Bishakha Ghosh

I am an Economist by training with specialisation in Financial Economics and Ecological Economics. I earned a Master of Philosophy degree in Development Studies with specialisation in Economics from Centre for Economic and Social Studies, Hyderabad andpursuing Ph.D. in Development Studies with specialisation in Economics from there as well. I am in the advanced state of earning my Ph.D.

For my M.Phil. degree, I studied how resource endowments affect farmers’ ability to access water for irrigation in two districts in West Bengal. I understood that, biophysical factorsalso determine farmers’ ability to access water for irrigation. Hence, for my Ph.D., I studied how ecological, socioeconomic and institutional factors such as water logging, water level depletion, ingress of salinity, land use land change (LULC) and collective actiongovern the access and utilisation of both single and multiple sources of irrigationin the Eastern Gangetic Basin. Jamshedji Tata Trust supported my Ph.D. through Institutional Doctoral Fellowship at Research Unit for Livelihoods and Natural Resources/Centre for Economic and Social Studies.

I gained valuable research experience by contributing to various projects funded by national (both government and private) and international agencies on river basins, sustainable small farm agriculture, economic value of biodiversity loss through minimising by-catch in marine fisheries, equity issues in WaSH (UNICEF) and economic analysis of value chains in dry-fishes (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada).

During the course of my research work, I was proposed and seconded to become a member of Indian Society for Ecological Economics (INSEE) and was also latergiven an opportunity to assist the then Secretary of INSEE, in organising their Tenth Biennial Conference on “Climate Change and Disasters: Challenges, Opportunities and Responses in November, 2019.

I am passionate about continuing research in Natural Resources Management, Agriculture and Gender.