Most of his field works have been in the undulating terrains of Central India, such as, Chhota Udaipur, in the west, and Jharkhand in the east, which are inhabited by various tribal groups.

Sankar Datta is a Development Evangelist, well known for his work in the field on livelihood support, as a part of institutions like PRADAN and BASIX.

Having started his journey as a Spearhead Team Leader organizing soybean farmers in central parts of India, he continued working with small rural producers as part of the founding teams of BASIX/ Indian Grameen Services[3][4] along with Vijay Mahajan, Deep Joshi, and PRADAN, two notable livelihood promotion and support institutions of India before joining the university.

[citation needed] Datta's early school education was done at Patha Bhavana, Viswa Bharati, Santiniketan, an institution founded by Rabindranath Tagore.

Apart from presenting various papers[16][17][18][19][20] on the livelihood challenges faced by the poor in various national and international calamities he has published several books.