By Nalini Bikkina | FDP 2012
The trajectory of a professional life is rarely a straight line. Often, it is a mosaic of intent, abrupt redirection, and the stubborn persistence of purpose. My journey from the structured discipline of psychology to the messy, high-stakes arena of interdisciplinary social sciences and public policy is exactly a narrative of disillusionment, discovery, and the resilience required to study a system that often refuses to be understood.
My early academic training was rooted in psychology. I was fascinated by the mechanics of the human mind and the social dynamics that govern human interaction. Yet, even then, I did not see psychology as a silo. I saw it as a lens. While a psychology lab or clinic can isolate variables, it cannot replicate the raw complexity of life on the ground. I began to wonder: If we can understand why an individual acts the way they do, can we not apply that understanding to how society functions, how institutions are built, and how policy outcomes are mediated by human perception? Integrating ethnographic research allowed me to step out of the sterile environment and into the field, providing a boots on the ground perspective that reveals the unscripted human behaviors and cultural nuances that no clinical simulation can capture.
This intellectual curiosity was not purely academic; it was deeply personal. I harbored a singular ambition: to serve as a Civil Servant. I dedicated years to the grueling preparation for public service commission examinations, eventually securing a position with the Andhra Pradesh Public Service Commission. It was the realization of a dream, or so I thought.
The reality of the administrative machinery was a stark, jarring contrast to the idealism of the textbooks. I witnessed, firsthand, the paralyzing grip of systemic corruption, the way policy intent was routinely hollowed out by bureaucratic inertia and personal gain. Furthermore, the environment was not one that valued intellectual rigor or administrative efficiency; rather, it was a space where bureaucrats were treated as mere cogs, often silenced or sidelined if they questioned the status quo.
The cognitive dissonance between my desire to effect positive change and the reality of the institutions I inhabited became unbearable. I made the difficult decision to leave service, a move that felt like a defeat at the time, but which ultimately liberated me to pursue a different path: the academy.
Transitioning into the teaching profession was a conscious pivot toward research. I believed that if I could not change the system from within, I would study it, critique it, and offer evidence-based alternatives from the outside. During this shift, one of my favorite instructors became a pivotal mentor, teaching me to discern the fine line between activism and research. They emphasized that while activism is driven by the desire for immediate change, research demands the discipline to follow data wherever it leads, even when it contradicts our personal convictions. This lesson ensured that my critique of the system remained intellectually grounded rather than merely ideological.
However, moving into interdisciplinary research was met with profound skepticism. For most of my academic journey, I have faced a wall of judgment. Traditionalists in both psychology and political science viewed my interdisciplinary approach with suspicion. “Psychology is for the clinic, not the legislature,” they would say. “Public policy belongs to economists and lawyers,” others claimed. This professional gatekeeping often felt like a dismissal of my lived experience and an invalidation of the unique synthesis I was trying to create.
Amidst this, there were two profound exceptions. The Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad and the Fulbright Commission saw what others could not: that complex social problems cannot be solved by one discipline alone. They recognized that the behavioral insights I brought from psychology were not peripheral; they were essential to understanding the efficacy of policy interventions. Being validated by institutions of such caliber provided more than just a credential; it provided the intellectual scaffolding to continue despite the prevailing biases.
The challenges, however, persisted. In various research environments, I encountered not just intellectual pushback but, on several occasions, overt biases and forms of racism. In spaces where specific pedigrees and disciplinary purisms are held in high regard, an outsider who dares to blend methodologies is often treated as a threat or an anomaly. These experiences of being judged are not merely professional hurdles; they are exhausting, draining experiences that test one’s resolve. Yet, I continue. Why? Because the problems I study are simply too important to abandon.
My background in psychology allows me to conduct research that is grounded in human reality, not just institutional theory. When I study public systems, I am not just looking at the flowcharts or the budgetary allocations; I am examining the psychological incentives of the actors, the behavioral barriers to policy uptake, and the cognitive biases that lead to policy failure. This interdisciplinary approach provides a granularity that traditional, siloed research often misses.
The judgment I have faced is, perhaps, a symptom of an academic structure that is still evolving. We live in an era of wicked problems like climate change, public health crises, systemic inequality, which inherently defy disciplinary boundaries. My commitment to this research is, therefore, a commitment to the necessity of interdisciplinary inquiry. The world does not unfold in neat, disciplinary packages. Policy outcomes are deeply psychological, social, and cultural phenomena. To understand them, we must be willing to traverse the borders between fields, even when the path is lonely and the gatekeepers are hostile.
My transition from an aspiring civil servant to an interdisciplinary researcher has taught me that true impact often comes from the margins. When you are told that your work does not fit, it is usually because you are pushing the boundaries of what is known. I continue to pursue this research because the history of social progress is written by those who refused to accept that the current way of thinking is the only way of thinking. My training in psychology gave me the tools to observe; my experience in the public sector gave me the resolve to act. Together, they form a career that is not about fitting in, but about making sense of the systems that shape our lives.
Author Bio:
Nalini Bikkina is Professor and Fellow, Multidisciplinary Unit for Research in Translational Initiatives at GITAM School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Visakhapatnam.
