The Centre for Social and Economic Progress (CSEP) is delighted to invite you to a seminar titled “Revisioning Rural Development” on Friday, January 17, 2025 from 3:00-4:30 pm (IST).  

The seminar will feature a conversation between Jyotsna Puri, Special Adviser – Strategic Initiatives, Office of the President and Vice-President, IFAD, Saroj Mahapatra, Executive Director, PRADAN and Amarjeet Sinha, Senior Fellow, CSEP.

The event will be held at the CSEP Auditorium, 6, Dr Jose P Rizal Marg, Chanakyapuri, New Delhi – 110021. Please note that this is an in-person event only. If you are in Delhi on the day, please join us for the seminar. The video of the seminar will be available on the CSEP website and YouTube channel upon completion.

Register here to attend

About the event

The session will explore emerging perspectives on rural development and human well-being. In addition to a global perspective, it will deliberate a local perspective through insights from a field-based civil society organisation. The discussion will also address public policy issues related to rural development, aiming to bring out the emerging perspectives for the future on Rural Development.

Panellists

Jyotsna (Jo) Puri

Jyotsna (Jo) Puri is an expert in climate finance, international development and impact evaluation, with close to 30 years of experience in the multilateral sector. Till August 2024, Jo was the associate vice-president of strategy and knowledge at IFAD. In this role, she spearheaded the work on technical quality of IFAD operations and investments in more than 80 developing countries and with international treaties and agreements while leading a 200-person global team. She was also the co-chair of the International Land Coalition (2022-4).

Currently, as Strategic Advisor to the President of IFAD she is leading the development of IFAD’s strategy (2025-2031) and its flagship Rural Development Report. Between 2017-20, Jo was the inaugural Head of the Independent Evaluation Office of the Green Climate Fund. She oversaw the First Performance Review of the GCF, that provided the blueprint for GCF’s new strategy. She also initiated the Data Lab and the Behavioural Science lab at the IEU. Jo advocated for evidence-driven policies and programmes at the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie) where she was the deputy executive director and head of evaluation. Jo is currently also an adjunct associate professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), where she teaches development effectiveness and is a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington DC.

Jo has played an instrumental in conceptualising resilience credits that provides a model for incentivising financing for climate adaptation. She has contributed to several high-level policy groups within the UNFCCC and UNEP. Dr Puri has authored numerous academic articles and reports on climate resilience, impact evaluation, and innovation. She also serves on the board of Innovations for Policy Action (unpaid). Dr Puri holds a PhD and MSc in Agriculture and Resource Economics from the University of Maryland, USA, and an MA in Development Economics from the Delhi School of Economics, India.

Saroj Mahapatra

Saroj Mahapatra is the Executive Director of PRADAN. He has more than 28 years of experience of working with State Government Projects, multi-stakeholder networks, and several projects of WFP, IFAD, UNICEF, MGNREGA and NRLM with a focus on participatory planning process involving the marginalised households in the remotest area of Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh. He directly worked with poor communities of Central India tribal pocket and has been instrumental in preparing the Integrated Natural Resource Management manual for MGNREGA implementation of Ministry of Rural Development, GoI. Saroj holds a Master of Engineering in Hydraulics and Irrigation Engineering from UCE, Burla.

Amarjeet Sinha

Amarjeet Sinha has a life-time commitment to work for transforming lives and livelihoods of the deprived households through human well-being. He is a Senior Fellow at the Centre for Social and Economic Progress (CSEP). He was earlier posted as Advisor to the Prime Minister till July 31, 2021, looking after the social sector and rural initiatives. An Indian Administrative Service (IAS) Officer of the Bihar Cadre of the 1983 batch, he retired in December 2019 as Secretary, Department of Rural Development, Government of India. He has 40 years of experience in Government, largely in the rural and social sectors. He has had the unique distinction of having played a major role in designing the Sarva Siksha Abhiyan (India’s main programme for universal education), the National Rural Health Mission, in bringing about governance reforms in programmes for rural areas covering livelihoods, employment, housing, social security, skills, urban development, and road construction. He also coordinated successfully the work of Gram Swaraj Abhiyan in 2018 to reach seven pro-poor public welfare interventions (LPG, electricity, Bank Account, life and accident insurance, LED Bulbs, and Immunization) to 63,974 large villages with over 50% vulnerable social group population. Multi-Dimensional Poverty and its Reduction, Public Policy and Public Management are areas of his work. He also leads the work on a Public Report on Secondary Education (PROSE) in education for improving learning outcomes, with the Centre for Social and Economic Progress.

Please contact Gurmeet Kaur at GKaur@csep.org for general queries and Ayesha Manocha at AManocha@csep.org for media queries.