Gautam Nair is Assistant Professor of Public Policy at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. He is a scholar of inequality, distribution, and democracy, with a focus on the politics of social policy, state-business relations, and South Asia. He received his PhD in political science with distinction in from Yale University.
His book manuscript, titled Retail State: The Politics of Consumption Welfare in India and Beyond, develops a new theory of redistribution and social policy. Other ongoing work studies the representation of consumer interests in public policy, the political economy of reparations and group-targeted transfers, the politics of finance, and democracy and development in contemporary India.
His papers are published or accepted in the Journal of Politics, International Organization, Comparative Political Studies, and Perspectives on Politics, among other journals. This research has been supported by competitive grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF), Time-Sharing Experiments in the Social Sciences (TESS), and several academic centers at Harvard.
Nair teaches courses on South Asia and the political economy of development in the Masters in Public Administration/International Development (MPA/ID). He co-chairs the Weatherhead Research Cluster on Business and Government and is affiliated with the Ash Center, Center for International Development, and other Harvard institutes.
For more information, visit his .
On Leave in Spring 2025.