Richa Kumar | Humanities & Social Sciences

Richa Kumar

Richa Kumar
Associate Professor
Sociology
Multi. Disc.
CV Summary: 

Richa Kumar is Associate Professor of Sociology and Science and Technology Studies (STS) in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. She has been studying issues at the intersection of agriculture, food, human health and the environment from a social science and STS perspective for the last 20 years. She has published "Rethinking Revolutions: Soyabean, Choupals and the Changing Countryside in Central India" (Oxford University Press, 2016) and co-authored the State of Rural and Agrarian India Report 2020 among other journal articles, book chapters and public opinion pieces.

Her research and teaching interests are in the Sociology of Agriculture, Environment and Climate Change; Sociology of Food, Nutrition, Toxicity and Health; Science and Technology Studies; and Rural and Agrarian Policy. She is the Principal Investigator of the IIT Delhi Grand Challenges Project on Measuring agrochemical body burden in a select human population, allocating exposure by source, and studying the implications for public health and agrochemical regulation in India (2020-2025). Her collaborative work with Sangtin Kisan Mazdoor Sangathan (Sitapur) on diets, nutrition and agrarian transformation in western Avadh, Uttar Pradesh has been co-curated on the bilingual portal www.foodcultures.org for dissemination to the larger public. Her work has also been featured on the TEDx platform, through two documentaries (by ScoopWhoop Documentaries and VICE News), and on Radio France.

She is a member of the Core Group on Right to Food and Nutrition of the National Human Rights Commission, General Body Member and Research Advisory Group Member, Bharat Rural Livelihoods Foundation (BRLF), Member, National Technical Committee for implementing Himalayan Agroecology Initiative, Research Advisory Group Member of the MA in Rural Management Program at Shiv Nadar University, Dadri, and Steering Committee Member of the National Coalition for Natural Farming (NCNF). She is a core group member of the Network of Rural and Agrarian Studies (NRAS), a group of multidisciplinary scholars and activists working on agrarian issues in India. As part of NRAS, she has co-organized several conferences and mentoring workshops at IIT Delhi and across non-metro academic spaces in India. She is a recipient of the inaugural Elizabeth Adiseshiah Memorial Award (2019), the New India Fellowship (2010) and was nominated for the Women Leading IITs Leadership program (2022). She completed her Ph.D. from the Science, Technology and Society Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, USA.

 

Students interested in doing a PhD in the following topics are welcome to contact her at richa@hss.iitd.ac.in:
a) new technologies in agrarian and rural spaces (drones, apps, sensors, blockchain, digital infrastructure, etc.)
b) the role of agribusiness in the food system and implications for health and nutrition
c) changing food cultures across agroecological regions in India and their intersection with caste, class and gender 
d) transition to agroecological farming.    
 

Ph.D. Supervision

  1. Neymat Chadha: Body in Transition: An Ethnographic Study of Hysterectomies among Women Labourers in Rural Maharashtra (completed 2026)
  2. Caroline Fazli: Knowledge, Values, and Visions of Development in India’s Agroecology Movement (external supervisor, University of Bath, UK) (completed 2025)
  3. Abhigya: Constituting Risk: Regulatory Science, Pesticides and Farmers in Western Uttar Pradesh (co-supervised; completed 2024)
  4. Mini K: Aid and Beyond: Farmers, Facilitators and the Politics of Participation in the State of Kerala (completed 2019)
  5. Anand Prakash: Nutritional Puzzle in India: An Inter-Disciplinary Study (co-supervised)
  6. Debottam Saha: Interrogating ‘Organic’: Critical Perspectives on ‘Alternatives’ in Agriculture
  7. Devashish Chauhan: Food: Boon or Bane? Dalit Food Cultures and the Quest for Contentment
  8. R. Sridhar Rao: Performing Authority: Customary Governance Among Fisherfolk Communities on the Kaveri Delta Coasts (co-supervised; joined July 2022)
  9. Mridul Surbhi: Healing in the Middle Land: An ethnographic study of Amchi healers in Spiti, Himachal Pradesh (co-supervised; joined July 2023)
  10. Anuradha Chetry: Plantation Regime, Oil Palm Cultivation, Technology and Agrarian Transformations in Northeast India (joined July 2024)
  11. Bharti Varun: An Ethnographic Study of Agricultural Drone Technology and its Entanglements with Caste, Labour and Agrarian Knowledge in Haryana, India (joined July 2024)
  12. Samyuktha Rameshkumar: Navigating Urban Foodscapes: An exploration of food environments and their
    influence on eating practices among young adults in Chennai, India (joined January 2025)
  13. Naincy Sachan (joined July 2025)

