TED Community » V K Madhavan
About Me
After 8 years living and working in the Kumaun Himalayas as the Executive Director of the Central Himalayan Rural Action Group (Chirag), Madhavan is currently a Consultant to the High Level Committee on status of Women in India - a committee set up by the Government of India. The High Level Committee in a two year time frame is tasked with preparing a report for the Government on the status of women, reviewing all existing government programmes, schemes and laws that pertain to women and to submit recommendations on how to improve the status of women.
Madhavan has spent fifteen of the past two decades living and working in villages - promoting an integrated rural development approach - first in the desert in Rajasthan and more recently in the mountains of Uttarakhand.
Madhavan commenced his professional career in the desert districts of north-western Rajasthan with the Urmul Trust and its affiliates where he spent 7 years before relocating to Delhi. In Delhi, Madhavan worked on policy advocacy with ActionAid, consulted independently and spent a little over three years working on the issue of women and governance with The Hunger Project. After the desert and Delhi, the mountains presented a new challenge where Madhavan spent eight years. Now he's back in the city - trying to apply his experiences of the past two decades on a larger canvass.
Madhavan is one of theTrustees of The Action Northeast Trust (The ANT) (www.theant.org), an organization that works amidst largely tribal communities in Assam. Madhavan is one the founders and a member of the executive committee of No Pesticide Management Inititiate (www.zeropesticides.in)- a society created to promote the cultivation and consumption of safe foods and a promoter of Safe Harvest Private Limited a company set up to market safe foods.
Madhavan's interests include agriculture and rural livelihoods, education and community health, community based institutions, the not-for-profit sector and international politics in which Madhavan received his Masters from Jawaharlal Nehru University.
Madhavan writes a fortnightly column for The Mint called Fringe Benefits.
- Location:
- India, Gurgaon, Haryana, India
- Current organization:
- Consultant - High Level Committee on status of Women
- Past organizations:
- Central Himalayan Rural Action Group (Chirag), The Hunger Project India, Urmul Rural Health Research & Development Trust
- Current role:
- Consultant
- Gender:
- Male
- Areas of expertise:
- Innovation for Change, Rural Development, Enterprises with the poor
- I am:
- Brainstormer, Change Agent, Environmentalist, Idea generator, Social entrepreneur, Startup
- Associations:
- The Ant-Assam, Safe Harvest Pvt Ltd, No Pesticide Management Initiative
- Languages:
- English, Hindi, Tamil
- My website links:
- The ANT
- Universities:
- Jawaharlal Nehru University New Delhi India, Delhi University, Delhi, India
- TED conferences attended:
- TED2012, TEDGlobal 2011, TED2011, TEDGlobal 2010, TED2010, TEDIndia 2009, TEDGlobal 2009
More About Me
I'm passionate about
Integrated rural development; linking poor producers to markets; traditional weather-forecasting; symphonic versions of rock albums and Indian vegetarian food
An idea worth spreading
410 million people depend on rain-fed agriculture in India. Rainfed agriculture continues to languish without adequate attention and investment. There are limits to irrigation. While we explore ways of making irrigation more efficient there is a desperate urgency to focus on rainfed agriculture. If we do not make rainfed agriculture more remunerative, we can neither address poverty in rural India nor can we stem the pace of urbanisation!
Talk to me about
Ideas and applications that can transform rural poverty, traditional childrens toys, weather forecasts, sustainable agriculture, linking women producers to markets and deserts and mountains.
People don't know that I'm good at
Being a mere fly on the wall! Washing dishes! Digging in the garden with no expectation of results!
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A comment on Conversation: What is the one thing that you wish you could do but are too afraid?
A comment on Conversation: What is your definition of personal success?
A comment on Conversation: What is the best advice you received in your life?
A comment on Conversation: Why do we always want to brainstorm new ideas for issues that may already have brilliant solutions begging to be scaled or refined?
Or merely ego! The desire to be an original creator or thinker or problem solver and more importantly to own the solution?
A comment on Conversation: What's the overlooked gem, the book I haven't read that I must?
1. "Dibs in Search of Self" by Virginia Axline - the first book that I read that made me aware of children with special needs.
2. "Gandhi is Gone. Who will guide us now?" - Minutes of a meeting held in March 1948. The meeting was planned by Mahatma Gandhi who unfortunately did not live to attend it. Nearly every major national leader attended the meeting. Many of the issues remain relevant today but more importantly, the quality of informed discussion and debate is outstanding and rarely seen anywhere today. For Indophiles or anyone interested in parliamentary democracy and social change.
A reply on Conversation: Should anyone be able to upload their TEDTalk to TED.com?
A comment on Conversation: Why do so many think that population growth is an important issue for the environment? Don't they know the facts of demographics?
As Mark as had pointed out, investing in women - through education and health care - can lead to substantive reductions in family size but despite evidence to this effect the preference for male children and the patriarchal mind-set that is pervasive, inhibits adequate investment in women. We need to invest in young people and particularly young women - given the demographic transition in many countries - and we need to ensure property rights and access to commons for the poor.
A comment on Conversation: Should anyone be able to upload their TEDTalk to TED.com?
If at all, TED would like to create the space for external review or arbitration they could create an independent panel - to whom requests that have been turned down can be submitted again. A forum for redressal at best!