Biography

Rajkumar is trained in interdisciplinary social sciences. He was a Blue Charter Fellow wherein he worked on marine plastic pollution facilitated by The Association of Commonwealth Universities and spent 3 months in Cardiff University. Here, he designed a survey to measure behaviors, attitudes and perceptions around plastic pollution in Indian cities, later culminating into his doctoral work. He got awarded a PhD in Law and Governance from Centre for the Study of Law and Governance, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, India (2024).
Rajkumar’s doctoral work explored the various forms of regulatory institutions enabling individuals, households and communities in urban neighborhoods to adapt behavior changes around household recycling practices. The work involved ethnographic fieldwork in western India (Aurangabad, Maharashtra) and Delhi in 2021.
As part of the Max Weber Fellowship, he intends to explore the relationship between regulation of sustainable consumption behaviors or consumers-extended environmental cooperative behavior (recycling) and its broader contribution to ‘circular economy society’ in the global south. He wishes to understand the mechanisms out there that facilitate the moral and social values of the sovereign consumer to be aligned with the normative transitions required for ‘circular economy society’. The interdisciplinary work borrows analytical frameworks from law and economics and draws inspiration from Elinor Ostrom’s approach to understanding institutional diversity among real world social dilemmas. Rajkumar attempts to live a frugal lifestyle and connect with surrounding nature and animals.

Mentor

• Josephine, van Zeben