N. C. Narayanan works on the governance of urban water, sanitation and environmental commons. He specifically asks why technically viable, sustainable, and inclusive solutions fail to scale in small and medium towns in India, and what institutional arrangements, civic traditions, and knowledge systems make transformative governance possible. His work spans urban water and sanitation governance, municipal solid waste management, groundwater governance, climate adaptation in coastal cities, decentralised energy and the water-energy-climate nexus. Published across a range of journals including Water Policy, Water History, Water Alternatives, Journal of Water Sanitation and Hygiene for Development, Ecology and Society, Journal of Environmental Management, Natural Resources Forum, etc., his scholarship consistently bridges policy analysis and governance practice. He is the author or editor of four books, including Water Governance and Civil Society Responses in South Asia (Routledge, 2014). Publications list

Narayanan has supervised fifteen completed and five ongoing doctoral researchers at IIT Bombay and partner institutions, forming one of the most sustained university research groups on water and environmental governance. The group’s work spans urban sanitation systems, groundwater governance, water disasters, peri-urban water transfers, large dams, municipal solid waste, climate adaptation in coastal cities, decentralised solar energy, and environmental movements. List of researchers

His externally funded research portfolio spans over two decades and includes partnerships with the Institute of Development Studies Sussex, the University of Lausanne, UC Berkeley, Concordia University, Washington University in St. Louis, the Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Kyoto University, the University of East Anglia, and the Technical University of Munich, alongside funding from India’s Department of Science and Technology, the Swiss Programme for Research on Global Issues, UKRI, ESRC, the Belmont Forum, the Omidyar Network, and the Tata Trusts. Projects span urban sanitation, solid waste governance, climate resilience in coastal cities, decentralised energy, and transdisciplinary sustainability. List of research projects

From 2017 to 2025, Narayanan anchored the Living Lab Alleppey, an eight-year university–local governance initiative that trained hundreds of students from institutions across India and TU Munich in grounded, real-world sanitation and water governance research. Working iteratively across winter and summer schools, the initiative built cumulative knowledge of Alappuzha’s integrated sanitation challenges, facilitated governance campaigns with the municipality, and engaged state agencies to scale solutions. Watch the film.

Stewardship transferred in 2025 to the Technology and Governance Support Forum (TAGS Forum), founded by his former students who co-mentored the activity from the start.

Narayanan has developed a field-immersion pedagogy at IIT Bombay, refined across international schools in partnership with Washington University in St. Louis (2009), the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (2009, 2013), UC Berkeley and Concordia University (2014), the Technical University of Munich (2023, 2025), and IIT Bombay through Living Lab Alleppey (2017, 2018, 2019, 2023, 2025). This pedagogical approach, which trains students as governance researchers embedded in real urban problems, underpins both his teaching and his transdisciplinary research methodology.

Narayanan began his career as a hydrogeologist before reorienting his work toward the social and political dimensions of resource governance. He holds an M.Phil. in Applied Economics from the Centre for Development Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, and a Ph.D. in Development Studies from the International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University, The Netherlands. He has served as Assistant Professor at the Institute of Rural Management, Anand, and as Executive Director of the South Asia Consortium for Interdisciplinary Water Resources Studies (SaciWATERs), Secunderabad.

At IIT Bombay, he served as Head of the Ashank Desai Centre for Policy Studies and was part of the core group that developed the Master of Public Policy (MPP) and Ph.D. programmes in Public Policy. He also contributed to the development of the Technology and Development programme at CTARA and the interdisciplinary Climate Studies programme. He has been a Fulbright Visiting Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, and Visiting Faculty at the Universities of Lausanne and Monash. He is an Adjunct Professor at the National Institute for Advanced Studies, Bengaluru, and is currently on sabbatical at the Centre for Development Studies, Thiruvananthapuram.