Vamsi Vakulabharanam

• Ph.D. in Economics, 2004, University of Massachusetts Amherst.
• MA in Economics, University of Massachusetts Amherst.
• MBA, 1994, XLRI (Institute of Management and Labour Relations), India.
• Bachelor of Technology 1992. Computer Science, National Institute of Technology, Warangal,
  India.

• Co-Director, Asian Political Economy Program, PERI, UMass Amherst, 2015-
• Associate Professor of Economics, University of Massachusetts Amherst, 2014-

• Political Economy
• Economic Development
• Economics of Inequality
• Economics of Asia

1. Received the first Amartya Sen Award (Economics) given to Distinguished Social Scientists by the Indian Council for Social Science Research (ICSSR), 2013.
2. Research Scholar, India China Institute, New School, New York, 2015-17.
3. Erudite Scholar in Residence in Kerala State at Union Christian College and St. Berchman’s College, MG University, India, July-August 2018.
4. Grant to be national coordinator for India on Wealth Inequality in China, India, Brazil and South Africa, 2019-2023, Southern Centre for Inequality Studies, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.

• From the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET, NY) between 2011 and 2014 for a project on "Development and Inequality: What can the Asian Experience Teach Us?"
• From the India China Institute (ICI) at the New School of Social Research, New York, 2007-2009 on "Inequality in China and India".

