Co-operatives,
Development and
Higher Education

Dr. Ananya Mukherjee

Vice-Chancellor, Shiv Nadar University, Delhi-NCR

Dr. Ananya Mukherjee is Vice-Chancellor of Shiv Nadar Institution of Eminence, recently recognized as an Institution of Eminence. Attracted by the opportunity to lead such an institution, Dr. Mukherjee returned to India after spending more than two decades in two of the largest universities in Canada — the University of British Columbia and York University.
Dr. Mukherjee obtained her Ph.D. from the University of Southern California, USA, and her BA and MA degrees in Economics from Jadavpur University, India. Before joining Shiv Nadar University, Dr. Mukherjee was Provost and Vice-President Academic, University of British Columbia (UBC) Okanagan — a fast-growing campus of a university which ranks amongst the top 40 in the world. She also led UBC’s strategy for antiracism and inclusive higher education, and has been involved in several national initiatives for higher education in Canada. Between 2015 and 2018, Dr. Mukherjee was Dean of the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies at York University, Toronto. In this capacity, she led the largest liberal arts faculty in Canada with 23,000 students from 123 countries.
Dr. Mukherjee is an interdisciplinary scholar of Development. Her initial body of work focused on corporate governance and its relation to development in India/South Asia, resulting in two books, several articles in academic journals and the media. Since 2006, Dr. Mukherjee’s work has focused more on the theorization of development, beginning from a critical understanding of Amartya Sen’s work on human development. This has yielded yet another body of work including two books and many other contributions, both for academia and beyond. At York University, Dr. Mukherjee established the International Secretariat for Human Development (ISHD), an initiative dedicated to research for social change. Under her leadership as the Founding Director, ISHD collaborated with institutions such as the International Labor Organization; the UN Office for Project Services, Rome; the UN Development Program; the UN Research Institute for Social Development, and others.
Dr. Mukherjee was named as one the 15 Most Influential Women in Education by Business World in 2022; amongst Canada’s 100 Most Powerful Women in 2021; and one of the five Brilliant Women in Academia by Canadian Immigrant magazine in their tribute to ‘Immigrant Women of Inspiration’ in 2016.

Dr. Saswata Biswas

Director, IRMA, “Tribhuvan” Sahkari University, Gujarat

Professor Saswata Narayan Biswas, PhD, is Director at the Institute of Rural Management, Anand (IRMA) and Dean of the School of Cooperative Management of the Tribhuvan Sahakari University, Anand. He has over three decades of experience in teaching, research, executive training and consulting at IRMA. He has over three and a half decades of experience, primarily working on cooperative and nonprofit management, as well as addressing issues related to poverty, food security, maternal health, and sanitation in rural areas of India. He has consulted for international and national-level organisations, including UNICEF, USAID, NDDB, and NABARD, on cooperative management, nonprofit management, human resources development, and other related areas. He has consulted and conducted training programmes in Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania. Prof. Biswas has published about fifty articles in various journals and other publications. He is the chief editor of the International Journal of Rural Management (Sage Publications) and on the editorial boards of several journals in India and abroad. Prof. Biswas was a visiting faculty at the University of South Australia (Whyalla campus). He is a member of the Board of Governors of the Centre for Social Science, Surat. Presently, he serves on the Board of Studies (BoS) of several Universities in India. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the International Association of Applied Psychology (IAAP). He is the past president of the National Academy of Psychology (India).

Dr. Ch. Srinivasa Rao

Director and Vice-Chancellor, Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New-Delhi

