Biography

Shachi holds a BA(Honours) in Economics from Hansraj College, University of Delhi; an MA in Development from Azim Premji University; and an MA in Economics from Ram Manohar Lohia Awadh University. She completed her MPhil in Sociology at the Delhi School of Economics, where her research offered a discursive analysis of swadeshi as a form of economic nationalism. Tracing shifting swadeshi imaginaries in advertising alongside transformations in the Indian state and political economy, her work examined competing claims to scientificity and authenticity through a study of Patanjali Ayurved and the emergence of contemporary nationalist consumption cultures.

Professionally, she has worked as a Senior Research Consultant with the State Capacity Initiative at the Centre for Policy Research, contributing to projects on administrative training, bureaucratic competencies, and electoral management by public officials. She has also served as a consultant to various NGOs, civil society organisations, and state governments on welfare implementation, participatory planning, and urban governance.

Through teaching writing, she examines how regimes of representation (textual, mathematical, visual, and digital) shape disciplinary boundaries and hierarchies of knowledge. Her pedagogical approach treats writing as a broader practice of inscription and world-making, cutting across forms and media to explore how ideas acquire structure, authority, and political force.

Her research interests lie at the intersection of markets and material cultures, media, state infrastructures, digital governance, welfare, and the anthropology of bureaucracy and the state.