1. Invited Lecture - Dhar Studies Foundation, Indiana University Bloomington - "Inequality Matters in the Indian Economic Boom Since 1990s: Insights from a Political Economic Perspective." Feb 23, 2017.
2. Presented a paper "Building a New Capital City in South India and the Emerging Capitalist Dynamics: Neoliberal continuity or the Imagination of a new inclusive Capitalism?" and organized (chaired) a session - "Urbanization of Inequity: Urban Processes in South Asia" American Association of Geography 2017 meetings, Boston, April 5, 2017.
3. Invited Lecture: "Inequality in China and India During the Neoliberal Era," Bennington College, College-wide lecture, September 18, 2017.
4. Presented a paper "Caste, Class and Production of City Space in India," Political Economy Workshop, Department of Economics, University of Massachusetts Amherst, November 14, 2017.
5. Presented a paper "Indian Urban Process: Class, Caste and Religious Axes" Presentation at the Hong Kong-Shenzhen Bi-City Biennale (Invited by the Organization Committee of the Biennale), January 12, 2018.
6. Presented a paper “Class and Inequality in China and India over three decades”, Presentation at Department of Economics, Department workshop, UMass Boston, April 12, 2018.
7. Presented a paper “Grayness and Indian Urban Process” at the Advanced Graduate Workshop, Azim Premji University, July 11, 2018.
8. Invited lecture – “Why Read Das Kapital after 150 years?” at Union Christian College, Kerala, July 31, 2018.
9. Invited Keynote lecture (Professor CO Abraham memorial lecture) – “Class and Inequality in India Since 1980s” at St. Berchman’s College, MG University, Kerala, August 1, 2018.
10. Presented a paper “Class and Caste Inequalities, and Production of City Space in India,” Human Development and Capabilities Association (HDCA), Buenos Aires, Argentina, August 30, 2018.
11. Participated in a roundtable – “Teaching Capitalism” at the Museum of Capitalism, Tufts University, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, September 14^th, 2018.
12. Presented a paper “Class and Caste Inequalities, and Production of City Space in India,” at Graduate School of Design, Harvard University, Oct 19, 2018.
13. Presented a paper “Social Class and Inequality in China Between 1988 and 2013: A CHIP survey based analysis,” at a conference commemorating Thirty Years of China Household Income Project at Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China, Oct 27-28, 2018.
14. Presented a paper “Production of City Space in India: Class, Caste, and Grayness,” Mittal South Asian Institute, Harvard University, March 26, 2019.
15. Presented a paper “Wealth Inequality in India: 1991-2012,” at a conference on Wealth Inequality in the Global South at University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, April 10, 2019.
16. Organized the conference and presented a paper “Inequality in India Since Independence: The Story of Two Consolidating Urban Elites,” at the Inaugural conference on Asian Political Economy, Political Economy Research Institute, University of Massachusetts Amherst, April 13-14, 2019.
17. Participated as a faculty mentor in Young Scholars Initiative, Institute of New Economic Thinking, Hanoi, Vietnam, August 11-14, 2019.
18. Invited to present on Caste and Indian Wealth Inequality in Practice of Caste in USA, Special Lecture Series, August 14, 2020.
19. Participated in a Plenary of the Young Scholars Initiative (Urban and Regional Working Group), Institute of New Economic Thinking, (Virtual), November 5-12, 2020.
20. Plenary Speaker, “Inequality in India Since Independence: A Tale of Two Classes” Indian Institute of Technology, Patna, January 17, 2022.
21. Participated in a Workshop comparing Wealth Inequality in Brazil, India and South Africa, March 2, 2022.
22. Participated in a workshop on Caste, Class and Gender: Thinking about Intersectionalities, June 6^th-12^th 2022, Kathmandu, Nepal.
23. Wealth Inequality from analyses of the Super Wealthy in India, July 23-24, 2022, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India.
24. Discussant on a panel “Domestic Economy of China”, Institute of Chinese Studies (ICS), New Delhi and the Centre for Policy Research (CPR)  in the First Conference of 'China's Domestic Governance' (CDG), 9–10 September 2022. 
25. Presented Findings on Indian Wealth Inequality in Comparing wealthy Across Brazil, India and South Africa, October 15-17, 2022.
26. Presented at the International Seminar -“Unfurling Indian Economy Growth, Transformation and Sustainability”, on the theme – “Indian Inequality Since Independence” 15 - 17 December 2022.
27. Presented at the China-India conference on “China and India – A comparative political economy (1950-2010)” at the National University of Singapore, January 13-14, 2023.
28. Presented at WITS University, Johannesburg, - “Mapping the Wealthy in India: A Spatio-Temporal Perspective”, March 15-16, 2023.
29. Presented in the UMass Economics PE workshop – “Class and Inequality: China, India and their Changing Global Presence”, May 2^nd, 2023.
30. Presented at Centre De Sciences Humaines (CSH) New Delhi - “Mapping Wealth and the Wealthy in India”, June 5^th, 2023.
31. Presented at Advanced Graduate Workshop, Azim Premji University, India – “Class and Inequality: China, India and their Changing Global Presence,” July 5^th, 2023.
32. Presented at Advanced Graduate Workshop, Azim Premji University, India – “Diversity and Development: A Tale of two Indian Cities,” July 5^th, 2023.
33. Presented at the Class-Caste conference, University of Hyderabad – “Caste, City Spaces and Indian Cities”, July 27^th, 2023.
34. Presented at the ‘Approaching a Decade of New Andhra Pradesh’ conference, Institute for the Research on Andhra Pradesh (IRAP), Kurnool, India – “Economic Performance of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana – A Comparative Perspective”, August 12-13, 2023.
35. Presented at the Human Development and Capabilities Association (HDCA) Annual Conference, Sofia, Bulgaria – “Caste and Indian Cities”, September 13, 2023.
36. Co-organized a conference “Political Economy of Contemporary South Asia” at the University of California, Berkeley, and presented a paper – “Understanding the Emergence of Populism in India, Post-2014: A Political Economy Perspective”, October 13-14, 2023.

Books

1. Class and Inequality in China and India, 1950-2010, Oxford University Press (Forthcoming, 2024).

Edited:

1. 2. China, India and Southeast Asia: Paths to development and state-society relations, (eds.) Edmund Terence Gomez, Kee-Cheok Cheong, and Vamsi Vakulabharanam, Routledge, 2017.
   3. Global Handbook on Inequality, (eds.) Jodhka S., Bauman, B., Bultman, D., Vaid D., Hofner, L., Bultman, V. Vakulabharanam, Springer (Forthcoming, 2024).
   4. Wealth Inequality and Elites in the Global South: Perspectives from Brazil, India, and South Africa, (eds.) Aroop Chatterjee, Surinder Jodhka, Lena Lavinas, and Vamsi Vakulabharanam, Forthcoming, 2025).