 

Links to recent lectures / interviews / articles / reports:
 

In conversation with Miguel Altieri (father of agroecology) on Local Knowledge, Global Change as part of the Reimagining the University Speaker Series and Rural Transformations Speaker Series, 30 June 2023

What we Lost Because of the Green Revolution as part of the panel on India and Southeast Asia in the Inter-Institutional Seminar entitled, “The Green Revolution: A Global Perspective on its 80th Anniversary,” 11 April 2023 (at 40:15 min)

How have changing ecologies figured into the new farm laws? The India Forum, 28 September 2021

Did India Need the Green Revolution? (Part I, Part 2, Part 3) Interviewed by Scoop Whoop Unscripted Documentary, July 1, 2021

Interviewed by Prof Metta Spencer, University of Toronto on the Save the World Talk Show, 12 July 2021

Food and Nutrition Security in India: Building Back Better from the Covid-19 Pandemic, Panel Discussion organised by the Baha'i Chair for Studies in Development, 22 January 2021

Reforms for farmers need to look at more than mere efficiency of agricultural markets, Indian Express, January 5, 2021

Farm Debate: A Green Reality Check, Indian Express, December 7, 2020

Contact Information

Email: richa at hss.iitd.ac.in
Office: +91-11-2659-6681

Research Areas

Critical Agrarian Studies and Agroecology; Science and Technology Studies; Sociology of Agriculture, Environment and Climate Change; Sociology of Food, Nutrition, Toxicity and Health; Sociology of Markets and Commodities, Sociology of Toxicity and Waste

Academic Background

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA (2002-2009)
Ph.D. in History and Anthropology of Science, Technology & Society (HASTS) from the Science, Technology and Society (STS) Program

Georgetown University, Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service (SFS), Washington, DC (1998-2001)
Bachelor of Science in Foreign Service (B.S.F.S) with a specialisation in Science, Technology and International Affairs (STIA)

Employment History

Associate Professor, Sociology and Policy Studies (Jan 2017 to present)
Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Delhi and
Associate Faculty, School of Public Policy, IIT Delhi (2019-present)

Assistant Professor, Sociology and Policy Studies (Jan 2011 to Dec 2016)
Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Delhi

Publications

Richa Kumar, "Creating Food (In)Security and Nutritional Crisis: Re-evaluating the Legacy of the Green Revolution in India." In the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Food Studies. Ed. Darra Goldstein. New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming. doi: 10.1093/acrefore/9780197762530.013.ORE_FST-00033.R1

Richa Kumar, “Inequality and the Agrarian World.” In Jodhka, S and B. Roehbin (Eds.) Global Handbook of Inequality. Springer, 2024.

Sudha Nagavarapu, Surbala Vaish, Om Prakash, Kamal Kishore, Richa Singh, Richa Kumar and Sangtin Kisan Mazdoor Sangathan (SKMS). “Reshaping Collective Dreams for a Just Food Future through Research and Activism in Western Avadh, India.” In Radical Food Geographies: Power, Knowledge and Resistance Eds. Hammelman, C., Levkoe, C.Z. and K. Reynolds, White Horse Press, 2024.

Richa Kumar, “Standardised Foods and Compromised Consumers: Can the repeal of the three farm laws turn the clock back?” Sociological Bulletin, 72(1), 2023, 1-18.

Richa Kumar, “Degrowth, Diversity and Decentralisation: Building Sustainable Food Systems for Food and Nutrition Security.” In A. Fazli and A. Kundu (Eds.) Reimaging Prosperity: Social and Eonomic Development in Post-COVID India, Palgrave Macmillan, 2023, pp. 171-187.

