About
Dr Ashraf Pulikkamath is a Sir Ratan Tata Post-Doctoral Visiting Fellow (2025–26) at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), affiliated with the International Inequalities Institute. He is also an Assistant Professor of Economics at the School of Social Sciences & Humanities (VISH), Vellore Institute of Technology–Andhra Pradesh (VIT-AP) University, India, where he serves as the Coordinator of Economics.
His research lies at the intersection of gender, public finance, and development policy, with a particular focus on gender budgeting and welfare interventions in India.
Dr Pulikkamath’s work engages critically with how fiscal policy and welfare programmes shape gendered and caste-based inequalities in the Global South. Drawing on feminist economics and critical policy analysis, his research interrogates the political and institutional logics through which ostensibly progressive development policies may reproduce structural disadvantage. A central strand of his scholarship examines gender budgeting as a policy tool, exploring its limits, contradictions, and unintended consequences in sub-national governance contexts in India.
He received his M.A. in Econometrics (2015), M.Phil. in Economics (2017), and Ph.D. in Econometrics and Gender Studies (2024) from the University of Madras. His doctoral research offered a comparative analysis of gender budgeting across Indian states, combining qualitative fieldwork with policy and budgetary analysis. He has published research articles and book chapters on gender budgeting and public policy with leading academic publishers, including Routledge, Taylor & Francis, Wiley, and SAGE.
Dr Pulikkamath has been the recipient of several academic recognitions, including the JENESYS (Japan–East Asia Network of Exchange for Students and Youths) Fellowship awarded by the Japan International Cooperation Center (JICE), Government of Japan. During his fellowship at LSE, he is developing a critical study of marriage assistance schemes under gender budgeting, examining their implications for women’s agency, education, and social mobility among marginalised communities in India.