Navigating India’s policy landscape

When and where:

Thursday, November 9, 5:30-7:00 PM
Sloan School, E62-250
All Tata Talks are free and open to the MIT community

The topic:
Informing and implementing policies in India often requires examining the underlying institutional and technical arrangements of proposed rules and regulations. This talk will discuss the landscape of policymaking in India using examples from the energy and climate change spheres. Based on fieldwork and literature, Khosla will provide insights on the opportunities, obstacles, and avenues to bridge the gap between existing institutional structures and policy goals.

About the speaker:
Radhika Khosla is a Visiting Scholar at the MIT Energy Initiative, and a Visiting Scholar at the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy, University of Pennsylvania for the fall of 2017.

As a Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research (CPR) based in New Delhi, India, she works on the integrated nature of India’s energy sector to examine the linkages between energy, development, and climate change, particularly in urban areas. She also focuses on the demand-side of Indian energy, with special attention to the technological, institutional, and behavioural aspects of energy use as well as its lock-in to a rapidly growing, built environment.

Prior to being at CPR, she was a Staff Scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) in New York, where she led research and implementation on building energy policies in Indian states. She has also been a Welch Fellow at NRDC’s Center for Market Innovation, and worked with The Energy and Research Institute, The Climate Group, and the Center for Advanced Study of India at UPenn. During her time at CPR she was also an India Fellow for the Oxford India Centre for Sustainable Development at Somerville College, University of Oxford.

Khosla holds a PhD in the Geophysical Sciences from the University of Chicago and an undergraduate and master’s degrees in Physics from the University of Oxford.