Now
This month
on the desk.
A page of the present tense. What is open in the notebooks and browser tabs right now. Updated by hand when something changes, which is more often than the blog makes it look.
Last updated: 13 August 2026
Actively working on
- A field study on caste, social capital, and mobility in rural Tamil Nadu, now moving from the pilot into the larger survey across the same block.
- A randomised trial of a critical thinking curriculum in government schools, as research advisor, still in the measurement and design stage.
- An evaluation of violence-against-women interventions across South Asia, at proposal stage.
- Two monitoring and evaluation engagements — one in maternal and child health, one an end-of-programme evaluation using contribution analysis and outcome harvesting.
- A data project that grades field observers and audits caste representation across more than 700 districts, for a large national organisation.
- A long-form case story from a field visit to an alternative school in the Doon valley.
- Quiet work on the JanVayu citizen testimony layer, pulling the archive into shape.
- The Innovation Advisory canvas suite is now its own Active venture — fifteen free, printable, one-page frameworks live (the Aspiration Gap Framework, the Rapid Civic Tech Canvas, and the Curriculum–Construct Fit just shipped), with a “Which canvas, when?” workflow on the hub.
- Phototales Studio is in steady rhythm — the daily mailer (one photograph and its story, every morning) is the heart of it.
- Democracy by Design — a crowdsourced protest archive co-founded with Pallavi Nayak, cobbled together in two hours after the July Jantar Mantar crackdown. Featured in The Hindu on 8 August.
- littlek.in — a Class 1 CBSE learn-and-play platform built for one specific first-grader at home, opened for anyone. NCERT-mapped, English/Hindi/Mathematics.
- Badalte Khwaab · Women’s Aspirations in a Changing India — the full report is out. 6,092 rural women across 15 states, led as Research Lead (Quantitative) with Development Intelligence Unit and Transform Rural India Foundation. Just back from the launch in Delhi.
- In Mathura this month for the baseline of an edtech efficacy study in mathematics, grades 1 to 5.
- Bangalore next — Discrimination & Development study fieldwork with Bala, plus a workshop with expert reviewers and Christ University staff.
Writing
- The Measurement Trap — done. In production with Routledge.
- The co-authored paper on whether the smartphone has displaced the television as the medium that moves rural women's gender attitudes — done. Now looking for the right venue to pitch.
- Regular essays on PolicyGrounds, most recently on the cockroach-mask student protests, the EPIC/voter roll failure, and India's reverse structural transformation.
- The Hate Effect, still at outline stage, taking its time.
- An essay on parenting in the age of air-quality advisories, in the head, not yet on the page.
- Recent methods pieces on the blog — The two-hour archive on Democracy by Design, and What the smartphone actually replaced on the three-generation media study.
Reading
- The Anxious Generation — Jonathan Haidt, alongside the smartphone-and-gender study writeup.
- Slouching Towards Utopia — J. Bradford DeLong, on the long 20th century as an incomplete slouch out of scarcity.
- Careless People — Sarah Wynn-Williams, on Facebook policy from the inside.
- The 2026–27 Union Budget documents, slowly, with a red pen.
- Everything Katherine Boo has ever published, in rotation.
- Tomb of Sand — Geetanjali Shree, tr. Daisy Rockwell. Slow on purpose.
Saying no to
- New retainers until July. The calendar needs its edges back.
- Work that cannot name the person it is for.
- Anything described as “thought leadership” without a question attached.