Dr. Sudhindra Sharma
Executive Director
Sudhindra Sharma is the Executive Director of IDA. He has been
with IDA and has guided it since its inception in 1996. He is a Sociologist by
training and has over twenty years of experience working in research and
development in Nepal, Afghanistan, India, Finland, and Thailand.
Dr. Sharma has led over 20 nationwide surveys in Nepal, covering
areas of community development, economics, finance and investment, governance,
peace and conflict, politics, and political economy. He led the survey series Nepal
Contemporary Political Situation or NCPS, which was a longitudinal opinion
survey focused on politics and was underway between 2004 and 2015. Other survey
series he has recently led are Public Safety and Security (2007–2011), Business
Climate Survey (2010-11), six surveys for the USAID-funded local governance
and community development program, Sajhedari Bikaas (2013–2017), The
Survey of Nepali People (2017 and 2018) under DFAT-TAF partnership.
He is the author of the book Procuring Water: Foreign Aid and
Rural Water Supply in Nepal (2001) and a co-editor of the book Aid Under
Stress: Water, Forests and Finnish Support in Nepal (2004). He has
contributed to and co-authored several policy papers brought out by the
Institute of Development Studies, University of Helsinki.
In 2009, Dr. Sharma was awarded a Docent in Development Studies at
the University of Helsinki and has since begun supervising PhD candidates
enrolled in Development Studies at the University of Helsinki. He completed his PhD from the University of Tampere, Finland in
2001 and Masters from Ateneo de Manila University, Philippines in 1992. He has
international experience in research as a visiting scholar at the German
Development Institute, Bonn; Institute of Development Studies, Helsinki; Center
for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi; and the Institute of Asian
Studies at Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok.