K. Sivaramakrishnan is the Dinakar Singh Professor of India & South Asia Studies in the Department of Anthropology at Yale University. He is also co-director of the Program in Agrarian Studies. When it comes to affiliates of the program, "Shivi," as he is commonly known, has perhaps the longest and most storied career. He was a graduate student in the inaugural class of the Agrarian Societies seminar, and he was then selected to become the first graduate assistant of the Agrarian Studies Program. In that capacity, he worked with James C. Scott, Kay Mansfield, Helen Siu, and others to craft the signature program that still operates today. In the years that followed, his involvement with the program continued to evolve. He was a postdoctoral fellow, and he later came back to present at the program's Friday colloquium. When he returned to Yale as a faculty member in the Department of Anthropology, he joined Scott as program co-director, a capacity in which he still serves. In this interview, Shivi recounts the first Agrarian Societies seminar and the experience of setting up a new program; the impact Scott and Agrarian Studies has had on him as a scholar; the larger influence the program has had on two generations of scholarship; and how the program has evolved over the years and his hopes for the future.