Board Of Governors
Mr. Lalit Mathur (Chairman): He is Retired Director General of National Institute of Rural Development, Hyderabad, and has been involved in various Government rural development programs, including leading CAPART in its early days.
Mr. Deep Joshi (Director): He is the co-founder of Professional Assistance for Development Action (PRADAN), a non-profit organization and one of the co-promoters of BASIX, a livelihood promotion institute. He has been awarded the Ramon Megasaysay Award – 2009, which is known as Asia’s Nobel Prize. Shri Deep Joshi has a degree from the National Institute of Technology in Allahabad, a Masters Degree in Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Management Degree from MIT’s Solan School. He advises the Government of Indian on poverty alleviation strategies.
Dr. Somnath Ghosh (Director): He has done his Ph.D from JNU and worked as faculty at IIM, Luknow and Indore. He is also working as a
Consultant and Trainer in the field of Livelihood Promotion, Human Resources, Institutional Development and micro-Finance. He also heads the Executive committee of the KBS Bank.
Mr. Prem Das Rai (Director): He was educated at IIT Kanpur (B. Tech, Chemical Engineering) and at IIM Ahmedabad (MBA). Eisenhower Fellowship (USA) for his contribution to Sikkim’s economic and industrial growth. He served as the Deputy Chairman of the State Planning Commission of the Government of Sikkim; Senior Executive at Bank of America (Kolkata), Managing Director of Sikkim Milk Union, Sikkim Flour Mills, Chairman of Sikkim Industrial Development and Investment Corporation (SIDICO) and Sikkim Scheduled Tribes and All Other Backward Classes Financial Development Corporation (SABCO), founding Chairman of the Ecotourism and Conservation Society of Sikkim (ECOSS), and CEO of BASIX-ONE. At BASIX he implemented microfinance initiatives for Sikkim and other NE states by working with farmers, villagers, and non-governmental organizations.
Prof. Jeemol Unni (Director): RBI Chair Professor in Rural Economics, Institute of Rural Management, Anand (IRMA). She worked with Gujarat Institute of Development Research, Ahmadabad as a Professor, Associate Professor and Assistant Professor. She is life time member for Indian Association of Women’s Studies, Mumbai and for Indian Society of Labour Economics, New Delhi. She is a Member of Advisory Committee, Society for Rational Thinking (SPRAT), Ahmadabad, Editorial Board, Indian Journal of Labour Economics, New Delhi. Member Statistics and Social Protection Advisory Group Women in Informal Employment and Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO) an international coalition of academics, activists, trade unions and NGOs, SEWA, UNIFEM, HIID, Harvard University, since 2002
Dr. Vidya Rao (Director): She is a Professor of Social Work at Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Deonar, Mumbai, and has been actively engaged in building collaborations with TISS with other institutions.
Mr. N. V. Ramana (Director) is a graduate in Dairy Technology from National Dairy Research Institute, Karnal and holds a Post Graduate Diploma in Management from Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad with specialization in Agriculture. He worked with ITC Group for twenty years; he had been with the BASIX Group in various capacities. He is now working as an independent consultant in the filed of micro-Finance and livelihood promotion. He also serves as a Board Member on Ctran Consulting Services and Indian Grameen Services.
Dr. Nisha Srivastava (Director): teaches Economics at the University of Allahabad, India. She has earlier worked with the UN World Food Programme (WFP), New Delhi, where, as Head of the Vulnerability Analysis, and Monitoring and Evaluation unit she led the WFP team to collaborate with the MSSRF in publishing the Report on Food Security for Rural India. Further, Food Security Atlases for various states were prepared jointly by the Institute for Human Development, and the WFP team under her supervision.
She was the co-author of the first Human Development Report for Uttar Pradesh. Her research interests include issues of food security, gender, labour and employment, livelihoods and social protection. She has worked on projects with several national and international organisations including the Planning Commission, UNDP, World Bank, JPIC, ESRC and IDRC among others. Some of her recent publications (with co-authors) include: The Justice of Eating: An Assessment of Inclusion and Exclusion in WFP’s Programmes; Women, Work and Employment Outcomes in Rural India; Integrated Child Development Services: Policy, Design, and Delivery Issues, Contextualising Violence At Macro And Micro Levels: The Multiple Dimensions Of Violence Against Women In Uttar Pradesh, India.
She is deeply involved in working with organisations that seek to empower women and marginalised social groups.
Mr. Girish Godbole (Director): Mr Godbole has been a development professional for the last 30 years. He has done his graduation in Agriculture Sciences from Indore and Masters in Social Work from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. He had worked withe L&T, PRADAN and then as the India Director for Save the Children Fund, Canada. He became a freelance development consultant facilitating developmental organisations. He had worked together with Mr Mahajan in making the strategic plans for the Sir Ratan Tata Trust in 1995 and the Sir Dorabji Tata Trust in 2005. Mr Girish Godbole had also made a film on microfinance and was presently on the Board of The Ratnakar Bank Ltd., Kolhapur, Maharashtra, and DSC Ahmedabad.