Swastik’s focus areas of research and practice include housing for the urban poor in India, heritage planning and management, data visualisation, and urban infrastructure provision. In the field of housing studies and practice, he has made significant contributions to the understanding and potential applications of rental housing, for which he has also been cited in the 2015 draft National Urban Rental Housing Policy of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, Government of India. His work on housing and urban development has been closely associated with Central and state government programmes in research and policy advisory capacities. He was a core team member tasked with supporting the Government of Karnataka to formulate the affordable housing and slum development policies. Teaching is a key focus of Swastik’s engagement with urban development in India. Swastik’s core responsibility in the UPP is that of teaching across sectors such as housing, slum development, urban infrastructure provision, heritage planning and management, and data visualisation. His research on housing and rental housing has been published in the Economic and Political Weekly, the Administrator (the journal of the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration), and the journal of the India International Centre, Delhi, among others.