PHD TITLE
PhD Title: Economic Policymaking and Regional State-Making in Independent India, Madras State c. 1947–1976
PhD Supervisor: Gopalan Balachandran
Expected completion date: September 2025
My doctoral research is focused on documenting the history of economic federalism in India c. 1947–1976. Taking the State of Madras as a case study, it analyses the ways in which India’s regional States articulated their concerns, negotiated their interests, and asserted their rights in the terrain of economic policymaking in an asymmetric federal polity. The primary archival research for this project will be undertaken in the archives and research libraries in India, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Profile
Raghunath Nageswaran is a third-year PhD candidate at the Department of International History and Politics. After completing a Masters Degree in Economics from Madras Christian College (India) in 2016, Raghunath worked as an independent researcher and guest lecturer between 2017 and 2020. His doctoral research at the Geneva Graduate Institute looks at the history of economic planning and policymaking in independent India from the vantage point of its regional States. He has an abiding spectatorial and scholarly interest in the game of cricket.
RESEARCH INTERESTS
Global economic history, history of economic thought, Indian economic development, political economy of Tamil Nadu and social history of cricket
ACADEMIC EXPERIENCES
Guest Lecturer at MOP Vaishnav College (Chennai), August 2019–December 2019
OTHER WORK EXPERIENCES
- July 2018–September 2018 Consultant, UNICEF funded project “Adolescent Vulnerability Index for Tamil Nadu”
- June 2017–December 2017 Research Associate, UNICEF funded project “Public Expenditure for Childrenin Tamil Nadu, 2009–10 to 2017–18
RELEVANT PUBLICATIONS AND WORKS
- Book Review: Policy and Practice of Social Justice in Tamil Nadu (coauthored with Vignesh Karthik KR) Economic and Political Weekly 58, no. 6, (Feb 11, 2023): 30–32
- Book Review: The Dravidian Model: Interpreting the Political Economy of Tamil Nadu by Kalaiyarasan A. and Vijayabaskar M, Cambridge University Press Commonwealth and Comparative Politics 60, no. 4 (Nov 28, 2022): 414–417
- Book Review: Midnight’s Machines: A Political History of Technology in India by Arun Mohan Sukumar, Penguin India Commonwealth and Comparative Politics 60, no. 1 (Feb 1, 2022): 112–114
FELLOWSHIPS, GRANTS AND AWARDS
- Swiss Government Excellence Scholarship 2021–22
- Swiss Government Excellence Scholarship 2022–23
- Swiss Government Excellence Scholarship 2023–24