M. R. Sharan
I am Mamidipudi Ramakrishna Sharan, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Affiliate Faculty at the Department of Economics at the University of Maryland, College Park.
My research centres around questions in development economics and political economy. I have worked as a researcher and policy economist with various research organisations and both state and central governments in India. I earned my PhD from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government in May 2020.
I study decentralisation in rural India. One strand of my research focuses on elected representatives: whether villages are governed more effectively by elected officials or appointed bureaucrats; how women and lower-caste leaders shape local governance; who wins local office; and how village councils are composed, including at the level of individual ward members. A second strand examines the bureaucracy, from systems for resolving citizens’ complaints to the delivery of large-scale anti-poverty programs. A third takes a broader view of the system. With coauthors, I have written a review tracing the evolution of Panchayati Raj—the institution of rural local governance in India—across two millennia and, today, some 250,000 village democracies.
Prior to my PhD, I obtained a B.A. in Economics from Hansraj College and an M.A. from the Delhi School of Economics. After my PhD, I served as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Global Development.
Besides my academic research, I contribute to media and other platforms. My narrative non-fiction book on village politics in Bihar, Last Among Equals, was released in December 2021, and my novel Blue was published by HarperCollins in 2014. I also co-host the podcast Brothers in Music: The A. R. Rahman Edition.
