Lalitha is a Research Consultant with the Climate Resilience team at The Council. Her work focuses on community-driven climate action, with a core emphasis on community engagement, participatory approaches, and building robust evidence to inform climate policy. She is particularly interested in how socio-ecological systems respond to climate risks and how community-driven adaptation can strengthen resilience on the ground.

She previously worked as Research Fellow at Samrakshan Trust, a grassroots research organisation in Madhya Pradesh, where she collaborated with communities living along forest fringes. She conducted extensive surveys across more than 35 villages working directly with households and local institutions to understand their priorities and vulnerabilities. Her work strengthened her commitment to research that informs decentralised governance, climate adaptation, and livelihood security.

Lalitha holds a Master’s degree in Environment and Development from Ambedkar University Delhi and a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science from the University of Delhi. As part of her interdisciplinary MA programme, she undertook ecological field studies in the Himalayan foothills, including vegetation sampling and avifauna surveys. She also studied livelihood diversification in a mountain valley village in Kangra, Himachal Pradesh, and how communities navigate human-animal interactions. For her master’s thesis, she explored the political economy of agrarian land and livelihoods in southern Tamil Nadu through an in-depth study of land lease arrangements, engaging with agrarian political economy and land–labour relations. These academic endeavours shaped her approach to socio-ecological inquiry and deepened her interest in community-centred research.

Besides work, she enjoys documenting and writing about the workings of daily life. She is an avid reader of fiction and a devoted movie enthusiast.