Ashwini Deshpande, Professor of Economics, Ashoka University

Ashwini Deshpande is Professor of Economics and the Founding Director of Centre for Economic Data and Analysis (CEDA) at Ashoka University. Her Ph.D. and early publications have been on the international debt crisis of the 1980s. Subsequently, she has been working on the economics of discrimination and affirmative action, with a focus on caste and gender in India. She is the author of “Grammar of Caste: economic discrimination in contemporary India”, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2011 (Hardcover) and 2017 (Paperback); and “Affirmative Action in India”, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, Oxford India Short Introductions series, 2013. She received the EXIM Bank award for outstanding dissertation (now called the IERA Award) in 1994, and the 2007 VKRV Rao Award for Indian economists under 45.