Research Team

East West Centre Team

SUMEET SAKSENA
Fellow

Sumeet Saksena most recently served as a Fellow at the Centre for Environmental Studies, Tata Energy Research Institute, India. He is a member of the International Society of Exposure Assessment; Committee on Indoor Environment Quality, United States Department of Energy; Advisory Group for the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment; Standing Research Advisory Committee for the Central Statistical Organization; and the Technical Working Group, Cities 21 Pilot Project, International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives. Read more...

JEFFERSON M. FOX
Senior Fellow

Jefferson Fox is a Senior Fellow at the East-West Center. He received his Ph.D. in Development Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1983. Dr. Fox's scholarship focuses on land-use and land-cover change in Asia and the possible cumulative impact of these changes on the region and the global environment. Dr. Fox has co-edited several books, most recently, People and the Environment: Approaches for Linking Household and Community Surveys to Remote Sensing and GIS (Kluwer Academic Press, 2003). Read more...

G. SHABBIR CHEEMA
Senior Fellow and Director, Asia Pacific Governance and Democracy Initiatives (AGDI)

G. Shabbir Cheema's current work focuses on governance and democracy in Asia and the Pacific – including civil society engagement, cross-border governance, electoral and parliamentary processes, transparency and anti-corruption strategies, and civil service reform. He directs the Asia Pacific Governance and Democracy Initiative (AGDI). Read more...

SaciWATERs Team

ANJAL PRAKASH
Project Director

Anjal Prakash is the Senior Fellow at SaciWATERs. He has 12 years of experience in the sector and has worked extensively on the issues of ground water management, gender, natural resource management and water supply and sanitation in India. A graduate from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai India, Dr. Prakash holds PhD in Environmental Sciences from Wageningen University, The Netherlands. Dr Prakash has also authored a book titled "The Dark Zone: Groundwater Irrigation, Politics and Social Power in North Gujarat" published by Orient Longman, and has contributed several papers to leading journals. He is currently editing two books on Water and Health and Water Resources Policy in South Asia. He is coordinating this action research project in South Asia.

VISHAL NARAIN
Team Member

Vishal Narain is Associate Professor at the School of Public Policy and Governance at MDI, Management Development Institute, Gurgaon, India. His research and teaching interests are in inter-disciplinary analyses of public policy processes and institutions, water management and periurban issues. He holds a PhD from Wageningen University, the Netherlands.

He is the author of Institutions, technology and water control: water users’ associations and irrigation management reform in two large-scale systems in India (Orient Longman, 2003). His research has been published in international refereed journals like Environment & Urbanization, Water Policy, Water International and South Asian Water Studies. He was also a lead author for UNEP’s fourth GEO (Global Environment Outlook) assessment.

POULOMI BANERJEE
Senior Fellow

Dr. Poulomi Banerjee holds a PhD on watershed management from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Prior joining to SaciWATERS she was working as a researcher in water resource and policy division (WRPM) of The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), New Delhi. She has been working in the field of water supply and sanitation, natural resource management, climate change, agriculture, governance and policy issues for the past seven years . She has proficiency in handling both research and implementation related projects and associated with various national forums and societies. She looks into the peri urban and the study of disappearing lakes projects as a senior Fellow.

POOJA ANAND
Research Associate

Pooja Anand did her graduatation in Mass Communications & Journalism and then Masters in Political Science from Hyderabad Central University, Hyderabad, India. She has been working with SaciWATERs for last three months to support SCaN (SaciWATERs-Cap-Net Network (www.saciwaters.org/scan ) and will now be working with the present periurban project. She firmly believes that ‘development projects that give tangible results to the people are THE solution to the myriad environmental and global problems that seem to have enveloped the world as a whole’. She is also a trained BharatNatyam Dancer.