The Centre for People’s Collective (CPC)
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Rohit Jain is a Development Practitioner and former Faculty at Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) with more than 36 years of extensive experience working with grassroot organizations, civil society groups, and Academic Institutions. He was an Executive Director at SRUTI (Society for Rural Urban and Tribal Initiative), Delhi, and Associate Professor at TISS Tuljapur Campus. He designed and coordinated the MA/M.Sc. Program in Development Policy, Planning, and Practice. He was also an enabler for PMRDF (Prime Minister Rural Development Fellow) and Faculty Incharge for the NUSSD (National University Students Skill Development Programme). Currently, he is a member of the Indian Public Policy Network, a permanent member of the Indian Sociological Society, and a Trustee of Yuva Mitra, Sinnar Nashik, Maharashtra.
Is a widely-travelled journalist, writer, researcher and educator with 27 years of experience in full-time and independent capacities with two decades of work in rural journalism; a Core Team member of the People’s Archive of Rural India, he has research interests in agrarian society with a focus on collective social enterprise, food systems, water, institutional governance, climate change, commons, and caste and gender issues. Recipient of many coveted awards and fellowships, he is an author of ‘A village awaits doomsday’ (Penguin India, 2013) and ‘Ramrao – the story of India’s farm crisis’ (Harper Collins, 2021); his journalism appears in Indian and foreign publications; he is a Visiting Faculty at the IFMR-Krea University, Sri City, AP. The CPC was born out of his and other friends’ long-thought idea; he helps the CPC’s teams with designs and social theory to augment the grassroots works. His other interests are cricket, films, traveling and wine-making.
Is a social activist, researcher and policy advocacy worker with 30 years of work in the field of forest and natural resources governance with communities across India, mainly the tribal and backward classes, policy, institution and capacity building, and networking with the communities at the forefront of deepening of the democratic governance in the country; currently based out of Nagpur, he looks after the CPC’s vertical on Community Forest Rights under the Forest Rights Act [A3] and forest governance within the Gram Sabhas; is the thematic anchor for Maharashtra RRAN on forest rights act; manages the CPC’s student internship programmes; he contributes to the policy making and implementation processes with several civil society groups, and is leading efforts to form collective social enterprises on forest-based livelihoods and products.
Is an entrepreneur and businessman with diverse interests, including education and infrastructure; is based out of Nagpur and heads the Gudadhe Group of Companies; as a director of the CPC, he heads finance, administration and provides inputs on entrepreneurship building to the community enterprises.
Has a Master’s in Social Work and is the CPC’s Chief Training and Capacity Building officer, with nearly two decades of field experience with forest and agrarian communities in Vidarbha; he is currently leading the training and capacity building of the community leaders within the Forest Rights Act regime and helps the community organizations with all documentation work; he has been a former consultant to the Maharashtra Knowledge Corporation Limited (MKCL) in their ongoing ‘Green Collar Jobs’ project, and has deep interests in functioning of Gram Sabhas; he also leads the CPC’s field surveys and scoping studies.
A Master’s in Social Work with 10 years of experience in social field with multiple organisations, he heads the CPC’s programme verticals of pastoralists’ rights and access to forests, building of collectives among the agriculturists, and indigenous cattle breeders of Vidarbha; his task is to coordinate with the community resource persons that work with the CPC, synthesise the collective learnings and challenges, and generate ideas that seek to solve the functional problems of the community models; a football afficionado, he is CPC’s grassroots team accelerator. His interests are social action, research, collective enterprise, WASH, low-cost housing, child rights, and forest and agrarian communities.
Has an MBA in IT Management and a bachelor’s in computer applications; handles all the IT and ITES related work for the CPC, building e-learning solutions for the CPC and community collectives; and works on the CPC’s projects to provide IT solutions; he has been a former consultant to the Maharashtra Knowledge Corporation Limited (MKCL) in their ongoing ‘Green Collar Jobs’ project. Ajinkya has keen interests in the social landscape of Vidarbha, particularly the ever-migrating pastoralists, human migration, and photography. He enjoys spending time in the field with different livestock rearing communities as much as he enjoys playing cricket.
Is a Programme Coordinator for the CPC’s ongoing focus on pastoralism and Forest Rights Act in Chandrapur district, Wardha & Yawtmal of Vidarbha; comes with an experience of nearly eight years working with different organisations including the Aide-et-Action, Wildlife Conservation Trust, Oxfam India and Prerak Foundation; has a passion for working with the tribal and other-forest-dwellers of Vidarbha and leads the CPC’s scoping studies; his interests other than work are food and travelling.
Is a budding biodiversity scientist, a scholar of the pastoralism in India, and researcher; he anchors the CPC’s vertical of agro-pastoralist communities and their social enterprises, in addition to building networks with many like-minded individual and institutional partners; is the convener of the Maharashtra chapter of the Revitalising Rainfed Agriculture Network (Maha-RRAN) where he networks with the individuals and institutions working on the structural problem of rainfed family farms and allied sector livelihoods, while conceptualizing and steering the agro-pastoralists’ institutional models and governance. Sajal has several research papers to his credit; he was instrumental in characterization of the lesser-known breeds of cattle in Vidarbha region reared by pastoralist communities & their conservation . As the CEO of the CPC, he heads the projects that are at the intersection of forests, pastoralists and agriculture, and leads grassroots research from the framework of social action theory and biodiversity. He is a product of Nirman, a youth innovation programme run by the SEARCH, Gadchiroli, and has interest in poetry.
