Meghna Raj Saxena is a Research Associate at the National Data Innovation Centre (NDIC), NCAER. She holds a Master’s in Economics from Azim Premji University, Bengaluru, and a Bachelor’s in Economics (Honours) from St. Xavier’s College, Jaipur.

Her research interests lie at the intersection of gender, development economics, and macroeconomic policy. Her Master’s thesis, Defying Norms and Defining Autonomy, examined women’s agency and social norms across life stages among married women in India, using a mixed-methods approach combining NFHS-5 data with field research from Devgadh Baria, Gujarat.

She is skilled in qualitative fieldwork including interviews, participatory tools, surveys, and focus group discussions as well as geospatial analysis using QGIS and advanced statistics using R, STATA,and Python. She has experience working with datasets including NFHS, NCRB, CPHS, RBI, and IMF PortWatch.

Prior to NCAER, she worked as a Research Associate at XKDR Forum, Mumbai, where she evaluated state welfare schemes in Karnataka and Maharashtra using CPHS and DID methods, and tracked the rerouting of global maritime traffic using IMF PortWatch satellite data. Her work spanned across household finance, public finance, urban planning, health economics, and macroeconomy.

She has also interned with the National Foundation for India under the Abhijit Sen Rural Internship, conducting field research on Women’s Autonomy in Devgadh Baria: Role of Social Norms and Women Collectives and with the Budget Analysis and Research Centre Trust (BARC), Jaipur, where she analysed primary survey data from 17 districts in Rajasthan on gender roles in society and family in the post-COVID period, in collaboration with UNICEF.