The Pratichi Team

Abdur Rafique
Abdur Rafique has been working with Pratichi since 2016 and has spent over 20 years as a researcher in the development sector. He holds a PhD from Visva Bharati University. He studied Rural Development, International Education and Development at the postgraduate level. He has been working with Pratichi since 2016 and contributed to research and evaluation in diverse projects. He has been a member of the guest faculty at the University of Kalyani and was granted visiting fellowships to the University of East Anglia and the University of Sussex, UK. He is a recipient of the Commonwealth Academic Staff Scholarship. He has to his credit a number of published scholastic works related to education, migration and health. He has also authored a book entitled ‘Known Faces and Unknown Life.

Anita Agnihotri
Anita, a career bureaucrat, joined the Indian Administrative Service in 1980 and retired in 2016 as Secretary to the Government of India after 36 years of meritorious service. In her long career in administration, she handled diverse responsibilities in various departments of the state as well as the Union governments. She has wide ranging experience in policy formulation and implementation in the economic, infrastructure and social sectors. Anita holds two masters degrees in Economics (University of Calcutta) and Development Economics (School of Development Studies, University of East Anglia, UK). She did her BA Honours in Economics from Presidency College, Kolkata. She is also an award-winning author of Bengali creative fiction, with over 40 volumes to her credit.

Anita Dixit
Anita has a doctorate in Economics from Jawaharlal Nehru University. She has previously worked with the Behavioural Science Centre, Ahmedabad and the Azim Premji Foundation, Bangalore. Her research interests include the study of food security, health and livelihood. Her publications include papers on poverty, food security and employment, focusing on Gujarat. She was also involved in a published study on Dalit livelihoods conducted by Oxford University. As part of Pratichi, she has been involved in evaluation studies of various government schemes and studies related to women’s empowerment.

Ankita Mukherjee
Ankita is passionate about working in the development sector and started working for Pratichi in 2019. She has a Master’s degree in Agriculture and Rural Development. Her research interests include inquiring into education in public schools, health and livelihood. She likes to manage and analyse data. She co-authored the report, ‘Primary Education in Kolkata: Overlapping Barriers and the Need for Collective Efforts,’ published in 2020 by Pratichi (India) Trust and supported by Tech Mahindra Foundation. Apart from that, her interests include writing, painting, designing and photography.

Antara Dev Sen

Antara is founder editor of The Little Magazine, the independent journal on contemporary South Asian literature and social concerns. She is also a literary critic, translator and social commentator. Currently Guest Editor of Indian Literature, the journal of Sahitya Akademi, India’s national academy of letters, Antara has been Senior Editor of The Hindustan Times and of The Indian Express in Delhi, and a Reuter Fellow at Oxford University. She has had columns in The Indian Express, The Asian Age, The Deccan Chronicle, The Week, The Hindustan Times, Daily News and Analysis (DNA), Sify.com, Free Press Journal, The Bengal Post and Bangla Live, among other publications.

Dilip Ghosh

Dilip retired from the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) in 2012 after having worked in the departments of Health and Family Welfare, Panchayats and Rural Development, Cottage and Small Scale Industries. He had also headed a number of projects on rural decentralisation and livelihood in West Bengal supported by the government as also external agencies during his tenure in the government. Further, between 2013 and 2016, he was a member of the Fourth State Finance Commission of West Bengal. In recent times, he has been engaged in field-level studies in several states of India on various aspects of rural local bodies on behalf of UNICEF. He also writes on various issues related to governance and human development in the print media.

Dinesh Kumar Bhat

Dinesh is a practising Chartered Accountant (FCA) since 1998 and runs his own firm – Dinesh Kumar Bhat & Associates – in Delhi which has been providing various distinguished clients with finance, accounts and auditing services for the last 23 years. He is a B. Com. graduate as well. Dinesh is a wizard with numbers and as the Chief Finance Officer of the organisation, he has been looking after all financial and accounts-related matters of Pratichi and providing the Trustees with sound advice since the inception of the Trust in 1999.

