In 1994, he was awarded the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, the highest science award in India in the mathematical sciences category. Kumar has made profound and original contributions to commutative algebra and algebraic geometry. He is well known for his contribution settling the Eisenbud-Evans conjecture proposed by David Eisenbud.[3] His work on rational double points on rational surfaces has also been acclaimed.[4][5]