Vikas Kumar

Areas of Interest & Expertise

  • Political economy of statistics
  • Law and economics
  • Economics of religion
  • Indian history

Biography

Vikas Kumar is Professor of Economics at Azim Premji University, Bengaluru. He studied metallurgy (B Tech, 2001) at the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (IIT Kanpur) and economics (PhD, 2010) at Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research (IGIDR), Mumbai. He worked with Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited, New Delhi and Trichy, and National Law School of India University (NLSIU), Bengaluru, before joining Azim Premji University. 

His research explores the interfaces between politics and statistics, economics and religion, and Kautilya’s Arthasastra and other pre-modern texts. He is the author of Living with Illegibility: State-making in Nagaland (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming), Numbers as Political Allies: The Census in Jammu and Kashmir (Cambridge University Press, 2023) and Waiting for a Christmas Gift: Essays on Politics, Elections and Media in Nagaland (Heritage Publishing House, 2023) and the co-author of Numbers in India’s Periphery: The Political Economy of Government Statistics (Cambridge University Press, 2020). 

He curated the exhibitions Caste in Modern India: A Postal History (1905−2024)Counting and Controlling Population: Postal Services, Census & Family Planning in Post-colonial India (1951 – 2011) and Ambedkar through Ephemera: Tracing a Legacy in the Everyday at the Bangalore International Centre and Baba Saheb: An Extraordinary Philatelic Journey (1966−2022) at the India International Centre, New Delhi. He is a recipient of the Elizabeth Adiseshiah Award for Distinguished Contributions to Development Studies (2024).

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Exhibitions