Reetika Khera


Reetika Khera is an Indian economist and social scientist. She is Associate Professor at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. Khera is on leave from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi.

Early life and education

Reetika Khera earned a B.A. in economics from Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, an M.A. in economics from the Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi and an M.Phil. in development studies from the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex in Brighton, England. Khera completed a Ph.D. in economics at the Delhi School of Economics. She did her schooling from Convent of Jesus and Mary, Baroda
and collaborates often with noted economist and activist, Jean Drèze.
She has received fellowships from the Institute for Economic Growth, the Commonwealth Scholarship Scheme, King's College London, and from Princeton University.

Career

Reetika Khera is one of India's leading development economists. Currently, she is Associate Professor at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad; and is on leave from her post as Sulaiman Mutawa Associate Chair Professor in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. Khera is a highly visible, seminal advocate for improved welfare programs in the country and actively helped to implement India's National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. She has worked with the G. B. Pant Social Science Institute, Allahabad University and is a visitor at the Centre for Development Economics at the Delhi School of Economics. She has also published several research papers analyzing NREGA, the Public Distribution System and other programs that affect India's most vulnerable citizens. One of her most important projects is the "Group Measurement," which evaluated the impact the NREGA project has had on India's citizens—that effort is titled, "The Jalore Experiment". In October 2017, she was in residence as an External Faculty Fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center and was nominated for the post to edit a book on India's Aadhaar program.
Khera has penned columns and been profiled in the mainstream media in India—for outlets such as NDTV, Scroll.in, Wire.in, Outlook India, Financial Times, Reuters, Bloomberg Quint, Quartz, Magnum Foundation, Indian Express, Business Standard, Business Line, Economic Times, Frontline, Business Today and the BBC. She is frequently interviewed on Indian television in English and Hindi and in alternative Indian media, Deccan Herald, Livemint, South Asia Citizens Web, Countercurrents, India Together and India Spend ).
In January 2018, her NYT editorial, "Why India's Big Fix is a Big Flub," was one of the most comprehensive public arguments ever made on the limitations of Aadhaar. Khera describes how the program aimed to biometrically register India's 1.3 billion residents in an even-handed, judicious way. But although millions enrolled, the program remains riddled with colossal privacy and corruption challenges.
In November 2017, Khera filed a "Right to Information" request with the Unique Identification Authority of India to solicit public data on how much the agency spent to advertise and promote Aadhaar, since the program started in 2009. UIDAI has not commented or responded to the RTI request.
In her January New York Times editorial, Khera argues:
Aadhaar was supposed to showcase the government’s forward thinking about efficient administration; it has only exposed the state’s coerciveness. It was supposed to ease the poor’s access to welfare; it has hurt the neediest. It was supposed to harness technology in the service of development; it has made people’s personal data vulnerable. One of the Indian government’s biggest banner projects has become a glaring example of all that can go wrong with policy making in this country.
As part of an April 2018 story in the New York Times, Khera highlights how India's poorest classes are among those Aadhaar has harmed the most. Rather than being aided by the program, Khera states that, "This is the population that is being passed off as ghosts and bogus by the government."
Her most cited peer-reviewed papers are:

Books