About me

I come from a small place in Kerala called Erumeli. It is not a village in its purest sense, nor a city in its wildest. It is something in between, and that something in between is a town.

The Erumely grama panchayat, according to Wikipedia. (A random fact for you.)

And of course I miss it. The people more than the things, then the nature, then the whole long list of regional delicacies.

Growing up I wanted to be many things at different points: truck driver, soldier, ethical hacker, monk. There were also dreams in which I was a photographer, a designer, a video creator and a restaurant owner.

Funnily enough, economist never made the list. The starting point was my dad, a political scientist, and my uncle, an economist, preaching the wonderful avenue of possibilities. You can work in a corporation, in academia, in politics, as a bureaucrat, as a consultant, or as “the finance guy”.

As the owner of a truly indecisive mind, I was hooked by a path that refused to close any doors. People say mathematics or physics does the same, but my brain is slightly incapacitated when it comes to those. So economics it was.

I'm glad it happened, and glad it leaves me time to dabble in the creative things I enjoy.

Now that I'm here, there are things in this field I really love. Otherwise I wouldn't be doing a PhD, I guess. (There is no pressure from an academic family. I promise.)

It was during my bachelor's that I got interested in environmental issues and climate change. The interest lasted, and was probably amplified by my time with the Student Christian Movement of India and Anjappam. There I learned about ecological issues, took part in conservation work on the ground, and spent time helping people who needed it.

After my bachelor's I wanted a master's with a specialisation in environmental economics, and Universität Hamburg, known for its climate excellence cluster, had electives in environmental and climate economics by the handful. Somewhere along the way I also started liking the econometrics, which nobody had warned me about, and took electives in that too.

The two met in my master's thesis, an evaluation of India's National Clean Air Programme. The answer was not a happy one: no real improvement overall, and in some places the air got worse. Finishing it left me wanting to know what institutions need to be in place for an environmental policy to actually work, and what happens when the people enforcing the rules depend on the people bending them. That is where my PhD is headed. I think it could help explain why so many environmental policies in developing countries like India fall short. The longer version is on the Research page.

I picked up a camera when I was thirteen: a Sony Cyber-shot point-and-shoot. I remember nothing specific, except that it came on every family trip and I shot random pictures left and right. My first DSLR was a gift from my dad on my eighteenth birthday. That is when I really began to learn the art of it.

I've heard the argument that painting is superior to photography, and I somewhat agree. I wish I could paint. With some substantial time I might, one day. Not yet.

Until then, photography is the door through which I get to make things. I love doing more or less all of it and haven't found a niche. For now my favourites are landscapes and documentary work.

Any creative pursuit widens the patterns your brain thinks in, and photography does that for me. Perspective matters in a photograph and it matters in a problem. Stand somewhere else, and the solution changes.

Photography is a conscious process for me and needs motivation. Badminton needs neither: I turn up regardless of mood. It has been a constant since 2023, which is funny, because I was never much into sports before Germany.

I play at ETV Hamburg, one of the city's biggest sports clubs, and I'm on one of its teams in the Bezirksliga, the middle of the five leagues that Hamburg's badminton association runs. From September to April that means a match day against another club every couple of weekends.