His research and teaching interests fall in the fields of development sociology, political sociology, agrarian political economy, and social theory. He has had a long-standing intellectual and political engagement with the phenomenon of rural land dispossession for “development projects” such as dams and now Special Economic Zones (SEZs). His work can be found in The Land Question in India: State, Dispossession and Capitalist Transition (Oxford University Press) and Governing Global Land Deals: The Role of the State in the Rush for Land (Wiley-Blackwell).