Bhopal, India ·
We map the predictable forces — psychological, genetic, sociological, regional — that shape human outcomes. Then we build practical tools to change them.
Who We Are
Why does a child born in the same city, same year, same economic bracket as another child end up in a completely different place twenty years later? The answer isn't luck. We intend to find out what it actually is — and do something about it.
The majority of socially influential research is conducted in a handful of countries, on samples that do not represent the populations most affected by poverty, exclusion, and systemic failure. A study on motivation and economic mobility conducted in Boston tells us relatively little about a family in Madhya Pradesh. The factors, the cultural context, the available infrastructure, the psychological meaning of work and identity — these are not universal. They must be studied where they actually exist.
Tanya Sharma founded the RANDOM Initiative out of a conviction that the most important questions about human outcomes are being studied in the wrong places, with the wrong tools, for the wrong audiences. She leads the volunteer teaching programme in Bhopal and directs the Initiative's flagship begging-cycle study.
Bhopal, India Social Research Field EducationThe Problem
When someone lives in poverty for generations, we call it misfortune. When a child fails in school despite effort, we say some kids just aren't built for it. When a person cannot pull themselves out of a survival-mode existence, we wonder why they won't just try harder.
They prevent us from looking at what is actually happening — and they absolve every system, institution, and researcher of the responsibility to investigate. Life outcomes that appear random are almost always the product of identifiable, measurable, and — critically — addressable factors.
What We Study
How a person understands who they are shapes what they believe is possible for them — before any external barrier is reached.
Chronic stress and scarcity reconfigure cognitive function. This is not a moral failure — it is a documented physiological response.
Genetic factors influence learning styles, temperament, and vulnerability to certain conditions — and interact powerfully with environment.
Who surrounds a person — and whether that network reinforces or punishes progress — is one of the strongest predictors of mobility.
Region is not backdrop. Local economy, culture, infrastructure, and institutional quality directly determine which paths are even visible.
The same intervention applied at age 6 versus age 16 produces entirely different outcomes. Context is not incidental — it is the variable.
Our Work
RANDOM operates across four interconnected areas. Research informs delivery. Field experience reforms research. Data optimises the organisations doing the delivering. And direct teaching keeps us honest about what real conditions look like on the ground.
Interdisciplinary teams — sociologists, neuroscientists, data analysts, mathematicians — studying social problems from the inside out. Two parallel teams on every issue: one mapping root causes, one generating solutions. We seek grants, publish findings, and translate everything into usable field tools.
A machine-learning system that helps trained teachers understand what each student actually needs — not what an average student needs. Because two children with identical backgrounds can have entirely different internal worlds, and a teacher who understands that is a fundamentally more effective teacher.
We help philanthropic organisations understand what is actually working — and what isn't. Data reports, financial modelling, survey design, impact measurement. Good intentions are not enough. We believe every organisation doing social good deserves the analytical infrastructure to do it better.
Direct delivery. Volunteer teachers and subsidised study materials for underprivileged students. Led by founder Tanya Sharma and collaborators. This is where the research meets the child — and where the child teaches us what the research missed.
How It Connects
Active Studies
Our flagship study examines why individuals engaged in begging — a survival mechanism with high short-term returns — resist transitioning to employment or education, even when opportunities are available.
The common framing — that beggars are lazy, irrational, or simply don't want to change — is empirically unsupported and analytically useless. Our study approaches this as a systems problem, not a character problem. We are mapping the psychological, neurological, economic, and social structures that sustain the cycle — and building an evidence base for interventions that actually address those structures.
The Methodology
We do not import problem definitions from elsewhere. We work with communities to understand what the problem actually is — in this place, for these people, right now.
One team investigates root causes with no solution mandate. Another develops potential solutions with no root-cause attachment. Both work simultaneously, so neither constrains the other.
Behavioural data, sociological surveys, neural mapping, longitudinal observation. We triangulate across methods to arrive at findings that hold up to scrutiny.
Findings become field tools — practical frameworks teachers, NGOs, and community workers can actually use — not just papers that sit in journals.
Every intervention we design gets tested. We track what works, what backfires, and what the data says versus what we hoped it would say. Honest measurement is non-negotiable.
Field observations from delivery programmes become new research questions. The loop is the point. We improve continuously, and what we learn goes back into every other vertical.
The Team
Our student researchers bring fresh interdisciplinary perspectives to deeply entrenched social problems. We recruit across sociology, neuroscience, data science, psychology, and economics — valuing rigour and curiosity over credentials.
Get Involved
Bring your discipline to problems that need it. We work across sociology, neuroscience, psychology, statistics, economics, and education.
Explore collaborationWe can help you understand your own impact data, identify what's actually driving your outcomes, and build better measurement systems.
Work with usWe place trained, supported volunteer teachers with underprivileged students. You will receive sociology and child psychology training — not just subject training.
Join a cohortWe operate grant-funded research and open-source our findings. Your support directly funds studies, salaries, and field tools that reach communities with no access to institutional research.
Support the workWhat We Believe
We do not start from a position of moral judgment about the populations we study. Curiosity produces better research than condemnation, and better interventions than charity.
A study conducted elsewhere may be a useful starting point. It is never a sufficient answer. Every population exists in a specific place, at a specific time, within a specific web of relationships.
We measure our success not by publication counts but by whether our findings produce observable change in the lives of real people. A paper that sits in a journal is a necessary step, not the goal.
Social problems are not contained within academic disciplines. A neuroscientist working alone cannot answer the questions we are asking. Neither can a sociologist. The answer lives in the space between them.
Whether you're a researcher, a teacher, an NGO, or simply someone who believes that structured problems deserve structured solutions — there is a place for you here.
Contact
Whether you have a research question, a collaboration proposal, or simply want to know more about our work — we read every message carefully and respond to every serious inquiry.