The focus of my work has been on analytical and applied work in public administration and policy, governance, comparative politics and development studies - public sector institutional reforms, local governments, community institutions and decentralized governance, institutional design, capacity building of local institutions, water supply and sanitation, water resources management, displacement & resettlement, community forestry, mechanisms for social protection and wider issues concerning rural development in India.

Over 20 years of research and teaching experience in Political Science and Development Studies. Taught postgraduate courses on Administrative Theory; Comparative Politics; Research Methods; Rural and Urban Development and Local Governments; Environment and Development: Policy and Politics; Development, Institutions and Poverty; States, Markets and Society; Human Development; and Institutions and Public Policy Processes.

. ‘Institutional Reforms for Local Governance’, in a workshop on Methodology for Capacity Assessment to Improve MDGs and Provincial Government Transformation, UNDP, Aceh, Indonesia, May 10-13, 2010.

‘Poverty, Social Development and Rural Drinking Water Reforms’, at an international conference on Governing the Asian Giants: The Search for Good Governance and Sustainable Development in India and China, organized by the University of Hong Kong and Hong Kong Institute of Education, Hong Kong, March 29-20, 2010.

 ‘Rural Water Supply and Sanitation in Cambodia: Understanding Functional Reassignment for Improving Local Service Delivery’, at UNICEF Seminar on MDGs and Local Governments, August, 2009, Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

‘Reasserting the Image of Blue Mongolia: Local Service Delivery for Rural Water Supply and Sanitation in Mongolia’, at the UNDP-Mongolian University for Science and Technology Seminar on Sustainable Water for Mongolia, May, 2008, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.

‘Environment & Justice: The Public Purpose of Water’, Asian Conceptions of Justice, Third Asian Political and International Studies Association Congress, November 2007, Delhi.

’Methodology for Support to National Policy and MDG Strategies - Rural Water Supply’ Technical Workshop in Improving Local Service Delivery for MDGs in Asia, UNICEF, UNCDF and UNDP, Bangkok, October 2007.

‘Reforming the Centralized State: Assessing Decentralization Paradigms in the Drinking Water Sector in the Philippines’, International Conference on the Role of the State in Public Service Delivery at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore, September 2007.

‘Paradigms of Decentralization, Institutional Design & Poverty: Drinking Water in the Philippines’, Conference on Embodying Asia: Spheres of Production, Sites of Exchange, Asia Scholarship Foundation, July 2007.

‘Resources, Local Institutions and Poverty in the Philippines' presented at the Philippine Institute of Development Studies, Manila, August 2006.

‘Decentralizing South Asia’s Rural Water Sector’, Envisioning South Asia, South Asian Policy Analysis Network, April 2006.

 ‘Water and Local Governments: Institutional Design, Politics & Implementation’, paper presented at the Second Annual Asian Political and International Studies Congress on Governance Dilemmas in Asia Public Action in a Competitive and Insecure World, City University of Hongkong, November 2005.

12. ‘Development, Democracy & Local Governments: Lessons from the Rural Water Sector in India’ presented at an international seminar organized by Meghnad Desai, Mary Kaldor & Neera Chandhoke, London School of Economics and the University of Delhi, Civil Society in India, January 2003.

13. ‘Reforming the Rural Water Sector in India’, at a World Bank Round Table on Public Sector and Institutional Reforms organized by Satyajit Singh and Frank Dreeze, Washington D.C., April 2001.

14. ‘Diverse Property Rights and Diverse Institutions: Forest Management by Village Forest Councils in the UP Hills’, presented at India 50: Identities, Nation State and Global Culture, University of Sussex, September 1997.

15. ‘Hydraulic Property Rights and the Political Economy of Large Dams in India’, Institute of Development Studies, Sussex, October 1995.

16. ‘Politics of Environment: A Perspective from India’, South Asia Forum, London School of Economics and Politics, Weekly Seminar Series, March 1989.

These are in addition to participation in numerous Conferences in India

Invited to the position of Founding Dean and Professor for the School of Development Studies and the School of Human Ecology, Ambedkar University, Delhi (2009-10).

Awarded the Asia Fellowship for the year 2005-6 to study Local Governments in South East Asia at the Philippine Institute of Development Studies, Manila.

Nominated as Leverhulme Fellow for Environment & Development at the Centre for the Comparative Study in Culture, Development and the Environment (CDE), University of Sussex, UK (1996-8).

Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), University of Sussex, UK (1995).

Performance Award at The World Bank (2001) for leading the Rural Team that was judged ‘best-practice in knowledge management for water and sanitation sector’; Won a Spot Award at The World Bank (2000) for consistently producing quality newsletters and field notes on water and sanitation issues in India; Won a Spot Awards at The World Bank (1999) for organizing a State Ministers’ Workshop leading to The Cochin Declaration on Rural Water Reforms.

A scholarship by the Institute of Development Studies, Sussex, for an M.Phil program in Development Studies (1988-90).

Won the Vice-Chancellor's (Delhi University) Environmental Shield (1984-85).

Member of Asian Political and International Studies Association

Member of Asian Studies Foundation

Member of Asian Association for Social Welfare

Member of WES-Net, India

Member of Solutions Exchange, UNDP, New Delhi

Member of Capacity Net, UNDP, New York

Was Core Group Member of environmental groups like Kalpavriksh, Nature Club and Peoples' Environmental Group, 1982-88.