Prof. Dr. Vibhuti Patel, Managing Trustee

Prof. Vibhuti Patel superannuated from TISS, Mumbai on 30-6-2020. Prof. Vibhuti Patel worked at Advanced Centre for Women’s Studies, School of Development Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences from 1-7-2017 to 30-6-2020 after her superannuation from SNDT Women’s University, Mumbai on 30-6-2017. Currently she is Vice-President of Indian Association for Women’s Studies and Expert Committee member of School of Gender and Development Studies, IGNOU, Delhi. Prof. Vibhuti Patel is Ph.D. in Economics, University of Mumbai. She was awarded a Visiting Fellowship to the London School of Economics and Political Science from the Association of Commonwealth Universities, UK in 1992-93.She has authored and co-authored 12 books; edited and co-edited 9 books and contributed over 100 papers as chapters in various books edited by others. She has also authored and co-authored 34 research monographs and reports. Her research papers, comments, commentaries, and reviews have been published in the national as well as international academic journals.She had prepared a base paper on “Gender” for Mumbai Human Development Report (2010), Maharashtra Human Development Report (2012) and MMRDA Human Development Report (2012) for Government of Maharashtra. She contributed 3 chapters for an Expert Committee Report on Socioeconomic Status of Muslims in Maharashtra for Maharashtra State Minority Commission, Government of Maharashtra, 2013. As an Expert Committee member of the Working Group on Discrimination against Women and Girls of United Nations Human Rights Council, she contributed to prepare a Report on Women’s Human Rights in Changing World of Work, 2020.

Dr. Druv Mankad, Trustee

Dhruv Mankad Graduate in medicine. A leading spokesperson on Primary Health Care in Maharashtra. He was Director of VACHAN, a Nashik based NGO, for ten years. He rejoined the same organization as Honorary Director, after a break for MacArthur Fellowship. He has worked in the as Senior Consultant with the School of Health Science, Yashwantrao Chavan Maharashtra Open University, as well as with national and international organizations like BAIF, Tata Trusts, Actionaid, UNFPA, SEWA Bharat, EU, The Habitat Trust in the past. Currently, he is Secretary, VACHAN’s board and a consultant with HCL Foundation, NOIDA.

Dr. Jaya Sagade, Trustee

Director, Centre of Women’s Studies Centre, Vice Principal (retd.) ILS Law College, Pune Dr. Jaya Sagade: Retired as Director of Women’s Studies Centre and Vice-Principal at ILS Law College, Pune, where she taught Women and the Law; and Family Law; Human Rights for 32 years. Her areas of research are gender equality, women’s human rights, violence against women, right to reproductive health. She has a range of publications in these areas. Oxford University Press has published her book on Child Marriage in India and Routledge has published Women’s Human Rights in India. She has worked extensively with national and international academic institutions, UN agencies such as WHO; Government of India and Maharashtra and with NGOs.

Dr. Mohan Deshpande, Trustee

Director, Centre of Women’s Studies Centre, Vice Principal (retd.) ILS Law College, Pune In spite of being a medical doctor Dr. Mohan Deshpande has been working in the field of health! He gave up his clinical work in 1993 and began a unique work which he fondly call Health Communication, a vastly different concept and practice from that of popular health education. It’s a rights based work, rooted in people’s culture of communication, now spread across the country in various states in rural, tribal, semiurban and urban areas.

He has a group of likeminded people called Aarogya Bhan Collective or simply AaBha. They aim at developing a culture of health communication. AaBha has been able to reach out to about more than 30,000 people through its various activities and training workshops. He is a health communicator for about 27 years. He has worked with school children, teachers, college going youth, ASHAs, Anganwadis, rural health workers, ashram schools, sex workers, NGOs, govt agencies , various health service providers including doctors.

He is associated with 67 organizations through this work. He is a painter, music composer, writer, poet and a singer too. He is a recipient of some awards like the US based Maharashtra Foundation Award for Social Work, 2004.

Dr. Padma Prakash, Trustee

Padma Prakash : Doctorate in Sociology, Specialistion in sociology of medicine and health, sociology of sports, academic journalist, women’s rights and health activist, is Editor/Director, eSocialSciences, an Asia focused repository and publication space, a unit of IRIS Knowledge Foundation. She was formerly Acting Editor/Associate Editor, Economic and Political Weekly.

Dr. Padmini Swaminathan, Trustee

Padmini Swaminathan is a former Director of the Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai, where she also held the post of the Reserve Bank of India Chair in Regional Economics till her retirement from the Institute in 2011. After retirement, she was invited to join the faculty of the newly opened Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Hyderabad where she became Professor and Chairperson of the School of Livelihoods and Development and held the post till May 2017. From June 2017 to February 2019, she was Visiting Professor at the Council for Social Development, Hyderabad. Swaminathan’s research work covers the areas of industrial organization, labour, occupational health and skill development – all from a gender perspective. Her recent publications include: (co-edited) Volumes on Telangana Social Development Report 2017; Telangana: Gender, Access and Well-being 2018; a co-authored book on Feminist Methodologies: Interdisciplinary Explorations published by Routledge in 2017; an edited volume on Women and Work published by Orient BlackSwan in 2012, among others. She is currently on the editorial boards of several journals including Gender Technology and Development, and the Indian Journal of Gender Studies. She is also a Board member of several institutions such as the Institute for Studies in Industrial Development, New Delhi; SAMA-Resource Centre for Women, New Delhi; Anusandhan Trust, Mumbai. Periodically her services have also been requisitioned by the state: such as the High Court of Madras, the erstwhile Planning Commission and the Government of Kerala.