Janajit Ray

Janajit’s primary calling has been in the sphere of private school education for over three decades. He has served several distinguished schools like The Doon School, Oakridge International School, Yadavindra Public School and others in various capacities. He joined this organisation hoping to be part of Pratichi’s efforts – with its research-in-action approach leading to effective policy-making – to bring about the long-awaited paradigm shift in public schooling: from the existing adult-directed, content-based, exam-oriented, one-size-fits-all cattle-class environments for mindless transaction of syllabus that present-day schools have become, towards a student-centred, skills-based, inquiry-oriented, personalized model of creative learning.

K. Gopalan Kutty

Kutty has been with Pratichi for 11 years now. His primary brief is to record and take care of all the accounts of the Trust on a regular basis and report the details to the Chartered Accountant. A B. Com. graduate from Kerala University, he has been living and working in the sphere of accounting in Delhi for well over four decades.

LAKSHMIRAM SAREN

The Santiniketan office of Pratichi would have lost out substantially on its characteristic homeliness had Lakshiram not been there. A most affable person, he resides on the premises. He takes very efficient care of the requirements of overall maintenance, cleanliness and even security – especially at night – of the entire building including the guest rooms. He is also a good cook who provides guests that stay there with delicious wholesome meals.

Manabesh Sarkar

Manabesh possesses an MA in Sociology. He has previously worked as a Coordinator at the Liver Foundation West Bengal. His research interests include public health and tribal livelihood. His publications include a paper on informal health care providers. He jointly led the study – ‘Living World of the Adivasis of West Bengal: An Ethnographic Exploration’ – carried out by the Asiatic Society and Pratichi Institute. His articles are published quite regularly in various newspapers and periodicals.

Manabi Majumdar

Manabi has a PhD in Political Science from the University of Maryland, USA. She has had faculty appointments at the Madras Institute of Development Studies and the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences (CSSS), Calcutta and a research appointment at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, Harvard University. Currently, she is also an Honorary Professor in Political Science at the CSSS, Calcutta. Her research interests include areas of human development, democratic politics and social use of solar energy.

Mukhlesur Rahaman Gain

Mukhlesur has been working for Pratichi since 2011. He has his Masters in Public Administration, Political Science and Social Work and is currently pursuing his PhD from Kalyani University. In course of his work at Pratichi, Mukhlesur has contributed to several important assignments like the project on Adivasis in West Bengal, the Tripura Human Development Report, the West Bengal Health and Nutrition project, the primary and elementary education project, to name a few. Prior to joining Pratichi, Mukhlesur was associated with a project run by the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences (CSSS), Calcutta in collaboration with the Sheffield University, UK.

Runa Aditi

Runa started interacting with members of Pratichi in 2002. Between 2006 and 2008, she conducted several workshops on drama and creative writing with children from certain government elementary schools supported by the Department of Language and Culture – Himachal Pradesh (HP), the Gandhi Smarak Nidhi and Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, HP. She observed that there was considerable scope for exploring different dimensions of creative pursuits in government schools of Himachal and that hardly anything had been done in this sphere. Runa shared her experience with certain members of Pratichi who encouraged her inquiry and pledged their support. This led to the initiation of the project – Education through Creation – in HP in 2012. The team that she has painstakingly built up over the years is continuing its efforts and quest for better education with apt studies and publication of such reports.

Sabir Ahamed

Sabir Ahamed’s professional brief is to visualize possible research ventures in sync with Pratichi’s core interests, conduct effective research planning, supervise implementation of research activities and manage project finances. However, this senior social researcher-cum-activist does considerably more for the organisation. His interests include the socio-economic status of Muslims in India, child protection, education and transparency as well as accountability in governance. He is adept at interpreting official statistics and trained in data analysis software. He played a leading role in producing the report on the Muslim population of West Bengal – Paschimbange Musalman: Ekti Parikrama and the volume – Caring Children: Essays on the Status of Children in West Bengal. His op-ed articles on various development issues have appeared regularly in reputed regional and English dailies over the last ten years.

Sakila Khatun

Sakila has been associated with the Santiniketan office of Pratichi for the last ten years. Earlier she was part of the CRY project, and was engaged in field work, data collection and data entry tasks. She has also contributed in the same way to various other Pratichi studies regularly as well as to organising and attending annual workshops, meetings, seminars, etc. Earlier, she was a teacher in a pre-primary school.

