About

Education:

Bocconi University

I recently graduated from the MSc in Economic and Social Sciences program at Bocconi University. I was selected in the ICRIOS Visiting Students Program (2023-2024), where we were mentored and trained in empirical research methods. I have completed courses like advanced statistics, advanced mathematics, advanced macroeconomics, macroeconometrics, development economics, economic analysis of crime, population dynamics, and labour economics. My thesis with Prof. Arnstein Aassve examined the association between social networks and cognitive functioning of the elderly in Europe. The thesis highlighted the need to understand ‘quality’ of social networks and the advantage of institution-led elderly care in explaining regional heterogenities.

Azim Premji University

I completed my B.A. (Honours) in Economics from Azim Premji University (Bengaluru). I took courses in economic theory (such as Intermediate Microeconomics and Macroeconomics, Econometrics and Political Economy), quantitative tools (Linear Algebra, Statistics, and Computational Economics), and on research methods (Communicating Economics, and Academic Writing). I completed my Honours thesis under Professor Amit Basole. The thesis was an empirical project that analyzed the effect of COVID-19 on India’s consumption expenditure. I used a regression framework to tease-out peculiar trends in consumption-inequality. Working on the thesis, various data assignments, and term papers during this program motivated me to deepen my understanding of theory, economic tools and skills. I became passionate about data visualization in R and typesetting in LaTeX. I also enjoyed applied courses on ‘Climate Change Economics’ and ‘Labour Economics’, where I got a chance to use economic models on real data.

Rishi Valley School

I am a proud alum of Rishi Valley School, KFI (Madnapalle). The six years I spent at this residential school have greatly shaped me and my outlook towards life. Today I structure my days in a balanced way because of school, where we did physical training (running/strength/sports) in the morning and evening, took classes in the day, reflected on the asthachal hill and went for the study hour (prep) at night. RV taught me so much more. I got introduced to bird-watching by the renowned ornithologist Dr. V Shantaram. The current affairs club, carefully curated by then-director Radhika Herzberger encouraged us to dive deeper and seek explanations for major events of the time. Our teachers encouraged us to read widely- from fiction, to technical and philosophical texts. I learnt to express myself in new ways- through Gieve Patel’s poetry workshops, Sonali akka’s theater classes and by doing pottery, needlecraft and batik. I grew as a person through my journey in sports. I entered RV with little interest in sports, discovered and played basketball consistently over the years and I graduated from school as the basketball captain. The school was also frequently visited by alumni and great minds from diverse walks of life- their talks during assemblies inspired me and exposed me to new ideas.

Work Experience:

LEAP, Bocconi University

I worked as a research assistant to Professor Andrea Guariso at the Laboratory for Effective Anti-Poverty Policies (LEAP) over the summer of 2023. I was selected in the LEAP Internship Program. A new skill I learnt was to do ‘fuzzy matching’ of data in Stata. I further used the ‘LEDA’ package in R, which was specifically designed to match ethnic data-sets in Africa (relevant for the project). Using the LEDA package made me understand the basics of Object Oriented Programming. I also learnt QGIS to handle spatial data and attended workshops on research methods for development economics.

XKDR Forum

I collaborated with XKDR Forum (Mumbai) as a quantitative researcher. I was involved in a project on measuring the effect of finance on household consumption management. We used a longitudinal micro-data from India for the project. I visualized data and ran regressions using R for the project. At XKDR, I learnt to document my work systematically and to create functions from scratch in R. Working here has motivated me to learn more about open-source systems and to master the command line (great for productivity!), which is used de-facto at the organization.

Centre for Sustaiable Employment

I worked as a research assistant to Professors Anand Shrivastava and Amit Basole at the Centre for Sustainable Employment (CSE) (Bengaluru). I worked on a project on income-inequality during the pandemic. Contrary to the existing literature, we found preliminary evidence that income-inequality did not drop during the COVID-19 period, and established a pre-trend of already falling income-inequality in India. During my stint at CSE, ️I mainly did exploratory data analysis using R on AWS. After regular presentations and rigorous verifications, we narrowed down on a narrative. This work was presented at the Annual Research Conclave (2023) at Azim Premji University. It is now out as a working paper (August 2024). See ‘Projects’ page for details.

Volunteering:

Seva Mandir

I worked as a research intern at Seva Mandir (Udaipur) in the summer of 2021. I was tasked to evaluate the effectiveness of one of Seva Mandir’s Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) intervention. I successfully conducted a primary survey (n=50 households) and submitted a report of my findings to the organization. I learnt to design a coherent questionnaire with inputs from my pilot run. I executed the survey with help from a balsakhi, who was trusted by the respondents and helped with language translation. This field experience helped me connect development theory with ground realities and was full of political economy insights.