Dr. Anindita Adhikari

Education

• Post-Doctoral Fellow, Center for Emerging Democracies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 2023-2024
• PhD, Department of Sociology, Brown University, 2023
• MA, Sociology, Brown University, 2017
• MA, Development Studies, Institute of Development Studies (IDS), University of Sussex, UK, 2008
• BA, Political Science, Lady Shri Ram College, University of Delhi, 2007

Profile

Anindita is a political sociologist whose research interests include social movements, bureaucracies, the politics of welfare provisioning and democratic deepening. She has been co-teaching a course on accountability and governance for the MPP programme at NLS since 2021. Her research and teaching is motivated and informed by 15 years of public action work embedded in diverse policy settings. She has been associated with the Right to Work, Right to Information, and Right to Food campaigns. She has previously worked with the Government of Bihar and the Ministry of Rural Development on employment, social security, and land issues. She co-founded the  organization ‘Social Accountability Forum for Action and Research’ (SAFAR) in 2022 that works on strengthening transparency and accountability in public service delivery in collaboration with state and national governments and civil society. 

Research interests

Sociology of the State, social movements, politics of welfare provisioning, democratic deepening.

Her book project examines the effects of rights-based welfare expansion and its effects on local governance and civic action through a comparison between two institutionalized accountability systems in Bihar. She has two other ongoing research strands; a historical project on the role of participatory institutions in policy reform and another on local democratic politics and climate change. Her work has been published in journals such as Development and Change and World Development.

Publications

Peer-reviewed publications:

• Adhikari, Anindita and Heller, Patrick. 2024. “Civil Society, the State and Institutionalizing Welfare Rights in India”. World Development, Volume 182.
• Levine, Adam C, Park, Anna, Adhikari, Anindita, Alejandria, Carinnes P Maria, Bradlow, Benjamin, Lopez-Portillo, Maria F, Mutwafy, Salma, Zumbyte, Ieva, Heller, Patrick. 2023.The role of civil society organizations (CSOs) in the COVID-19 response across the Global South: A multinational, qualitative study. PLOS Global Public Health
• Adhikari, Anindita, Navmee Goregaonkar, Rajendran Narayanan, Nishant Panicker, and Nithya Ramamoorthy. 2020. Manufactured Maladies: Lives and Livelihoods of Migrant Workers During COVID-19 Lockdown in India”. The Indian Journal of Labor Economics, 63 (4): 969-997.
• Adhikari, Anindita, and Vasudha Chhotray. 2020. “The Political Construction of Extractive Regimes in Two Newly Created Indian States: A Comparative Analysis of Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh”. Development and Change. 51 (3): 843-873.
• Chhotray, Vasudha, Anindita Adhikari, and Vidushi Bahuguna. 2020. The political prioritization of welfare in India: Comparing the public distribution system in Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand. World Development, vol 128.
• Adhikari, Anindita and Bhatia, Kartika. 2011. NREGA Wage Payments: Can we bank on the banks? Economic and Political Weekly Vol. 45 No. 1. Republished in Khera, R. (ed) (2011) The Battle for Employment Guarantee, Oxford University Press: New Delhi

Book Chapters, Reviews and Reports: 

• Adhikari, Anindita and Singh, Prerna. “Public goods provisioning and social development” in Roy, Indrajit and Desai, Manali (eds) Cambridge Companion to Indian Politics and Society (Forthcoming)
• Adhikari, Anindita. 2024. Review of Cultivating Development: Politics and Citizenship in Agrarian India by Mukulika Banerjee. Pacific Affairs, vol. 97, no. 3
• Adhikari, Anindita. 2021. Development and Accountability in Urban India: Party Workers, Citizens and Public Services, Review of Demanding Development by Adam Auerbach, Economic and Political Weekly Vol. LVI No 21
• Co-author, Stranded Workers Action Network. 2020a. 21 Days and Counting: Migrant Worker Crisis and the National Lockdown in India
• Co-author, Stranded Workers Action Network. 2020b. 32 Days and Counting: COVID-19 lockdown, migrant workers and the inadequacy of welfare measures in India
• Co-author, Stranded Workers Action Network. 2020c. To leave or Not to Leave: Lockdown, Migrant Workers, and Their Journeys Home
• Adhikari, Anindita, Bradlow, Ben, Heller, Patrick, Jamil, Rehan, Li, Kristine, Pheiffer, Chantel, Schrank, Andrew and Walton, Marcus. 2017. Grassroots Reform in the Global South. USAID Research and Innovation Grants Working Paper Series.
• Adhikari, Anindita and Taylor, Peter. 2016. Transformative education and community development: Sharing learning to challenge inequality in an Indian context, in Class, Inequality and Community Development, edited by Mae Shaw and Marjorie Mayo, Policy Press: University of Bristol