• 2018- The Mirage of Inclusive Growth? Metropolitan Expansion and Emerging Livelihoods in the New Urban Periphery, in Amita Bhide And Himanshu Burte (eds.), Urban Parallax: Policy And The City In Contemporary India (pp:92-103), N. Delhi: Yoda Press, (with R. Varadarajan).
• 2018-, Dispossession by Neglect: Agricultural Land Sales in Southern India, Journal of Agrarian Change, 18:3 (571-587), (with Ajit Menon).
• 2017- The Agrarian Question amidst Popular Welfare: Interpreting Tamil Nadu’s Emerging Rural Economy, Economic and Political Weekly; 52/46: 67-72
• 2017 - State Spatial Restructuring, Subnational Politics and Emerging Spaces of Engagement for Collective Action: Labour Regimes in Tamil Nadu, Southern India. Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space; 35/1: 42-56.
• 2017 - Income, Poverty and Employment. Tamil Nadu Human Development Report, State Planning Commission, Government of Tamil Nadu Academic Foundation
• 2017 - Peripheral Agriculture? Macro and Micro Dynamics of Land Sales and Land Use changes in the ‘Rural’ Economy of Kancheepuram. Political Economy of Contemporary India, R. Nagaraj and S. Motiram, 205-229, Cambridge University Press (with Ajit Menon)
• 2016 - The Politics of Urban Mega-projects in India: Income Employment Linkages in Chennai’s IT Corridor. Economic and Political Weekly; 51/17: 8-92 (with M. Suresh Babu)
• 2014 - Emerging spatio-technical regimes of accumulation in the globalising south and implications for labour, in Harriss-White, B., & Heyer, J. (Eds.). (2014). Indian Capitalism in Development, Routledge, UK.
• 2014 - The Politics of Silence in Rob Jenkins, Loraine Kennedy and Partha Mukhopadhyay (eds.), Power, Policy and Protest: The Politics of India’s Special Economic Zones (Oxford University Press: N. Delhi).
• 2014 - On the Charts, Off the Tracks, Disconnected Development in Ambur Town, Tamil Nadu, Economic and Political Weekly; 49/22: 101-110 ( with Karen Coelho)
• 2014 - Middle-Class and Slum-Based Collective Action in Bangalore Contestations and Convergences in a Time of Market Reforms. Journal of South Asian Development; 9/2: 147-171 (with L. Kamath)
• 2014 - Caste as Social Capital: The Tiruppur Story, Economic and Political Weekly; 49/10: 34-38 (with A. Kalaiyarasan)
• 2013 - Economic Change, Politics and Caste: The Case of the Kongu Nadu Munnetra Kazhagam. Economic and Political Weekly; 48/48: 103-111 (with Andrew Wyatt)
• 2012-The Development of Technological Capabilities in India: Information and Communication Technology in Select Sectors (co-authored), Background paper prepared for International Labour Organisation,(cited in Information Economy Report 2012: The Software Industry and Developing Countries), UNCTAD, Geneva, 2012.
• 2012- Opening up or Ushering in? Citizen Participation as Mandate and Practice in Urban Governance (co-authored), in Karen Coelho, Lalitha Kamath and M. Vijayabaskar (eds.), Participolis: Consent and Contention in Neoliberal Urban India, Routledge: N. Delhi, 2012.
• 2012- Urban Reforms and the Middle Classes: Fragmented Collective Action and the Incomplete Project of Stakeholder Participation (co-authored), in Karen Coelho, Lalitha Kamath and M. Vijayabaskar (eds.), Participolis: Consent and Contention in Neoliberal Urban India, Routledge: N. Delhi.
• 2011-The Institutional Milieu of Skill Formation: A Comparative Study of Two Textile Regions in Ohara, M. Vijayabaskar.M and Hong Lin (eds.) India and China Industrial Dynamics in China and India: Firms, Clusters, and Different Growth Paths (pp: 135-156), Palgrave McMillan: New York
• 2011 - Global Crises, Welfare Provision and Coping Strategies of Labour in Tiruppur, Economic and Political Weekly, Review of Labour, 46/22:38-45
• 2010 - Saving Agricultural Labour from Agriculture: SEZs and Politics of Silence in Tamil Nadu, Economic and Political Weekly, 45/6: 36-43.
• Not by Patronage Alone: Understanding Tamil Nadu’s Vote for Change. (co-authored), (2011), Economic and Political Weekly, Vol XLVI, No: 22.
• Infrastructures of Consent: Interrogating Citizen Participation Mandates in Indian Urban Governance. (Co-authored), (2011) IDS Working Paper 362, Centre for the Future State, Institute of Development Studies, Sussex
• Saving Agricultural Labour from Agriculture: SEZs and Politics of Silence in Tamil Nadu, (2010), Economic and Political Weekly, February 6, Vol. XLV No. 6, pp: 36-43.
• Limits and Possibilities of Middle Class Associations as Urban Collective Actors, (co-authored), Economic and Political Weekly, Vol XLIV:26-27, June 27, (2009), pp: 368-376.
• Can Cluster Development Programmes ensure Decent Work? Evidence from Indian MSE Clusters in Global Value Chains, Indian Journal of Labour Economics, (2008), Vol. 51.
• Constructing Work and Identity in the Indian outsourced ITeS sector in Saith. A, M. Vijayabaskar and V. Gayathri (eds.) ICTs and Indian Development: Governance, Diffusion, Poverty, London, New Delhi, Sage 2008.
• Many Messages of Sivaji (co-authored), Economic and Political Weekly, 42/44:29-32 (2007).
• ICTs and Transformation of Traditional Workplaces: Case of the Indian Automobile Industry (2005), in Saith. A and M. Vijayabaskar (eds.) ICTs and Indian Economic Development: Economy, Work, Regulation, London, New Delhi, Sage.
• Labour under Flexible Accumulation: Case of Tiruppur Knitwear Cluster, in Das. K (ed.) (2005), Industrial Clusters: Cases and Perspectives, (Aldershot:Ashgate),
• Human Development in Tamil Nadu: Examining Linkages, (co-authored), Economic and Political Weekly, (34/8: 797-802), February 21, 2004.
• Understanding Growth Dynamism and its Constraints in High-Technology Clusters in Developing Countries: A Study of Bangalore, Southern India, with Krishnaswamy G, in Mani S and H Romijn (eds.), Innovation, Learning and Technological Dynamism of Developing Countries, Tokyo: United Nations University Press, 2004.
• ICTs and Indian Development: Processes, Policies, Prognoses, (co-authored), Economic and Political Weekly, (2003), Vol: 38, No. 24, pp: 2360-2362.
• Dimensions of Children's Work in the Cotton Knitwear Industry in Tiruppur, Indian Journal of Labour Economics, (2002), Vol. 45, No. 3, pp. 561-76.
• The Indian Garment Industry, (2002), in Garment Industry in South Asia- Rags or Riches? Competitiveness, productivity and job Quality in the post-MFA Environment, (Ed) Gopal Joshi, International Labour Organization (ILO): New Delhi (pp. 39-81).
• Labour Markets in the New Economy: The case of Indian Software Industry, (co-authored), The Indian Journal of Labour Economics, (Jan-March 2001), Vol. 44, No. 1, pp. 39-54.
• A Curmudgeon's Guide to Economic Reforms in India, with Mani S, (1998), Economic and Political Weekly, Vol: XXXIII, 51, pp. 3257-3272.
• Industrial Growth and Structure: Analyses of Manufacturing Sector in Karnataka, (co-authored) (1994), Economic and Political Weekly, Vol: XXIX, 48, pp. M157-M164.

