Dr. N. Lalitha retired as a Professor at Gujarat Institute of Development Research (GIDR), Ahmedabad, Gujarat in April 2022. Trained in Economics, she has research interests in the areas of smallholder agriculture, sustainable livelihoods, agricultural biotechnology, and development issues related to intellectual property rights. She has carried out and engaged in research projects involving primary data collection. She has published books (5- authored and co-edited) and 88 research articles in peer reviewed journals and presented papers in national and international conferences. Since 2012, she has been working on issues focusing on geographical indications. She started her work in the area of GIs by studying select handicrafts in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Kerala. The outcome of this research was later published as “Regional Products and Rural Livelihoods- A Case on Geographical Indications from India” by Oxford University Press (co- authored). She was the principal investigator of a research project on “Geographical Indication Protected Agricultural Products of India: An Enquiry into the Economic, Livelihood and Governance Impacts”, that was completed in January 2020. In 2016, a fellowship from the ICSSR enabled her to compare the GI scenario in India and Thailand. Besides a book on GI, she has written 14 research papers that have been published in edited books and peer reviewed journals in the field of GI.
In the field of agricultural biotechnology, she focused on the experience of Gujarat in adopting the genetically modified cotton since its adoption in 2003 and has written 22 articles in peer reviewed journals and edited books about the experience of the farmers. She also looked at the possible impact of the product patent regime on the Indian pharmaceutical industry. This interest made her to focus on the status of traditional knowledge and intellectual property protection in the Siddha system of medicine practiced in Tamil Nadu. Lalitha has also carried out research projects on the issue of access to essential medicines in the primary sector in Tamil Nadu.
She has taken part in the consultation of the government committees constituted at the state and central level for the implementation of Geographical Indications. She is currently serving as a member of the National Assisted Reproductive Techniques and Surrogacy Board, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India. Dr. N. Lalitha has carried out consultancy assignments for the World Bank, World Intellectual Property Organisation, Geneva, Natural Resources Institute, Greenwich University, Uk, Planning Commission, Government of India, New Delhi and Fairtrade International, Germany. She served as a visiting faculty and taught Intellectual Property Rights and Technology Management for the post graduate students of National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research (NIPER), Ahmedabad, from 2007-2013. N.Lalitha is a member of the editorial board of Journal of Intellectual Property Rights published by CSIR-National Institute of Science Communication and Policy Research. She had been a visiting research fellow at University of California, Berkeley, USA, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, MSH Paris, France and Thammasat University, Bangkok, Thailand.