Between 1987 and 1989, he served as an Assistant Director on Shyam Benegal's "Discovery of India/Bharat Ek Khoj," a series consisting of 53 episodes shot on 35mm film, amounting to 270 reels.
In 1990, Kumar co-directed "Ringmasters," a special investigative documentary commissioned by DD, which examined the use of money and muscle power during Indian elections.
This film, featuring no spoken words or text slides, relied solely on an elaborate music and sound effects track.
In 1992-93, following the Bombay riots in the aftermath of the Demolition of the Babri Masjid, Rakesh took a sabbatical from his career to run a relief camp in Jogeshwari East (Jhoola Maidan, near Gandhi Chawl, where the Bane family had been burnt alive inside their home).
In October 2004, after a special Revising Committee preview convened by Chairman, CBFC, the film was cleared by the Censor Board without a single cut.
International broadcasters who aired the film include BBC (Storyville), NHK, YLE, DR2 and several smaller TV stations in Europe, West Asia and Africa.
It also resulted in widespread public support and civil society protests that eventually created pressure on the Censor Board (CBFC) to re-examine the case.
This campaign got a tremendous and widespread response, enabling the film to reach towns and villages no commercial DVD distributor could possibly have.
This led to hundreds of protest screenings at cultural spaces, in college hostels, trade union halls and community auditoria etc.
On Oct 2, 2004, Gandhi’s birth anniversary, inspired by his Civil Disobedience campaign, a nationwide Show@Home initiative was launched by (Late) Himmatbhai Zaveri, an old Gandhian.
[4] Rakesh Sharma returned to documentary film-making after a decade, with the multiple award winning film Aftershocks: The Rough Guide to Democracy, a subaltern re-examination of the Narmada debate (Development at whose cost?
Apart from a classic follow-up of events, incidents and people featured in Final Solution, the series also examines several dimensions that could not possibly have been explored in the immediate aftermath.
As well as over a dozen “karasevak” families whose loved ones died inside S-6, Sabarmati Express at Godhra, most of whom were abandoned soon after the massive BJP victory in the 2002 Gujarat elections.
Though largely self-financed, in 2011, Rakesh turned to his audience and supporters with an appeal for crowdfunding, to help digitize his entire archive comprising all filmed and found material since the 2002 Gujarat carnage, as the original mini DV tapes had begun to deteriorate.