Richa Kumar. “From Self-Reliance to Deepening Distress: The Ambivalence of the Yellow Revolution in India.” Book Chapter. In da Silva, Claiton Marcio, de Majo, Claudio and Adrian Zarrilli. 2022. The Age of Soybeans: An Environmental History of the Soyacene During the Great Acceleration. White Horse Press, 2022, pp.291-311. https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv309h1fx.20#metadata_info_tab_contents

Sudha Nagavarapu and Richa Kumar. “Constituting the Norm: Interrogating the Anthropocene through Food Geographies in the More-than-Human Worlds of Western Avadh, India.” The Geographical Journal, January 2022.

P.S. Vijay Shankar and Richa Kumar. Editors. “The Problem.” Revisioning the Rural. Seminar, December 2021.

Richa Kumar, “Valuing Variability: Agriculture, Ecology and COVID-19". Society and Culture in South Asia 7(1): 105-111. January 2021.

Richa Kumar, Nikhit Kumar Agrawal, P.S. Vijayshankar and A.R. Vasavi. State of Rural and Agrarian India Report 2020. Network of Rural and Agrarian Studies (NRAS) and Notion Press, Chennai.

“The Future of Farming: To What End and For What Purpose? In Conversation: Bharat Bhushan Tyagi and Richa Kumar”. Science, Technology and Society 1-17: 2020.

Richa Kumar, “India’s Green Revolution and Beyond: Visioning Agrarian Futures on Selective Readings of Agrarian Pasts”. Economic and Political Weekly 54(34): 41-48, 2019. (Republished as Chapter 8 in Agrarian Change in India: Readings on Economy, Polity and Society Edited by Surinder S. Jodhka, Orient Blackswan, 2022)

Book: Rethinking Revolutions: Soyabean, Choupals and the Changing Countryside in Central India, Oxford University Press Delhi, 2016.

Richa Kumar, “Elusive Empowerment: Information Provision and Disintermediation in Soyabean Markets in Malwa, India”. Development and Change 45 (6): 1332-1360, 2014.

Richa Kumar, “Perils of Productivity: Making ‘Good’ Farmers in Malwa, India”. Journal of Agrarian Change 16(1): 70-93, 2016. (first published online 2014)

Richa Kumar, “Mandi Traders and the “Dabba”: Online Commodity Markets in India,” Economic and Political Weekly 45(31): 63-70, 31 July 2010.

Richa Kumar, "eChoupal: A Study on the Sustainability of Village Internet Centres in Rural Madhya Pradesh", Information Technologies and International Development 2(1): 45-73, Spring 2004.

Conferences

2022. Richa Kumar. “The Battle for Science: Challenging the Hegemony of the Green Revolution in India.” Association for Asian Studies. Hawaii, March 28-29.

2021. Richa Kumar. “From Self-Reliance to Deepening Distress: The Ambivalence of the Yellow Revolution in India.” Soy in the Anthropocene, Symposion by the Commission for Interdisciplinary Ecological Studies of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, University of Vienna, Kleiner Festsaal, 3 November 2021.

2020. Sudha Nagavarapu, Richa Kumar, Richa Singh and Surbala Vaish "Familiarity breeds contempt: how old food hierarchies influence present food choices among marginalized communities in western Avadh, India". Submitted to the Food Studies Twitter Conference 2020 of the Association for the Study of Food and Society / Agriculture, Food and Human Values Society, July 23-25.

2019. Richa Kumar, Sudha Nagavarapu, Richa Singh and Surbala Vaish "Commodities and Nation Building: Groundnuts in Western Awadh, Uttar Pradesh." Submitted to the Republic of Plants Workshop, Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IITM) and co-sponsored by the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT),Chennai, 10-14 December.

2019. Sudha Nagavarapu, Richa Singh, and Richa Kumar "Towards a just food future: Learnings from the food transition experience of a marginal community in rural Uttar Pradesh, India." Submitted to the Royal Geographical Society Annual International Conference 2019, London, August 28-30.

