Impact
A Platform for Young Academics and Scholars
The Foundation actively nurtures the next generation of scholars of rural India through academic workshops, podcast series, seminar platforms, and open-access research tools that provide graduate and early-career researchers with space to learn, present their work, and engage with leading academics and changemakers in the field. It also runs a dedicated online seminar series for young scholars of rural society, chaired by Prof. Barbara Harriss-White, where 20+ researchers from diverse institutions across India and beyond have presented their work over three rounds and received feedback from peers and expert discussants.
Research Methodologies
The informality and diversity of the Indian countryside make it difficult for official data sources to capture ground realities. The Foundation has devised unique methodologies to understand household incomes, structural inequalities, and informal labour relations. These are compiled into a Survey Methods Toolkit, made free and open source for researchers and students.
Primary Data Archives
More than 35 Ph.D. students have used the Foundation's data archives as the base for their doctoral research, alongside many post-graduate and post-doctoral researchers. These archives — drawn from FAS PARI research surveys — provide a rigorous foundation of primary data on rural India that continues to support new scholarship.
Durable Public Knowledge
The Foundation is committed to producing knowledge that endures. Its open-access methodologies, primary data archives, and research outputs are designed to serve scholars and practitioners well beyond individual projects — building a lasting body of evidence on the realities of rural India that remains freely available to all.
Informing Public Discourse
FAS organises public lectures with eminent personalities to bring evidence-based understanding of agrarian transformation into wider civic and policy conversations. By connecting rigorous research with public audiences, the Foundation ensures that the realities of rural India remain visible and central to national discourse.
Social Media Outreach
The Foundation maintains an active presence across all major social media
platforms — Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn — with a wide and growing audience. This presence extends the reach of its research, making findings accessible to students, practitioners, policymakers, and the general public.