​​​​​​journal articles

1. Michael, Kavya and Vakulabharanam V. (2015). Class and Climate Change in Post-Reform India, Climate and Development, Published online, April 23, 2015.
2. Vakulabharanam V. (2015). Merchant Capital in Neoliberal times: A mere appendage or a determining force? Studies in People’s History, Vol. 2(1).
3. Vakulabharanam V. & Sreeraj A.P., 2015. Whither Kerala Model: High Growth and Rising Inequality in Kerala after 1980s, Oxford Development Studies, Published Online, November 2015, pp. 1-17.
4. Vakulabharanam V. and Motiram S. 2016. Economic Mobility in Neoliberal India: An analysis of Class, Migration and Occupational Mobility. Contemporary South Asia (Special Issue on Mobility in India, edited by Nandini Sundar and Ravinder Kaur), Published Online August 2016.
5. Vakulabharanam, V. and De, R. 2016. “Growth and Distribution Regimes in India since Independence.” The Roundtable: The Commonwealth Journal of International Issues for a special issue on China, India and Southeast Asia: Paths to Development and State-Society Relations Volume 105 (6).
6. Gomez, Terence, Cheong, Kee-Cheok, and Vakulabharanam, V. 2016. “Introduction” The Roundtable: The Commonwealth Journal of International Issues for a special issue on China, India and Southeast Asia: Paths to Development and State-Society Relations Volume 105 (6).
7. Vakulabharanam, V. and Prasad, Purendra. 2017. "Babu's Camelot: Amaravati and the Emerging Capitalist Dynamics in Andhra Pradesh," Economic and Political Weekly, LII (2), 69-78.
8. Vakulabharanam, V. 2017. "Rereading Das Kapital in the Twenty First Century," Economic and Political Weekly, 52 (37).
9. Vakulabharanam, V. and Motiram S. (2023). “Gender and Work Patterns in Indian Cities: A Socio-Spatial Analysis.” Feminist Economics, 29(2).
10. Anand I., Thampi, A. Vakulabharanam V. 2023. “Wealth Inequality: The Indian Case.” Canadian Journal of Development Studies.
11. Motiram, S., and Vakulabharanam, V., 2024. “Mapping Religion, Space and Economic Outcomes in Indian Cities,” Urban Studies.

Book Chapters

1. Vakulabharanam, V. (2014). Economic Turbulence in Capitalism: Twentieth Century and Beyond. In A. Bagchi, & A. Chatterjee (Eds.), Marxism: With and Beyond Marx (pp. 115-135). New York: Taylor and Francis.
2. Motiram, S., & Vakulabharanam, V. 2015. Towards Understanding Poverty in India. In A. Akundy and Mishra R.K. (Ed.) India’s Social Sector Report - 2013, New Delhi: Academic Foundation.
3. Vakulabharanam, V. (2016). Erosion of Essential Goods in Neoliberal India: A Bottom-Up View. In K. Pistor, & O. De Schutter (Eds.), Governing Essential Resources. New York: Columbia University Press.
4. Rao, Smriti, & Vakulabharanam, V. (2018). Migration, Crises and Social Transformation in India Since 1990s in Cecilia Menjivar, Marie Ruiz, Immanuel Ness (eds.) Handbook of Migration Crises, Oxford University Press.
5. Vakulabharanam V. & Motiram, S. (2019). Role of Urban Inequality in the Phenomenon of Rising Wealth Inequality, India Social Development Report, Oxford University Press.
6. Motiram S., and Vakulabharanam V. (2019). Grayness of Cities, Essays in Honor of Satya Chakravarty, Springer.
7. Motiram S. and Vakulabharanam V. (2019). Income Inequality and Income Mobility, Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology, 2^nd Edition.
8. Vakulabharanam V. (2022). South Asian Economies in Two Imperialist Regimes Between 1950 and 2020, The Oxford Handbook of Economic Imperialism, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
9. Vakulabharanam V. (Forthcoming in 2023). Political Economy of Inequality in Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra Until 2014. Contextualizing Maharashtra, Delhi: Oxford University Press.
10. Vakulabharanam V., and Motiram S. (2024). The Contours of Economic Inequality in India Between 1980s and 2020s, Handbook of Global Inequality, Springer

• Political Economy I (Fall 2015, Fall 2017, Fall 2019, Fall 2021, Fall 2023) Department of Economics, University of Massachusetts Amherst (For Doctoral Students).
• The Process of Economic Development, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Spring 2015, 2016 (For Doctoral Students).
• Political Economy of Urban Development, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Spring 2017, 2019, 2021 and 2023 (For Doctoral Students).