2019. Sudha Nagavarapu, Richa Kumar, Surbala Vaish and Richa Singh. “Food Geographies of Trouble in the Anthropocene: A Growing Nutritional and Ecological Crisis in Rural Western Awadh, Uttar Pradesh, India.” Submitted to the Royal Geographical Society Annual International Conference 2019, London, August 28-30.

2019. Sudha Nagavarapu, Anand Prakash, Richa Kumar, Ankush Agrawal, Richa Singh and Surbala Vaish. “Contested Narratives of Dietary Transitions in India: Examining the Incommensurability of Macro and Micro Datasets.” Submitted to the 4th Annual Agriculture, Nutrition and Health Academy Week 2019 Conference, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Hyderabad, June 26-28.

2019. Richa Kumar, Richa Singh, Sudha Nagavarapu, Surbala Vaish, Ankush Agrawal and Anand Prakash. “Remaking Landscapes, Reshaping Palates and Transforming Diets in Western Awadh, Uttar Pradesh, India”, Submitted to the Agricultural History Society Conference on Power in Agricultural History, Washington DC, June 6-8.

2019. Richa Kumar, Richa Singh, Sudha Nagavarapu, Surbala Vaish. “Remaking Town and Hinterland:
Reshaping Palates and Transforming Diets in Western Awadh, Uttar Pradesh, India”, Submitted to the Urban-Arc 2019 Conference on City and the Region, Indian Institute of Human Settlements, January 10-12.

2018. Richa Kumar, Sudha Nagavarapu, Surbala Vaish, Richa Singh, Ankush Agrawal, and Anand Prakash. “Untangling Under-Nutrition:  Agriculture, Dietary Diversity and the Hollowing out of Rural India.” Submitted to the Sustainability and Development Conference, University of Michigan, November 9-11. 

2018. Sudha Nagavarapu, Richa Kumar, Surbala Vaish and Richa Singh. “The Commons as Place, Resource, Usage, Memory: Perspectives from Western Awadh”, Submitted to the 6th NRAS International Conference on Whither Rural Commons: State Policy, Natural Resources and Agrarian Change, Central University of Gujarat, Gandhinagar, September 20-22.

2018. Richa Kumar, Sudha Nagavarapu, Surbala Vaish, Richa Singh, Ankush Agrawal and Anand Prakash. “Green Revolution Transitions and Food and Nutritional security in Western Awadh, India” presented at the American Association of Geographers Annual Conference, New Orleans, April 10-14.

2018. Sudha Nagavarapu, Richa Kumar, Surbala Vaish, Richa Singh, Ankush Agrawal and Anand Prakash. “From diversity to monotony, fluctuation to stability? Tracking food transitions and their impact on nutrition in western Awadh, Uttar Pradesh”, Submitted to the International Conference on Critical Public Health  Consequences of the Double  Burden  of  Malnutrition and the Changing Food Environment in South and South East Asia, Organised by PHRN, PHM, JSA and WPHNA, New Delhi, March 29-30.

2017. "Scientific Notions of Productivity and Sociocultural Vulnerabilities in Agriculture" presented at the International Conference on Burning Fields, Biofuels and Bettering Farm Life: Pursuing Responsible Research and Innovation through Mutual Learning, New Delhi, September 11-13.

2016. "‘Scientific’ Evidence and Agrarian Policy Making in India" presented at the 4th LASSNET International Conference on Thinking with Evidence: Seeking Certainty, Making Truth, New Delhi, December 10-12.

2016. "Ideals of Development" presented at the International Conference on Responsible Innovation and Sustainable Agriculture: The Problem of Rice Straw Burning in Punjab, Chandigarh, Punjab, November 28-30.

2016. “Agricultural Marketing in India: Making Markets Work for Farmers” presented at the International Seminar on Revitalising the Rural: Rethinking Rural and Agricultural Policies, Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, September 27-29.

2015. “Assessing Accountability: Mandi Traders, Choupals, and Commodity Markets in Malwa, India" presented at the Annual American Anthropological Association Conference, Denver, Colorado, USA, November 18-22.

