Research
I work at the intersection of politics and public policy. I ask questions about knowledge production, tech, expertise, policy making, and right-wing mobilisation in the US, UK and India. Two key questions guide my research:
How do notions of expertise shift during moments of political and technological transformation?
How does this affect the power (material, institutional, and discursive) to produce legitimate knowledge and make key decisions around democratic futures?
a. Elite experts and ideologies of governance
My book, The New Experts: Populist Elites and Technocratic Promises (Cambridge University Press, May 2024), explores how notions of expertise change as ideological and political transformation take place. I examine the evolution of a shifting network of experts and elites, interrogating what is considered to be expertise in the context of governance. Through a study of Indian think tanks, political consulting firms, and policy research organisations, this project confronts a negotiation between technocracy and populism: should society be governed by the “experts”, or by the “people”? While previous scholarship tends to view technocracy and populism as contradictory forces, I find they have emerged as two complementary forms of ethno-nationalist legitimacy in India.
On one hand, populist politics uses emotionally resonant narratives to make ethno-nationalist policy digestible through an appeal to the majority, attempting to build a rigid national identity with a focus on class, culture, and religion. On the other, technocratic policy making, by claiming to have no culture and pursuing a techno-rationalist approach to policy priorities, works to neutralise charges of hyper-nationalism. Hence, the latter can be used in the service of the former, lending credibility to claims of a grand ethno-nationalist future. I emphasise the relational dynamic between the two: they function through different, often contradictory, logics and content yet are able to work towards the same goals in key moments of mutual reinforcement. At its core, this work is motivated by a desire to make sense of how political and policy elites have gradually normalised Hindu supremacy. I examine the: a) mechanics of the process (for example, think tanks, consulting firms, IT cells, government advisory groups, political parties) and b) the emergent multiple discourses they form. These findings are based on semi-structured interviews with over fifty politicians, policy makers, government officials, consultants, and other socially anointed intellectuals, several years of participant observation (between 2016-2020) in three prominent New Delhi think tanks, and discourse and documentary analysis.
b. AI expertise in policy making
Political and technological transformations often prompt a redefinition of expertise: the authority to produce legitimate knowledge and shape decisions. This project examines how artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming central to UK and Indian policymaking, focusing on how AI expertise is constructed, mobilised, and contested within government. The technical architectures of AI—data models, algorithms, and infrastructures—embed values and logics which are rarely subjected to democratic scrutiny. As such, AI is not simply a technocratic tool for governance; it must be studied as a socio-technical assemblage that reflects and reinforces power structures.