Working Papers / Background Papers

• 2020 - COVID 19 Pandemic and Social Protection in Tamil Nadu: Need to Strengthen a Life-Cycle Approach, MIDS Occasional Policy Paper, COVID-19 Series, No. 12 (with Gayathri Balagopal).
• 2020 - Sustaining Industrial Clusters in Tamil Nadu for Employment Generation: Some Policy Lessons from Tiruppur, MIDS Occasional Policy Paper, COVID-19 Series, No. 3.
• 2019 - Politics of Poverty Alleviation Strategies in India, WP 2019-7, Geneva: UNRISD (with Gayathri Balagopal)
• 2019 - Emerging Vulnerabilities in India’s Tea Plantation Economy: A Critical Engagement with Policy Response, (with P.K Viswanathan), (MIDS Working Paper, No. 233.)
• 2016 - Dispossession by Neglect: Agricultural Land Sales in the Periphery of Chennai. Published Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai (with Ajit Menon)
• 2014 - Understanding the Making of Non Corporate Capital: Entrepreneurial Narratives from Tiruppur, Tamil Nadu, Nehru Memorial and Museum Library (with Raman Mahadevan)
• 2014 - Engaging with Sustainability Issues in Metropolitan Chennai, European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI), Chance 2 Sustain City Series, Report No 5 (with 17 project associates)
• 2012 - The development of technological capabilities in India: Information and Communication Technology in selected sectors, International Labour Organisation, (cited in Information Economy Report 2012: The Software Industry and Developing Countries), UNCTAD 2012 (with M. Suresh Babu)
• 2012 - The Institutional Milieu of Skill Formation: A Comparative Study of Two Textile Regions in India and China, RINDAS International Symposium Series 2, The Center for the Study of Contemporary India, Ryukoku University, Japan.
• 2011 - Infrastructures of Consent: Interrogating Citizen Participation Mandates in Indian Urban Governance, IDS Working Paper 362, Centre for the Future State, Institute of Development Studies, Sussex (with Karen Coelho and Lalitha Kamath)

