Board & Advisory Council – Population Foundation of India

Governing Board
Advisory Council

Governing Board

Population Foundation of India’s Governing Board manages the governing function of the organisation, providing direction and oversight on different organisational issues. The Board is entrusted with the highest approving authority.

Professor K Srinath Reddy

Chairperson

Professor K. Srinath Reddy is the President of the Public Health Foundation of India and past President of the World Heart Federation. He chaired the High Level Expert Group on Universal Health Coverage, set up by the Planning Commission of India. He has also served as the President of the National Board of Examinations which deals with post-graduate medical education in India. He is the first Bernard Lown Visiting Professor of Cardiovascular Health at the Harvard School of Public Health.

Earlier, Professor Reddy served as the Head of the Cardiology department at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi. He is a global leader in preventive cardiology and has provided instrumental direction to strengthening training, research and policy development in the area of public health.

Mr Rajya Vardhan Kanoria

Vice Chairperson

Mr R V Kanoria is the Chairman & Managing Director of Kanoria Chemicals & Industries Ltd. He has been President, Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) and has chaired the Confederation of Indian Textile Industry and the Commission on Trade and Investment Policy of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), Paris.

Mr Kanoria is the past Trustee of Operation Smile in India. He received the Swiss Ambassador’s Award for Leadership and Business Ethics in 2013, and has also been bestowed with the Distinction of Commander of the Order of Leopold II by the King of Belgium for his contribution to the development of business ties between India and Belgium.

He holds an MBA from IMD, Switzerland and has several articles to his credit.

Mr Kiran Karnik

Board Member

Mr Kiran Karnik describes himself as a ‘public un-intellectual’, a non-academic with a strong interest in public policy and strategy. He is widely recognised for his work in the IT sector, as President NASSCOM from 2001 to 2008, and for helping to put Satyam Computers back on track – as Chairman of its government-appointed Board – after it suffered the biggest corporate fraud in India’s history. He has been on many key government committees, including the Scientific Advisory Council to Prime Minister, and the National Innovation Council.

Before his last full-time job in NASSCOM, Mr Karnik was CEO of Discovery Communications India (1995-2001) and launched Discovery Channel and Animal Planet in India and South Asia. As Founder-Director of Consortium for Educational Communication (1991-95), he oversaw production and transmission of UGC’s Countrywide Classroom TV programmes. Earlier, he spent over two decades in ISRO and was deeply involved in the use of space technology, especially for education and development, including the path-breaking Indo-US Satellite Instructional TV Experiment (SITE) and the Kheda TV project.

Mr Karnik is currently involved with a number of not-for-profit organisations in the fields of education and development, and is the honorary President of India Habitat Centre. He was a Director on the Board of Reserve Bank of India till September 2015, and currently chairs the Board of Reserve Bank Information Technology Private Limited. He also serves as an Independent Director on the Boards of a few other companies. He has contributed to, authored and edited many books, including “The Coalition of Competitors”, on NASSCOM and the IT industry. His latest book (“Crooked Minds”) is on innovation. He has also been a regular contributor to major national dailies.

Mr Karnik has been conferred many awards, including the Padma Shri.

Dr Ajai Chowdhry

Board Member

One of the six founder members of HCL, Dr Ajai Chowdhry is currently Chairman of the Board of Governors of Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Patna. He has been driving a vision of ‘IT for the masses’ and been part of several government committees working towards this goal. He is a Padma Bhushan awardee for his consistent contribution in building the IT industry of the nation, besides several accolades received for his key role in championing the cause of the domestic Indian IT market.

Dr Chowdhry has been conferred with Honoris Causa Doctorate of Science by IIT Roorkee and was also awarded a Honoris Causa (D. Sc.) by IIIT Jabalpur in recognition of his significant contribution to the Indian IT industry. Gifted with a pedant sense of entrepreneurship, he is presently the Board Member of the incubation centre at Indian Angel Network and IIT Delhi.

Dr Chowdhry has served as a member of the Advisory Council of Population Foundation of India and has guided the organisation in designing the transmedia serial, Main Kuch Bhi Kar Sakti Hoon.

Ms Maja Daruwala

Board Member

Ms Maja Daruwala has been the Executive Director of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI), an international non-governmental organisation headquartered in New Delhi with offices in London, UK and Accra, Ghana.

Ms Daruwala sits on several charitable boards in India and abroad, including NAMATI, International Record Management Trust, and Chair in Multiple Action Research Group (MARG) New Delhi, and Public Affairs Centre (PAC) Bangalore. She believes the only way to be optimistic about the future is to invent it!

A barrister by training, Ms Daruwala has conceptualised and edited reports targeted at the Commonwealth Heads of Government on poverty, the right to information, and police accountability. She continues to produce a body of journalistic work, including a television documentary on prisoners and rights and governance issues in the region.

Mr Vinod Rai

Board Member

Mr Vinod Rai holds a Master’s degree in Economics from the Delhi School of Economics, Delhi University, and Masters in Public Administration from Harvard University. He is a retired civil servant of the Kerala Cadre. He served as Secretary in the Department of Financial Services in the Ministry of Finance, Government of India. He was later appointed as the 11th Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG).

