Nitesh Bharadwaj

Nitesh Bharadwaj is a Research Manager at J-PAL South Asia, based in Hyderabad. He currently works in the "Incentivised Sustainable Paddy Cultivation" project that evaluates the adoption of water-saving agricultural practices, with a particular focus on Alternate Wetting and Drying (AWD) in rice cultivation. The study examines how incentives and information can influence farmer adoption, water use efficiency, and environmental outcomes.

Previously, as a Research Associate and Senior Research Associate at J-PAL South Asia, Nitesh worked on a diverse portfolio of randomized evaluations, mainly across the education and agriculture domains. His work includes the School Leadership Training (SLT) project, which studied the role of targeted leadership and capacity-building interventions for public school leaders. He has also contributed to the evaluation of the World Bank’s TEACH classroom observation tool, for strengthening teacher effectiveness in low-resource settings. Other research engagements in JPAL span collective action in irrigation, land inequality and structural transformation, arsenic awareness in groundwater, and the evaluation of Mission Kakatiya’s minor irrigation tank rehabilitation program in Telangana.

Before joining J-PAL, Nitesh worked as Deputy Manager (Public Health) at Sambodhi Research and Communications Pvt. Ltd., where he managed the baseline impact evaluation of a multi-state intervention aimed at improving clinical and socio-economic outcomes among Tuberculosis patients across four Indian states.

Nitesh holds a Bachelor’s degree in Dental Surgery and a Master’s degree in Public Health from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai, with a specialization in Health Policy, Economics, and Finance. He is deeply interested in randomized evaluations and evidence-based public policy, with research interests spanning mental health, gender, health systems in the Global South, universal health coverage, and child learning outcomes.