PRADAN

PRADAN was founded in 1983 as an India-based NGO (Non-Government Organisation). Its title stands for Professional Assistance for Development Action. It is a voluntary organisation registered under the Societies Registration Act of India. In 1983,Vijay Mahajan and Deep Joshi set up PRADAN, inspired by the belief that well-educated people with empathy towards the poor must work at the grassroots to remove mass poverty.

Soon there were several score professionals in PRADAN, working in remote villages in many parts of the country, helping poor families enhance their livelihoods through concrete action programmes.

PRADAN believes that the path towards conquering economic poverty is through enhancing the livelihood capabilities of the poor and giving them access to sustainable income-earning opportunities. In the process, the poor must be enabled to break free from their past, develop an alternative vision of their future and set achievable goals. They must be equipped with the technical, organisational, negotiating, and networking skills that will facilitate the fulfilment of their goals.

Today, some 400 professionals under PRADAN’s fold are working in the remote villages of India, immersing themselves directly with target communities. These young professionals are recruited from universities and hold specialised degrees in subjects like management, engineering, agriculture, and the social sciences.

PRADAN professionals, divided into 32 teams, have worked with over 271,000 families in 5,000 villages across seven of the poorest states in the country. A majority of the families that PRADAN works with belong to the Schedule Tribes and Schedule Castes.

PRADAN’s mission is rooted in a clear understanding of the societal contexts that make poverty in India complex, a phenomenon which thrives in various interrelated factors including:

Over the many years that it has worked with India’s rural poor, PRADAN has learned valuable lessons that serve as a guide to fulfilling the organisation’s mission. Among those learnings are the following:

The government remains the biggest and most dominant actor in development, but its efforts have had a limited effect on alleviating rural poverty. This could be due to various factors, including:

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