Who We Are

Biswajit retired as senior rural development specialist with the World Bank. He has worked with UNICEF, MacArthur Foundation USA and Swiss Development Cooperation. Currently he is a visiting scholar at the Indian Institute of Management, Udaipur. He was one of the initial team members of PRADAN who went on to set up several other rural development organizations such as GDS, Nalanda and IIMPACT. He has a management degree from Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. He lives in Jaipur with his family.

Mirai is currently Director of Social Security at Self Employed Women Association (SEWA). She is also Chairperson of the SEWA Cooperative Federation and the National Insurance VimoSEWA Cooperative. She was appointed a member of the National Advisory Council in June 2010. She has a B.A. from Harvard University in History and Science and a Masters from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She lives in Ahmedabad with her family.

Trained as an economist in India, Rukmini completed a BA at St Stephen’s College and attended Delhi School of Economics. She was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University and later earned her Ph. D at the University of Chicago. She returned to India in 1996 and has been with Pratham ever since. Rukmini has extensive experience in the field - working directly with rural and urban communities as well as in designing and implementing large scale partnerships with governments. She led Pratham’s research and assessment efforts including the well-known ASER initiative (Annual Status of Education Report) from 2005 to 2014. Originally from Bihar, Rukmini now is based in Delhi. She enjoys telling and writing stories for children and loves being a grandmother.

Sanjay is an advocate at the Supreme Court of India. He is also the founder and Managing Director of India's first environmental law firm, the Enviro Legal Defence Firm. He was an India Visiting Fellow at the Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California, Berkeley, Global Fellow at Duke Marine Lab, Duke University, USA and a legal intern to the Earth Justice Legal Defense Fund, San Francisco. He lives in New Delhi with his family.

Kirtti Bhusan Pani has been with PRADAN since 1997. He is a B.Tech in Agricultural Engineering from Orissa University of Agriculture & Technology, Bhubaneswar. He lives in Bhubaneswar with his family.

Tamali Kundu is a senior grassroots development professional with more than two decades of experience. She spearheaded the use of ICT for streamlining SHG financial management systems. In the past few years, she co-created several community process toolkits which are extensively used in capacity building programs for the marginalized. She is also a skilled trainer of Achievement Motivation and Entrepreneurship, Group Processes, Gender Equality, and Human Process Laboratories.

Tamali possesses a Master's degree in Bio-Physics from the University of Kalyani, West Bengal. She lives in Raipur, Chhattisgarh with her family.

Narendranath has been with PRADAN since 1989. He has served in many senior management positions, including leading the embedded cell with the National Rural Livelihood Mission (NRLM). He received a degree in mechanical engineering from Kerala University and a PGDRM from the Institute of Rural Management Anand (IRMA). He lives in New Delhi with his spouse and daughter.