Work reflection

Mentoring is not about having all the answers. It is about listening, building trust, staying alongside someone through setbacks, and eventually knowing when to step back. Drawing from her experience with the Samuday Sathis of the UPRP project in Jharkhand, Parijat Ghosh reflects on how their everyday work reshaped her understanding of what meaningful mentoring can look like.

The year 2020 marked a decisive turning point in my professional life. I stepped into a role I had no prior experience in, uncertain, but drawn by the possibility of learning something entirely new.

Sitting with community members, especially women, and listening to them share old tales; stories much like the ones I grew up hearing from my grandparents was one of the best parts of my village stay when I joined PRADAN as a Development Apprentice in Torpa, Jharkhand in August 2025.

The first night I slept in a mud house, I remember noticing the silence more than anything else. There were no passing vehicles, no city lights filtering through the windows; only the sounds of insects, distant conversations and a clear sky, full of stars which I had never really experienced before.

Development is driven not only by action in the field but also by the ability to learn, document, and share what works. This article traces PRADAN's evolving journey from an implementation-focused organisation to one that places research and knowledge generation at the heart of its mission to scale impact and facilitate development practices.

Development rarely follows a predictable path. As communities evolve through complex social interactions, conventional monitoring and evaluation frameworks often fail to capture the realities of change. This article explores why measuring development requires moving beyond rigid indicators towards learning, adaptation and context.

This article, authored by PRADAN alumnus, Ammu Thankam Mathew, was first published by ASSURE (Agency for Social and Spiritual Upliftment, Renewal and Empowerment) and has been reproduced here with minor edits. It captures her reflections and experiences as a development practitioner working in Scheduled Areas, with a focus on tribal communities.

For decades, I’ve seen the fields of rural India weather the challenges of rugged terrain, erratic rainfall, and shrinking landholdings. Agriculture, the backbone of life here, often felt less like a path to prosperity and more like a test of survival. In regions with hilly, undulating terrain—interspersed with forest patches—nearly 70% of rainfall escapes as surface run-off, leaving the land dry soon after the monsoon. With most households dependent on rain-fed farming, sustaining livelihoods becomes increasingly difficult without reliable water sources.