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Rao's Les Ġhorbat d'Afghanistan. Aspects Économiques d'un Groupe Itinérant 'Jat' (1982) was positively assessed by Asta Olesen and University of North Carolina's Jon W. Anderson. Olesen suggested that the research by Rao had filled "an almost complete gap in the knowledge of the ethnic puzzle of Afghanistan." Gropper suggested that her book The Other Nomads: Peripatetic Minorities in Cross–Cultural Perspective (1987) lacked structure and relevancy to future work.

Ann Grodzins Gold of Syracuse University saw Rao's research on the Bakarwals as a "densely packed examination". While reviewing Culture, Creation, and Procreation: Concepts of Kinship in South Asian Practice, a book that was co–authored by Rao in 2000, Gold pointed out that a large proportion of its content had been drawn from anthropological field studies concluded or initiated in the 1970s and early 1980s and that the book lacked "new ethnography". Gold also complained about a one-sided presentation of cultural essentialism that didn't give much credence to a postcolonial interpretation. She noted that the authors substantially covered the "geographic and ethnographic contexts" of South Asia. Vinay Kumar Srivastava positively reviewed Rao's co–authored and co–edited book, Nomadism in South Asia and acknowledged the extensive ethnographic investigations done on nomadism by the authors. He further added that "...this is the first volume of its kind that brings together different writings, from different cultural contexts on nomads." Overall, the book was favorably assessed by Denison University's Bahram Tavakolian.

Rao's coauthored book Customary Strangers: New Perspectives on Peripatetic Peoples in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia, published in 2004, was a set of mainly ethnographic essays surrounding the role of interactions between settled and displaced peoples. In one of the essays, she analyzed research conducted on some Afghanistani nomadic people in 1975-1978, their self-perception, and how they were perceived by the "settled" populace of Afghanistan. In the book, Rao built off previous work conducted by Georg Simmel. University of Pittsburgh's Robert M. Hayden reviewed the book, believing that the book might in the future serve as a benchmark study of displaced peoples. Hayden also believed that Rao's explanation for why the peripatetic lifestyle is successful was a good summary of the scholarly consensus surrounding the peripatetic lifestyle.

Rao was given the Choice award in 1999, for her book Autonomy: Life Cycle, Gender, and Status among Himalayan Pastoralists.