Akhil Alha is an Assistant Professor at Council for Social Development, New Delhi since June 2014. His research focusses on the political economy of development, socio-economic inequality, agrarian economy, public policy, platform economy, and developmental budgeting for marginalized communities. Akhil has a number of research publications to his credit published in some of the reputed academic journals.
In CSD, he has led a number of research projects as project director or team leader; the most noticeable being Status and Pathways for portability in Cash and In-kind Transfers in India with a funding support from KFW Development Bank, Germany. He has also carried out three studies with the funding support from the ICSSR. First of these studies captured transformations in agrarian relations in India during the period of agrarian crisis with a particular focus on tenancy relations, changing nature of agricultural labour contracts, and expansion of non-farm employment. The second study focused on the status of Scheduled Caste entrepreneurship in India, and the challenges posed before SC entrepreneurs from the agencies of the state, market and society. It also engaged with an important question of the impact of deregulation of the economy on the growth prospects of SC entrepreneurship. The third, and the ongoing study is focused at examining the role of caste and gender in defining outcomes in gig economy in India.
He is regularly invited to deliver lectures in capacity building and research methodology courses on data handling using STATA, academic writing, research design and conducting primary survey-based research. Training modules developed by him on primary survey research are adopted in different research institutions.
Akhil is also associated with a few farmers’ and Ambedkarite movements at the grassroot level in Rajasthan.