Richa Govil

Areas of Interest & Expertise

  • The role of women in agriculture
  • Interlinkages between agriculture and household nutrition
  • Producer collectives, farmer producer organisations and value chains
  • Social enterprises
  • Organisational strategy, culture and leadership practices

Biography

Richa Govil is the Vice Chancellor of Azim Premji University, Bengaluru Campus. Richa’s areas of interest include agricultural livelihoods, farmer producer companies, women’s livelihoods, social enterprises, and organisational practices in the social sector. 

Richa has co-founded and led the growth of organisations in domains of school education and development, and worked on interventions related to agricultural livelihoods, nutrition, micro-enterprises and farmer producer organisations.  She has also worked on corporate strategy, business and market strategy. 

Richa holds a PhD in Physics from the University of California, Berkeley, and a bachelor’s degree in physics with a minor in Business Administration from the same university.

Courses

Professional Development Courses

Courses taught in Postgraduate Diploma in Development Leadership

Publications

 Journal articles

  • Govil, R. (2025). Higher education in the age of artificial intelligence. Economic and Political Weekly, 60(45).
  • Govil, R., & Neti, A. (2024). Incubating farmer producer companies: The missing middle. Vikalpa: The Journal for Decision Makers, 49(4).
  • Neti, A., Govil, R., & Rao, M. (2019). Farmer producer companies: Demystifying the numbers. Review of Agrarian Studies, 9(2).
  • Govil, R., & Rana, G. (2017). Demand for agricultural information among women farmers: A survey from Karnataka, India. Review of Agrarian Studies, 7(1).
  • Govil, R., Leemans, W. P., Backhaus, E., & Wurtele, J. S. (1999). Observation of return current effects in a passive plasma lens. Physical Review Letters, 83(16).
  • Takayama, K., Govil, R., & Sessler, A. M. (1992). Macroparticle theory of a standing-wave free-electron laser two beam accelerator. Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics

Chapters in edited books

  • Govil, R., & Neti, A. (2021). Strengthening rural economy through farmer producer companies. In V. I. Lakshmanan, A. Chockalingam, V. Kumar Murty, & S. Kalyanasundaram (Eds.), Smart villages: Bridging the global urban – rural divide. Springer.
  • Govil, R. (2015). Nutrition in rural India. In P. Sloan, W. Legrand, & C. Hindley (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of sustainable food and gastronomy. Routledge.

Chapters in reports

  • Govil, R., & Neti, A. (2021). Farmer producer companies: From quantity to quality. In B. Sen (Ed.), State of India’s livelihoods 2021. Access Development Services.
  • Govil, R. (2018). Agricultural livelihoods: Need for re-imagination. In N. Srinivasan (Ed.), State of India’s livelihoods (SOIL) report 2018. Access Development Services.

Reports

  • Neti, A., & Govil, R. (2022). Farmer producer companies: Inclusion, capitalisation and incubation. Azim Premji University.
  • Govil, R., Neti, A., & Rao, M. (2020). Farmer producer companies: Past, present and future. Azim Premji University.

Book reviews

  • Govil, R. (2022). Social entrepreneurship journeys in agriculture [Review of the book Farming futures: Emerging social enterprises in India, edited by A. Kanitkar & C. Shambu Prasad]. Economic and Political Weekly, 57(5).

Newspaper articles