Ashutosh Kumar is Reader and Chairman at the Department of Political Science, Panjab University, Chandigarh. He has been teaching for more than fifteen years and has supervised the completion of one Doctoral and seven M.Phil theses. He participated in a summer course on Human Rights at IIHR, Strasbourg, France in July 1998 and in October, 2002 taught a credit course on 'Ethnic Conflicts in South Asia: A case study of Jammu and Kashmir' at the International School of Social Sciences, University of Tampere, Finland.

Dr. Kumar has worked on the India segment of the World Values Survey Project and a UGC sponsored project titled `Ethno-Religious Identity and Political Responses in Kashmir: A Discourse on the issue of Autonomy', March 1999 to 2001.

He has been associated with Lokniti since 2001 and has served as the Punjab State Coordinator for the Post-Poll Survey on the Punjab Assembly Elections in February 2002 and the Parliamentary Elections in May, 2004. Dr. Kumar has completed a two month South-South faculty exchange fellowship at theCentre for Democracy and Development, Lagos, Nigeria, from November-December 2004. In January 2005 he undertook a study of Shiromani Akali Dal in Punjab as part of an International IDEA sponsored project on political parties in collaboration with the CSDS.


Research interests :
Dr. Kumar's main areas of interest include Indian Politics and State Politics with special reference to Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir. He has recently completed a research paper on 'Constitutional framework for autonomy in India: Its historical and legal evolution' for a forthcoming book on autonomy edited by Prof. Ranabir Samaddar to be published by Sage. He has worked on 'Globalization and democracy in post-colonial India: Identity, marginality and development' as part of the research undertaken under the South-South exchange programme between the Centre for Democracy and Development CDD, Lagos, Nigeria and the CSDS.

Selected Publications

Articles in Professional / Refereed journals

	'Electoral Politics in Punjab:1966-2004', Journal of Punjab Studies, Volume 12, Number 1, Spring 2005.
	'Nigeria: Political economy of Oil, Economic and Political Weekly, June 11, 2005.
	'Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation in Nigeria: Drawing Lessons from the Democratic Experience in India', Journal of Asian and African Studies, Sage, (Forthcoming).
	'Punjab: In Search of New Leadership, Economic and Political Weekly, December 18, 2004.
	'Hamza Alavi and post-colonial state', Economic and Political Weekly, August7, 2004.
	'Politics of ethno-religious identity in Kashmir: Dominant concerns and possible solutions' Contemporary India, Vol3, No. 2, April - June 2004.
	'Electoral politics in Punjab: A study of the Akali Dal', Economic and Political Weekly, May 20, 2004.
	'State Electoral Politics: Looking for the Larger Picture', Economic and Political Weekly, July26, 2003.
	'The Recent Assembly Elections in Punjab: Some Reflections on Results and Changing Voter Preferences', International Journal of Punjab Studies, Vol. 9:1, 2002.
	'Reflections on recent assembly elections in Punjab', Mainstream, May 18, 2002 (co-authored).
	'Punjab Assembly Elections: Decline of Identity Politics', Economic and Political Weekly, April 13,2002 (co-authored).
	'Ideology and politics of National Conference in Kashmir', Co-authored in Arun K Jana and Bhupen Sarmah, ed., Class, Ideology and Political Parties in India (New Delhi: South Asian Publishers, 2002).
	'Communal Trifurcation of Jammu & Kashmir', Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. XXXVI, No. 16, April 21-27, 2001.
	'Why Kashmir matters? Issues and Options', Punjab journal of Politics, Vol. xxv, no. 2, 2001.

Authored Books

Political Economy of the State in India (Delhi: Atlantic Publishers, 1993)

Edited Books

	(Co-edited) Burning Issues in Jammu & Kashmir Politics (Jammu: Jay and Kay Publishers, 1999).
	(Co-edited) Politics of Autonomy in Jammu and Kashmir (Jammu: Vinod Publishers, 1999).

Book Reviews

	Book Review, Seminar, May 2005. Madhu Purnima Kishwar (2005): deepening democracy: Challenges of governance and globalization in India, OUP, New Delhi, Rs 595[Hardback].
	Book Review, Seminar, 539, July 2004. Hindu nationalism and Indian politics [with an introduction by Pratap Bahnu Mehta]. An omnibus comprising of John Zavos, The Emergence of Hindu Nationalism in India; Thomas Blom Hansen, The Saffron Wave; Christophe Jafferlot and Thomas Blom Hansen, ed., The BJP and the Compulsions of Politics in India, OUP, New Delhi, 2004.
	Book Review, Seminar, 534, February 2004. Sumantra Bose, Kashmir: Roots of conflict, paths to peace, Vistaar Publications, New Delhi, 2003.
	Book review, Mainstream December 2003. Gurpreet Mahajan in collaboration with Helmut Reifeld, ed., The Public and The Private: Issues of Democratic Citizenship, Sage Publications, New Delhi, 2003.
	Book Review, Seminar, 531, November 2003. Ajay K. Mehra, DD Khanna and Gert W. Kueck, Eds. Political parties and Party Systems, Sage, New Delhi, 2003, P.420, Rs.850.
	Book Review, Pacific Affairs, Spring 2002-2003, Volume 76, No.5. Surinder S Jodhka, ed., Community and Identity: contemporary Discourses on Culture and Politics in India, Sage Publications, New Delhi, 2001.

Dr. Ashutosh Kumar also contributes to the Newspaper The Tribune, Chandigarh.