Sandip Das

Sandip has been associated with Pratichi from 2010 – the days of the CRY project – for assisting the Pratichi’s Santiniketan office. He continues doing similar work related to administrative assistance and logistical assistance.

Saumik Mukherjee

Saumik’s association with Pratichi goes back to November 2001. Not only is he Pratichi’s ‘go-to’ person with regard to office administration, accounts, arrangements of the annual workshops, meetings, seminars, field visits and arrangements for different projects within the state as well as outside but also the one overseeing the plans and schedules of Professor Amartya Sen during his visits to Kolkata and Santiniketan. Before Pratichi, Saumik was associated with different projects sponsored by Oxfam (India) Trust and International Development Research Centre (IDRC), etc.

Shailaja Gopalan

Shailaja has been working with Pratichi for the past 21 years. A graduate from Delhi University she has worked and lived in the Capital for over 36 years. She looks after the day-to-day administration and secretarial work of the Trust very competently.

Shantabhanu Sen

A true product of Santiniketan, Shantabhanu possesses an MA in Economics as well as a PhD in the same discipline from Visva Bharati. He joined Pratichi in 2005 and has actively participated in field work and report writing for several studies and projects undertaken by Pratichi pertaining to primary education, basic health services, child nutrition, gender equality, etc. He is a talented writer whose articles are published regularly in Anandabazar Patrika as well as periodicals like Saptaha and Pashchim Banga Prathamik Shiksha Samachar in addition to various little magazines. His Bengali translation of Raghuram Rajan’s I do what I do has been published by Ananda Publishers. He has also translated the entire study on ICDS by Pratichi as well as a few chapters of The Argumentative Indian by Professor Amartya Sen.

Subhra Bhattacharjee

Subhra holds Bachelors degrees in Commerce as well as Library and Information Science and has been working for the organisation since 2013. At present, he is in charge of not only the entire library and archives related work but also the accounts of the Kolkata office. He has also been involved in several research projects like data collection for the on-going study of the effects of COVID 19, the Essential Health Care Programme (EHCP), the Tripura Human Development Report project and Kanyashree. His essay – ‘Shoisober Beej Tola’ – was published in the volume entitled ‘Alochonar Jonyo – Manob Unnayaner Pawthe’ jointly published by Pratichi and Gangchil.

Subhra Das

Subhra has a Master’s degree in Rural Development and Management from Kalyani University. She has been associated with Pratichi since 2011 and played a significant role in various projects of Pratichi like the Essential Health Care Program (EHCP), Monitoring of the Mid-Day Meal Scheme, the Kanyashree Assessment Study, the Tripura Human Development Report II, The Living World of the Adivasis of West Bengal: An Ethnographic Exploration, etc. Her areas of interest are gender, public health, ethnography and education. She is especially interested in field studies including in-depth ethnographic interviews.

Sujata Gupta

Sujata holds a postgraduate degree in Social Work and has been associated with the organisation from the time of the Pratichi-CRY collaborative project that aimed at enhancing quality education in government primary schools. She has contributed to various intervention and research activities conducted by Pratichi. She has also authored articles published in several daily newspapers of West Bengal.

Suman Sarkar

Suman has been working with Pratichi since 2017 and assisting the organisation by carrying out various assignments related to accounts and administration, logistical support to research work and various other in-house as well as outside-the-office tasks. He looked after stock maintenance and other logistical activities of a company in the leather complex area of Kolkata before joining Pratichi.

Sumanta Paul

Sumanta has been working at Pratichi since 2008. His primary brief is related to administration and logistical work including assisting in organising meetings, seminars, workshops, field work, bank related work, etc. Prior to joining Pratichi, he was employed with MARG and ORG as Market Research Coordinator in both organisations.

Susmita Bandyopadhyay

Susmita has a Master’s degree in Rural Development and Management from Kalyani University and graduated from Calcutta University with honours in Sociology. She has taken part in most of the major researches conducted by Pratichi Trust during the last ten years. She likes to gather, manage and analyse both qualitative and quantitative data. Apart from co-authoring several reports published by Pratichi, she has authored occasional papers like Meyeder Katha and has also written articles in newspapers.