2015. “Indispensable Intermediaries: Choupals, Cooperatives and Traders in Malwa” presented at the Conference on Marginal Ecologies, Ambedkar University Delhi, February 28-March 1.

2014. "Monocultures and Malnutrition" presented at the International Conference on Publics, Politics and Technoscience in Contemporary Indian Contexts, OP Jindal Global University, Sonipat, Haryana, November 17-18.

2014. “Tracing the History of the Malthusian Juggernaut: Preliminary findings from archival material of the International Wheat Conferences organised by the International Institute of Agriculture, Rome (1930-31)” presented at the Conference on Revisiting the Historical Connections between Agriculture, Nutrition and Development: The UN FAO in a Global Context, University of Basel, Switzerland, August 29-30.

Popular Articles

2022. Joint NRAS statement on GM mustard entitled, A Call for Expert and Public Consultations on Genetically Modified Mustard in The India Forum, 30 November.

2021. हरित क्रांति ने किस तरह कुपोषण को बढ़ावा दिया? Trolley Times, Issue 16, April 3.

2021. Standardised Foods and Compromised Consumers: The New Farm Laws and the Future of Indian Agriculture, New India Foundation Blog, April 1. (https://newindiafoundation.scrollstack.com/post/5339/Standardised-Foods-...)

2021. हरित क्रांति से पहले कृषि क्षेत्र की स्थिति Trolley Times, Issue 11, February 26.

2021. कृषि सुधार क़ानून कैसे हों? Trolley Times, Issue 9, February 7. (Co-authored with Nikhit Kumar Agrawal)

2021. Reform for farmers needs to look at more than mere efficiency of agriculture markets. Indian Express, January 5. (Co-authored with Nikhit Kumar Agrawal)

2020. In Farm Debate, a Green Reality Check. Indian Express, December 7. (Co-authored with Nikhit Kumar Agrawal, PS. Vijayshankar and A.R. Vasavi)

2016. Putting Wheat in its Place or Why the Green Revolution wasn’t quite what it’s made out to be. The Wire, October 31.

2012. Pesticides and the Technological Treadmill. The Hindu Business Line, June 26.

Projects

2020-2025. Principal Investigator, "Measuring agrochemical body burden in a select human population: Allocating exposure by source, and studying the implications for public health and agrochemical regulation in India" funded by a Grand Challenges-Humanities and Social Sciences Grant from IIT Delhi. (Co-PIs: Dr. Naveen Thayyil, Associate Professor of Law, Regulation and Science & Technology Studies (STS), HUSS, Dr. Shaikh Ziauddin Ahammad, Associate Professor, DBEB, Prof. T.R. Sreekrishnan, Professor, DBEB, Prof. Arvind K. Nema, Professor, Civil Engineering, IIT Delhi)

2017-2018. Principal Investigator, “Exploring the Linkages between Food Consumption and Malnutrition in Select Agro-ecological Regions of India” funded by a Faculty Interdisciplinary Research Project Grant No. MI01429 by IIT Delhi. (Co-PI with Dr. Ankush Agrawal, HUSS, IIT Delhi)

Honours

2022. Selected to Women Leading IITs Leadership Program (by IIT Madras)  

2020. HUSS Grand Challenges Grant, IIT Delhi

2019. Inaugural Elizabeth Adiseshiah Memorial Award (For outstanding contributions to Development Studies by a scholar under 45 years)

2017. Faculty Interdisciplinary Research Grant, IIT Delhi     

2010. New India Foundation Book Writing Fellowship

2007. American Institute of Indian Studies Junior Research Fellowship, Chicago

2006. Wenner Gren Foundation Anthropology Fellowship, New York

2005. Industrial Performance Center Doctoral Fellowship, MIT

2002-03 Kelly-Douglas Research Fellowship, MIT

2002-03. Presidential Fellowship, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

2001. Phi Beta Kappa Fellowship, Georgetown University

2001. Science, Technology and International Affairs Gold Medal, Georgetown University

Teaching Areas

Critical Agrarian Studies; Science and Technology Studies (STS); Sociology of Environment and Development; Climate Change / Anthropocene; Sociology of Food and Nutrition; Technology and Inequality

Courses

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