Ruchika Singh’s research interests cover electoral-political reforms and governance accountability and transparency. She holds a Masters degree in Public Policy from Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore and a Masters degree in Social Work from Jamia Millia Islamia University, Delhi.
Prior to her current role as an independent policy analyst, she was affiliated to the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), a nonprofit organisation working on electoral political reforms in India. At ADR, she spearheaded a number of research and information outreach campaigns. She anchored the analysis of electoral expenses submitted by candidates after the Lok Sabha 2009 elections to the Election Commission of India, which highlighted the gross undervaluation of the expenses incurred by the candidates during campaigning. She was also part of the core team that initiated the watershed project on getting political parties declared as public authorities under the Right to Information Act. Her Master’s thesis focused on developing a strategic plan to ensure efficient and effective dissemination of information analysed by ADR.
She has been associated with the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER) and Unnati, where she worked on Capacity Building, Dissemination and Research on Urbanisation in India. She has done internships with the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore, the National Campaign for People’s Right to Information, Pratham-Oxfam and the Young Women’s Christian Association.
Research :
As a public policy scholar with The Hindu Centre, Singh will undertake a study on Intra-Party Democracy in Political Parties in India. For a while now, there have been increasing calls to make functioning of political parties participatory to enhance the public participation in political processes. Proponents of electoral and political reforms in the country have been asking for intra-party democracy in political parties, claiming it will help address problems like dynasty politics and authoritarianism. This research will investigate how political parties in India adopt and practice intra-party democracy and will further analyse whether greater intra-party democracy is in the larger interests of the country, political parties and party leaders.
Read Policy Report No. 7 here:Intra-party Democracy and Indian Political Parties.
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