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Founder

Rajinder Singh Nijjar

More than three decades ago, Rajinder joined the development sector with the strong belief to make a positive change in the lives of deprived people living in Rural India. Rajinder committed himself to accelerate the process of change to improve the quality of life of people. Rajinder Singh Nijjar is the Founder and main catalyst is setting up Alternative Development Initiatives (ADI).
An alumnus of Indian Institute of Technology (I.I.T), Kharagpur, Rajinder has more than three decades of eternal involvement in sectoral and institutional development. His area of expertise includes integrated water resource management, watershed management, livelihood generation, institutional analyses, strengthening governance, community empowerment and capability building. He has also pioneered many large scale land and water management projects across India.
“Our idea is to bring positive change in the environment and value system of the people in totality”
After his educational pursuit, he immediately joined PRADAN and worked for few years at grassroots level. With the strong belief to bring in more and more sensitive people to work in rural areas, Rajinder decided to setup Grass – Roots Action for Social Participation (GRASP) in the year 1993. Later, he handed over GRASP to the management and moved ahead to work on larger issues. He then set up Alternative Development Initiatives (ADI) which is presently working PAN India and plans to expand globally.
Rajinder has made seminal contribution in focusing attention on the poor and marginal people, especially in the field of Rural Development and Environmental Resources Management in India. He has spearheaded large scale resource management projects, development programmes and organisations. He has worked as a practitioner, researcher, policy analyst and consultant with various Civil Society Organisations (CSOs), donors, bilateral and multilateral agencies, corporate agencies, financial institutions and various State Government departments across India.
“Global commitment towards integrated resource management and building human capital needs to go together for sustainable development”.
As a development professional, he is involved in planning, conceptualization, designing and facilitating implementation of government and outside financed programs. He has successfully built functional relationship between community, Government organisations, educational institutions, research agencies, Civil Society organizations, corporate agencies and donors. He worked as a catalyst in mobilizing government and outside financial resources into coherent investment plan, to cater the need of larger mass. He is the main catalyst in setting up, promoting and strengthening number of organizations working in the field of rural development, institutional development, environmental resource management, women empowerment, micro-finance and related issues. He has been instrumental in providing capability support and entrepreneurial skills within people and institutions to plan and manage different micro and macro developmental programmes. He has been involved in developing regional and State level strategies across India. Rajinder with the Global perspective is an entrepreneur and founder of organisations and social sector leader is passionate about his work that drives him bringing positive changes in the lives of most deprived people.