Policy Briefs

• 2016 - Formalising Finance, Informalising Labour: Demonetisation and the Informal Economy, Issue Brief, No.5, The Hindu Centre for Politics and Public Policy, Chennai.
• 2014 - Economic Governance and Spatial Planning in Small and Medium Towns: A case for Convergence, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai (with Karen Coelho)
• 2011- Worker welfare in export zones: Lessons from a garment cluster in south India, Global Insights No: 3, School of Global Studies, University of Sussex.

Book Reviews

• 2020-Financializing Poverty: Labor and Risk in Indian microfinance. South Asia in Motion. By Sohini Kar. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2018, in Pacific Affairs 93(1).
• The political economy of India’s growth episodes, Palgrave Macmillan: London, Sabysachi Kar and Kunal Sen, Indian Economic Review, 2019, 53(1), 409-411
• 2015 - India’s Human Security: Lost Debates, Forgotten People, Intractable Challenges. Jason Miklian and Åshild Kolås, Pacific Affairs, University of British Columbia; 88/3.
• 2012 - India Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises Report. P.M Mathew, S. Sridhar and Ram Venuprasad, Review of Development and Change, Madras Institute of Development Studies; 17/1.
• 2010 - Mohammad Talib, Writing Labour: Stone Quarry Workers in Delhi, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, Indian Journal of Labour Economics 53/3
• 2009 - Carol Upadhya and A R Vasavi, In an Outpost of the Global Economy: Work and Workers in India’s Information Technology, Routledge, N. Delhi, Economic and Political Weekly, 44/23.

Newspapers / Newsletters / Magazines

• The Raging Bulls, Indian Express, January 30, 2017.
• Mother Politics, Indian Express, December 7, 2016.
• Tamil Nadu Polls: Welfare, Freebies, Prohibition, Indian Express, May 11, 2016
• Agriculture takes seed again in Manifestos, Times of India, May 12, 2016, http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/author/mvijayabaskar/
• Meengalai Kodupadha? Meen Pidika Katru Kodupadha?, Minnambalam, https://minnambalam.com/k/1462320004, May 4, 2016
• Where buying a motorcycle can spark a riot. (with Anandhi.S), The Hindu, January 7, 2013.
• Farmers don’t need Futures, Financial Express, 22/5/2009.
• China now targets rural infrastructure, Financial Express, 18/3/2009.
• Indhiya Arasin Porulaadhara Kollgaiyum Tamizh naattin poruladhara maatramum, Maatru Veli. Vol.1 No.2, 2009.

Recent Completed Research Projects

• Vulnerability, State and Social Protection in Tamil Nadu: A Life Cycle Perspective (2018, supported by UNICEF)
• Impact of New Growth Strategies on Small and Medium Farmers in Tamil Nadu along with Dr. Ajit Menon
• ‘Young People in India: Social Change, Development and Politics’, supported by Institute of South Asian Studies, National University Singapore and carried out jointly with Jahwaharlal Nehru University. N. Delhi and Asian Development Research Institute, Patna.
• ‘Mapping Linkages between Megaprojects and Local Economic Development: Case of SEZ Development in Sriperumbudur, south India
• Coordinator, Preparation of the Tamil Nadu Human Development Report, for the Govt of Tamil Nadu.
• ‘Factors Driving Land-Use Change in rural Tamil Nadu’, funded by the State Planning Commission, Govt. of Tamil Nadu
• Changing contours of state welfarism and emerging citizenship: A comparative study of Tamil Nadu and Kerala (with IIT Madras)

Ph.D Supervision

• V.P. Nirmal Roy (completed)
• B.S Sumalatha.(completed)
• R. Saravanakumar
• Bibuti Bhushan Pradhan (part time)
• J. Arun Bharathy
• Srujana Boddu
• Titu Mahanta
• Brinda G. Krishnan
• Jijin.P

Teaching

• Taught a 4 credit course on Agricultural Economics for the Master’s Programme at Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Madras for three semesters
• Taught a 3 credit course on Indian Economic Development for the Master’s Programme at Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Madras for one semester
• A 8 lecture module on ‘Political Economy of Labour, Technology and Development’ for the Ph.D Course Work at MIDS.

Miscellaneous

• Served as Consultant to International Labour Organisation (ILO) N. Delhi and Geneva; United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF), (United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD), National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector, Govt. of India. N. Delhi.

Available on request