I am a development economist and social scientist who has spent three decades asking questions that mainstream economics preferred to avoid — and is now beginning to ask more centrally — about culture, power, narrative, and what poverty actually feels like from the inside. My work combines rigorous empirical analysis with ethnographic depth, and has taken me from village assemblies in Bihar to refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar to the mechanics of how ordinary people do — and don’t — get heard by the institutions that govern their lives.

I am currently Roberta Buffett Distinguished Practitioner-Scholar in Residence at Northwestern University, following more than two decades as a Lead Economist in the World Bank’s Development Research Group. My forthcoming book, Revolution by Stealth (Cambridge University Press, 2026), examines how women’s collective action quietly transformed gender relations in one of India’s most patriarchal states. My current research explores narrative well-being, the value of local democracy, and what it takes to bridge the boundaries that divide us.

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You can reach me here: bijuraowork at gmail dot com