Faculty Profile

The primary research area of interest is Electoral Geography. Prof. Jalan completed her doctoral research in the field of Electoral Geography on 'A Comparative and Geographical Analysis of Lok Sabha and Assembly Elections in North-Easthern Rajasthan (1991-1993 and 1998-1998)' in 2007. Since then she has been exploring different dimensions of electoral phenomenon with geographical perspective including Geography of Represetation, electoral delimitation and its socio-developmental implications. She completed post-doctoral research on 'Gerrymandering in Delimitation of Parliamentary and Assembly Constituencies ((With special Reference to North -East Rajasthan) as a UGC Research Awardee. Thereafter a micro-level study on evaluation of delimitation of assembly constituencies in context of Constitutional guidelines, evaluation of the prescribed guidelines in furthering inclusiveness and exhaustiveness of representation of different population groups, and impact of delimitation on representation of socially backward classes (SC and ST population) was conducted under a major research project titled  'A Geographical Analysis of Delimitation of Assembly Constituencies: A Case Study of Tonk and Dausa Districts (Rajasthan)' funded by ICSSR, New Delhi. Presently a web application is being developed for the state of Rajasthan under a major inter-institutional collaborative project titled 'Electoral Information System for Governance and Developmental Planning: A G-Governance Initiative' funded by RUSA 2.0. This portal will facilitate visualization of trends and patterns of Lok Sabha and Assembly elections held post delimitation (2008). It will also demonstrate booth-level election statistics at all three levels of elections (local government, Assembly and Lok Sabha), and socio-economic-developmental characteristics of Tonk Assembly Constituency upto village level. It is a pilot study being undertaken to understand the link between elecoral phenomenon and development of a region. 

She is associated as Co Principal Investigator in project titled 'Impact of Water Quality on Health in Vagad Region of Rajasthan: An Application in Web-GIS' funded by RUSA under phase 2.0.

Another research area of interest is Social GIS wherein she has been exploring the application of geospatial technology for understanding socio-economic-developmental phenomenon. She has applied geospatial tools for evaluating electoral delimitation and analysing patterns of other socio-demographic attributes. Digital image processing for urban applications is another field of interest.

At present she has approx. 37 papers published in national and international journals and 02 books - 'Electoral Geography'  and 'Image Processing : Application for Urban Areas' to her credit.