Selected Work
I work on one question: how do societies turn technology access and exceptional individual talent into durable institutional capability?
This page is the quickest route through the work: governance methods, worked examples, teaching materials, essays, and technology-pathway analysis.
Start Here
- Operative-State ContestabilityA working paper on evidence, challenge, and status control when AI agents act through external systems.
- Governance Stress-Test ChecklistThe reusable diagnostic tool for testing institutional readiness before deployment.
- Samagra Vedika Governance Stress-TestThe flagship worked example, built from the public record.
- Governance Stress-Test Protocol NoteThe evidence and workflow protocol behind the method.
- Technology And Institutions Teaching CohortThe teaching pathway for the same institutional-reasoning method.
Working Paper
- Operative-State Contestability: Agent-Mediated Action and the Institutional Conversion of Computer EvidenceWorking paper, 7 September 2026. Examines when a relevant challenge can alter the status or consequences of a machine-mediated state while its evidentiary basis is assembled and reviewed.
Governance Stress-Tests
A governance stress-test takes a concrete technology decision - an AI procurement, a deployment threshold, a DPI-linked rollout - and asks whether it survives procurement, accountability, recourse, public-value, and operational constraints before use.
Read these in sequence:
- Governance Stress-Tests HubThe series page for the method layer.
- Governance Stress-Test ChecklistThe public diagnostic tool.
- Worked example: Algorithmic Welfare Eligibility - Samagra VedikaThe method applied to a real welfare-eligibility case.
- Governance Stress-Test Protocol NoteThe evidence and workflow protocol behind the method.
Teaching
I have taught AI governance and public policy through EPPAI and write teaching materials designed to be reused by existing programs, student groups, and independent learners.
- AI Governance Primer: CoreCore primer for students and readers entering AI governance.
- AI Governance Primer: AdvancedAdvanced primer for institutional and implementation questions.
- EPPAI course materialsCourse materials from Economics and Public Policy of AI.
- Technology And Institutions Teaching CohortA small pilot for teaching institutional reasoning around AI and technology policy.
- Open teaching module on technology and institutionsIn development: syllabus, reading sequence, exercises, and teaching guides.
Selected Yukti Essays
Yukti is where the concepts are developed in public. This is a selected route through the work on AI infrastructure, operational capacity, digital public infrastructure, capability formation, technology as an institutional problem, and middle-power strategy.
- The Stack Beneath the InterfaceWhy subsidized AI access does not yet build AI capability.
- Operational Capacity Is AI CapabilityThe scarce layer is not access to models, but the institutional ability to use them well.
- Digital Public Infrastructure and Its LimitsPublic rails can shape AI adoption; they cannot supply the compute, energy, or institutional judgment AI requires.
- Capability Formation, Not Technology AdoptionAccess can be rented. Adoption can be subsidized. Capability has to compound.
- Why Technology Is an Institutional ProblemEfficiency can be bought. Judgment, recourse, and legitimacy have to be built.
- The Dynamic Trilemma of Technology StrategySovereignty, frontier access, and efficiency cannot all be maximized; what matters is what each choice leaves behind.
- The Uneven Acceleration ProblemAI can make generation faster before institutions become better at absorbing what gets generated.
- The AI Market Is Not One MarketBuyers enter linked markets for models, infrastructure, coordination, and institutional assurance.
Technology-Pathway Analysis
For the International Science Council, I have worked on technology profiles: structured assessments of how emerging technologies develop along institutional and infrastructural pathways.
- [1] Data Storage and SharingData Infrastructure in Global South Science Systems: Institutional Pathways and Strategic Choices; Venkat Nadella and Chandan Nagarajappa, International Science Council / Centre for Science Futures, 2026.
- [2] Robotics and AIRobotics and Artificial Intelligence in Global South Science Systems: Pathways, Infrastructure and Institutional Choices; Venkat Nadella and Chandan Nagarajappa, International Science Council / Centre for Science Futures, 2026.
Contact
I write Yukti and build public methods for reasoning about technology and institutions from India. Earlier work has spanned development finance, science policy, and innovation systems.