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: 8 May 2026
Actively working on
- An evaluation for a South Asian climate resilience fund, now moving from instrument design into pilot data collection.
- A field guide draft for practitioners on how to read an RCT without being read by one.
- Quiet work on the JanVayu citizen testimony layer, pulling the archive into shape.
- Two new field kits just shipped — The Causal Pathway Review (CLEAR) for stress-testing a Theory of Change, and The Indicator Test (VALID) for the metrics that go in the logframe.
Writing
- The Measurement Trap — chapter three, the one on under-counting unpaid work.
- The Hate Effect — still in the outline stage, taking its time.
- An essay for Medium on parenting in the age of air-quality advisories. In the head, not yet on the page.
- A short methods note on the two five-letter frameworks (CLEAR and VALID) just landed on the blog.
Reading
- Poverty, by America — Matthew Desmond
- The 2026 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.
- An Immense World — Ed Yong, on the sensory worlds we cannot reach.
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.