Rasika Chopra is a Manager in MSC’s Government and Social Impact domain in India. She has eight years of experience as a researcher and consultant, majorly working on projects in the urban sector in India, including central finance commission grant support, value capture finance public policy, municipal finance, and WASH. She has also worked in sustainability research for green and ethical indices. Her expertise includes project management, monitoring and evaluation, program design, public policy formulation, government advisory, and research and dissemination.  A few examples of her recent work are as follows:

• Designing WSS-focused investment readiness tools, templates, and training materials to assist WSS MFIs/MSMEs in their capital-raising process for Water.org. (2023)

• Designing a national mission to enhance the safai karamcharis’ livelihoods in India through the formation of SHGs for sanitation workers, provisioning access to social safety net packages, such as packages for life and health insurance, pension, and food security, and access to credit to develop business models in the sanitation value chain and alternate livelihoods to create sustainable enterprises. (2021-ongoing)

• Assessment of the market demand for micro-loans for drinking water supply solutions in rural households in Tajikistan, defining a deployment process, and building lending capacities of the MFIs for financing household-level drinking water solutions to households. (2022)

• 15th Finance Commission urban memorandum funded by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs in India (MoHUA): Assessment of actual and project revenues and expenditure of urban areas in states across India, financial outlays of planned and future urban missions under MoHUA, and urban infrastructure requirements in the country for providing urban sector recommendations to the 15th Finance Commission. (2019)

Before joining MSC, Rasika was a Research Fellow at the National Institute of Urban Affairs (NIUA). There she undertook various roles, including technical support and advisory to central and state governments, preparation of public policy, and coordinating and conducting national-level workshops. Rasika holds master’s degree with specializiation in Management from Manchester Business School, University of Manchester. She is fluent in English, Hindi, and Urdu.