Research & Policy Advocacy

SPS has made a number of notable contributions to research and policy advocacy. In 1998 India's Drylands, a study we carried out for the Union Ministry of Finance and the UNDP on the macroeconomic significance of watershed programmes for food security, employment guarantee and sustainable development, was published and released world-wide by the Oxford University Press.

From 2009 to 2014, Dr. Mihir Shah was Member, Planning Commission, Government of India, where he was largely responsible for the makeover of MGNREGA and initiating a paradigm shift in water management in India's 12th Plan. In 2015, the Government of India invited him to chair a Committee on Restructuring the Central Water Commission and Central Ground Water Board and also to chair a Committee to draft the National Water Framework Law and the Model Groundwater (Sustainable Management) Bill. In 2017, he was invited by the Government of Karnataka to Chair the Task Group set up to draft the State Water Policy.

Dr. Debashis Banerji is one of a handful of distinguished Indian scientists to have published original research in Nature. He is currently engaged in bioinformatic research on improvements in genetic engineering technology to make it relevant for poor farmers. His recent papers include "BtBrinjal and GM Crops: Towards A Reasonable Policy Ahead" in Current Science, "Strategies for Gene Stacking and Gene Containment in Transgenic Crops – The Major Challenges in Engineering Plant Transformation" for the International Conference on Molecular Biology and Biosafe Bioreactors — Some Highlights" for the International Conference on Photosynthesis in the Global Perspective, and "Strategies for Gene Containment and Gene Stacking in Transplastomic Engineering" for the All-India Botanical Conference & International Symposium on Plant Biology and Environment, "Advances in Plant Transformation Technology for Optimal Transgene Integration and its Expression Towards safer GM Crops in the Indian Context" for the Journal of the Indian Botanical Society.

P.S. Vijay Shankar was a Member of the National Steering Committee of the Integrated Watershed Development Programme of the Government of India from 2009 to 2014. He was also a member of the 12th Plan Working Group on Sustainable Groundwater Management. He authored a study commissioned by the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, Geneva on the history of education and health policy in independent India.

In 2004, the Hydrogeology Journal (official journal of the International Association of Hydrogeologists) carried his co-authored paper "Groundwater Demand Management at Local Scale in Rural Areas of India: A Strategy to ensure Water Well Sustainability based on Aquifer Diffusivity and Community Participation". His co-authored paper on "Rural Credit in 20th Century India", published in the Economic and Political Weekly (April 14th 2007), has been included as part of the prescribed syllabus for the Development Theory paper for BA (Hons.) Economics final year students at Delhi University. In 2016, with Dr. Mihir Shah, he co-edited the compilation Water: Growing Understanding, Emerging Perspectives, which contains the 25 best articles on water from the Economic and Political Weekly.