Prakriti Prajapati

I’m a PhD candidate in Geography at Penn State, where I study how India’s federal water engineers—hydrocrats—create and apply knowledge about water, infrastructure, and scarcity. Using an institutional ethnographic approach, my research examines how technical authority is embedded in bureaucratic systems, and how these engineers are shaped by the political and ecological landscapes they navigate.

By centering hydrocrats’ perspectives, I explore how water governance is practiced—how it’s understood, implemented, and sometimes quietly contested within the everyday workings of government institutions. I recently returned from ethnographic fieldwork inside India’s chief federal water bureaucracy, the Central Water Commission, where I studied how hydrocrats move through systems of hierarchy, control, and technical expertise, while also engaging with moments of uncertainty, care, and self-reflection.

My work is driven by a simple question: How do those who govern also govern themselves? And where might there be possibilities for reimagining expertise and transforming institutions from within?

I hold a BA in Economics from Lady Shri Ram College for Women (University of Delhi) and an MSc in Economics (with a specialization in the Environment) from the TERI School of Advanced Studies. Before beginning my PhD, I worked at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi and taught ethics as visiting faculty at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi.