Dr M. Vijayabaskar is a Professor at the Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai and member of the State Planning Commission, Government of Tamil Nadu. His research canters on political economy of development with a focus on labour and land markets, technological change, rural-urban linkages, transformations, and their intersections with policy-making. In addition to publishing in numerous scholarly journals and media outlets, he has co-authored the book ‘The Dravidian Model: Interpreting the Political Economy of Tamil Nadu’, published by Cambridge University Press earlier this year and co-edited monographs including Rethinking Social Justice (Orient Blackswan 2020), Participolis: Consent and Contention in Neoliberal Urban India, (Routledge 2012) and ICTs and Indian Social Development: Diffusion, Governance, Poverty (Sage 2008).
He has held Visiting Faculty positions at École des haute sétudesen sciences sociales (EHESS), Paris, University of Lausanne, Switzerland, the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London and IIT Madras. He is on the editorial advisory board of Oxford Development Studies, South Asia Multi-Disciplinary Academic Journal (SAMAJ) and the Indian Journal of Labour Economics and has served as a consultant to the Government of India, ILO, UNICEF and UNRISD. He holds a PhD in Economics from Jawaharlal Nehru University.