Dr. Mihir Shah

Chairperson, Rural Management Program, Shiv Nadar University

Dr. Mihir Shah is one of India’s leading scholars, practitioners and policy-makers on water management and rural livelihoods. He is Distinguished Professor, Shiv Nadar University, where he has pioneered a first-of-its-kind MA in Rural Management program, focused on students from the most disadvantaged regions and communities of the country. From 2009 to 2014 he was Member, Planning Commission, Government of India, handling the portfolios of Water Resources, Rural Development and Panchayati Raj. From 2019 to 2021 he chaired the Government of India's Committee to draft the new National Water Policy. This is the first time ever that a person from outside government was asked to chair this committee. An economist by training, Dr Shah wrote a much-acclaimed doctoral dissertation at the Centre for Development Studies, Kerala. After teaching for some years at the Centre, he resigned to explore fresh terrain beyond the ivory towers of conventional academia, which culminated in 1990 in the formation of Samaj Pragati Sahayog (SPS), headquartered in a remote tribal village of Madhya Pradesh, which is today one of India’s largest grass-roots initiatives for water and livelihood security. As part of Team SPS, Dr. Shah lived and worked with India’s tribal communities for over three decades, in the hinterlands of central India.

Dr. Toolika Gupta

Director, Indian Institute of Crafts & Design, Jaipur

Prof. (Dr) Toolika Gupta is a Director - Indian Institute of Crafts and Design, Jaipur President - Alliance Francaise de Jaipur and Dean (Product Design) at Vishvakarma Skills University. Prof. (Dr) Toolika Gupta is the Director of the Indian Institute of Crafts and Design, Jaipur since April 2017. She is an academic (academician) and a researcher, apart from being an academic administrator. She is an alumna of Lady Irwin College, Delhi University, going on to do her PhD from the University of Glasgow, UK. She has worked as a designer, and also as an educator at NIFT New Delhi. Apart from regular courses, Dr Gupta has initiated a lot of outreach programs for short term courses in order to create livelihoods. She has been very active in the field of craft and design education, has written a policy on craft education, for the Fair Trade Forum, and also heads the committee for brainstorming 'Chintan Shivir" sessions, on Craft education, by DCH, Ministry of Textiles, New Delhi. She has recently been awarded the Chevalier de l’Ordre national du Mérite (Knight in the National Order of Merit) by the President of the French Republic in 2025, for Indo-French relationships in the field of textiles, crafts and design. She is the President of the Alliance Francaise of Jaipur from 2022.

Dr. Nidhi Pundhir

Director, HCL Foundation

Dr. Nidhi Pundhir, SVP, Global CSR, HCLTech & Director, HCLFoundation. Dr. Nidhi Pundhir is an international humanitarian services and socio-economic environmental development specialist. In the capacity of Senior Vice President, Global CSR, she leads the global CSR agenda for HCLTech and heads the HCLFoundation, which is the CSR arm of HCLTech, in India. Dr. Pundhir has strategized as well as executed impactful programmatic frameworks that are aligned to the global Sustainable Development Goals, for the most disadvantaged and isolated communities, including environmental targets. She has a deep understanding of poverty issues and delivers realistic approaches towards poverty alleviation. In her current role, Nidhi has envisioned HCLTech’s flagship Global CSR Policy. She has built the HCL Foundation’s vision, mission, and strategy to the next level, ensuring high-quality programme delivery, that brings about meaningful difference on ground. With more than 27 years of experience in actualizing Human Rights and Environmental action at national and international levels, some of the key portfolios she has held were with SOS Children’s Villages as Director Programme Development, Asia, and at Plan International’s International Headquarters as Global Advisor on Child Protection in Development. Dr. Pundhir holds a doctorate in Public Health Management, with her thesis on “Right to Health During First 1000 Days of Life for Children Living in Slums”, from IIHMR University, Jaipur and M.Phil. in Health Systems Management from BITS, Pilani, India.

Abhishek Jani

Director, Fairtrade India, Centre for Social Markets

Malika Srivastava

ED, Center of Microfinance, Jaipur and Tata Trusts

Smita Bhatnagar

Sr. Co-ordinator, SEWA, Ahmedabad

Smita Bhatnagar is Senior Coordinator with the Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA), - an organization and a movement - comprising 3.2 million informal sector members across 18 States of India. Smita works on programs related to - digital financial inclusion, agriculture, micro-enterprise development, capacity building of grassroots members. Smita heads the SEWA Manager Ni School which strengthens the managerial, technical, digital and technological and soft skills of grassroots members. Besides, this Smita is intensively engaged with ‘SEWA Bazaar’ a digital social enterprise which provides SEWA’s grassroots artisans and micro-entrepreneurs with an online and offline platform for selling their handcrafted products. Smita holds - an experience of 34 years; a Doctoral Degree along with an MBA and; certifications from IIM, Yale School of Management, Coady International Institute, British Council and ICFA.

Anshul Ojha

Founder and Principal Anchor, Urmul Trust, Rajasthan

Anshul Ojha is a Founder & Principal Anchor, DRC. Anshul is a system designer focused on environmental action and social justice. At Desert Resource Centre, he leads bioregional partnerships to enhance desert ecosystems through regenerative agriculture, pastoralism, clean energy, and local livelihoods. Previously, for private sector, he developed a pan-India waste management ecosystem involving governments, communities, and the informal sector. As a filmmaker, he shares stories across various mediums. Until 2015, as tve’s regional coordinator in South Asia, he anchored establishing Television for Environment South Asia, highlighting the narratives of people and the planet from remote areas. His work emphasizes collaboration and innovation for lasting solutions for land, life & living.

Muniraju Shivanna

Vividoddesha Pramanik Grameen Krushi Sahakar Sangh, Karnataka

Tomy Mathew Vadakkancheril

Head, Elements & Fair Trade Alliance, Kerala

Tomy Mathew Vadakkancheril heads Elements Fair Organic, a business committed to bridging the physical and emotional distance between the sensitive farmer producer and the conscious consumer. He is the founder promoter of Fair Trade Alliance Kerala, a small farmer organisation located in the Western Ghats hill tracts. The organisation commits to the justice tuned global markets cashew, coffee, cocoa, spices and coconut products on fair trading terms. A former trustee of the Fairtrade Foundation U.K, Tomy also served as the Founder Chair of the International Nut Cooperative (INC), an International cooperative of edible nut producers from Latin America, Asia and Africa. The INC is the majority stakeholder in Liberation Foods CIC, UK, a hundred percent Fair Trade company that is mandated to ensure that not just a fair price but also brand equity and profits devolve down to the global South. Tomy currently also serves as the President of the Board of Praxis, Institute for Participatory Practices and as a board member of Southern Voices for Development, U.K.

Vipul Mittal

MD, National Cooperative, Organics Ltd.

Darryl W Reed

Distinguished Professor, School of Humanities and Social Sciences,
Shiv Nadar University, Delhi-NCR

Darryl Reed holds a PhD in political economy and public policy (University of Southern California, Los Angeles, ’95) and a PhD in social ethics (University of Southern California, ’97). He is currently a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Economics at Shiv Nadar University in Delhi NCR. Previously, he taught in Canada at York University and the University of British Columbia, and has held visiting positions at IIMC (1997-98) and IIMB (2009). His research interests include co-operatives, development, fair trade movements, social enterprise, business ethics, and development ethics. He has also been active in the fair trade and co-operative movements, including as past-president (2010-2015) of the Canadian Association for Studies in Co-operation, and as the founding president of the Green Campus Co-operative (a campus-based importer of Fairtrade garments).

N.T. Sudarshan Naidu

Chair, MBA Program, Associate Professor, School of Management and Entrepreneurship,
Shiv Nadar University, Delhi-NCR

Abhishek Jani

Chief Executive Officer, Fairtrade India Project

Abhishek has over 22 years of experience working with start-ups, social enterprises and multinationals in India and international markets. As the CEO of the Fairtrade India Project of Centre for Social Markets, Abhishek leads a team responsible for building a sustainable and ethical platform for consumers, institutions, businesses and farmer organizations in India across the food, cosmetics and fashion industry. Prior to joining the Fairtrade India project, Abhishek headed Navdanya’s Organic and Fair Trade marketing division where he got hands on experience of developing profitable and sustainable food and fashion value chains. Abhishek began his career as a business advisory consultant with Pricewaterhouse Coopers and subsequently has held leadership and advisory positions in marketing, food & beverage and technology ventures across the development and commercial sectors.Abhishek received his Bachelor’s in Economics from St. Stephen’s College (DelhiUniversity); and completed his Masters in Economics from the University of Cambridge.