He assumed office on 7 January 2008 till 22 May 2013. He is widely considered a symbol of the anti-corruption movement and is credited with having turned the office of CAG into a powerful force for accountability and transparency in contemporary India. He is the current Chairman of the Banks Board Bureau.

Mr Rai is also a global trustee of the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) Foundation. On 30 January 2017, the Supreme Court of India appointed him as the Chairman of the Committee of administrators of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI). Mr Rai is a Distinguished Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore, Singapore.

Prof Vikram Harshad Patel

Board Member

Vikram Patel is The Pershing Square Professor of Global Health and Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow at the Harvard Medical School. He co-leads the GlobalMentalHealth@Harvard initiative. His work has focused on the burden of mental health problems, their association with social disadvantage, and the use of community resources for their prevention and treatment. He is a co-founder of the Movement for Global Mental Health, the Centre for Global Mental Health (at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine), the Mental Health Innovations Network, and Sangath, an Indian NGO which won the WHO Public Health Champion of India prize. He is a Fellow of the UK’s Academy of Medical Sciences and has served on the Committee which drafted India’s first National Mental Health Policy and the WHO High Level Independent Commission for NCDs. He co-led the Lancet Commission on Global Mental Health & Sustainable Development and the Lancet-WPA Commission on Depression; he currently serves as co-chair of the Lancet Citizens Commission on Reimagining India’s Health System. He has been awarded the Chalmers Medal, the Sarnat Prize, the Pardes Humanitarian Prize, an Honorary OBE and the John Dirk Canada Gairdner Award in Global Health. He has been awarded Honorary Doctorates from Georgetown University, York University and Stellenbosch University. He was listed in TIME Magazine’s 100 most influential persons of the year in 2015.

Dr. Soumya Swaminathan

Board Member

Soumya Swaminathan was most recently WHO’s Chief Scientist and before that Deputy Director-General for Programmes. A pediatrician from India and a globally recognized researcher on tuberculosis and HIV, she has 30 years of experience in clinical care and research and has worked throughout her career to translate research into impactful programmes. Dr Swaminathan was Secretary to the Government of India for Health Research and Director General of the Indian Council of Medical Research from 2015 to 2017. In that position, she focused on bringing science and evidence into health policy-making, building research capacity in Indian medical schools, and forging south-south partnerships in health sciences. From 2009 to 2011, she also served as Coordinator of the UNICEF/UNDP/World Bank/WHO Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases in Geneva.

She received her academic training in India, the United Kingdom and the United States of America, and has published more than 480 peer-reviewed publications and book chapters. She is a Fellow of the US National Academy of Medicine, the Academy of Medical Sciences of the UK and a Fellow of all the science academies in India. She has received several honorary doctorates, including from Karolinska institute, EPFL, Lausanne and the London School of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. She serves on several national and global advisory bodies and committees. She is an adjunct Professor at Karolinska university in Sweden and Tufts university in Boston, USA.

As WHO’s inaugural Chief Scientist, Dr Swaminathan built the Science division with a focus on research, quality assurance of norms and standards and digital health. She played a key role during the pandemic in coordinating scientific efforts at the WHO, as well as in setting up Covax, with a focus on equitable vaccine distribution to LMICs.

Priya Paul

Board Member

Priya Paul, an Economics graduate from Wellesley College, USA, attended Harvard Business School and INSEAD. Paul possesses over three decades of rich experience in hospitality and multifarious management functions to her credit. She started her career as the Marketing Manager of The Park, New Delhi, and presently holds the position of Chairperson of the Apeejay Surrendra Park Hotels, Limited.

Paul is actively involved on the Boards of Hotel Association of India and World Travel and Tourism Council – India Initiative. She serves on numerous Philanthropic and Advisory Boards.

She was conferred the Padma Shri in 2012 for her contribution to trade and industry by the Hon’ble President of India. She was conferred with awards like Insignia of Chevalier de l’Ordre National du Merite (National Order of Merit) by the President of France, ‘Aatithya Ratna Award’ by Hotel Investment Forum India, ‘Hall of Fame 2011’ by Hotelier India and is recognized by Fortune magazine as one of India’s 50 most powerful businesswomen.

Paul is on the Board of Apeejay Surrendra Park Hotels Limited, Apeejay Shipping Limited, DLF Limited and DLF Cyber City Developments Limited.

Ishita Chaudhry

Board Member

Ishita Chaudhry is an independent consultant and feminist facilitator, with over 20 years of experience rooted in working with women and girls globally from underserved and marginalized communities.

An Ashoka Fellow and INK Fellow, she is the Founder of The YP Foundation (TYPF) in India, a youth-led and run organization that facilitates young people’s feminist and rights-based leadership on issues of health equity, gender justice, sexuality rights and inclusive education. Ishita worked as Founding Executive Director from 2002-2016 and served as Managing Trustee of the Board from 2002-2020, supporting a successful leadership transition.

Ishita is a strategy consultant and advisor with governments, philanthropic institutions, private foundations, women’s and environmental funds, technical agencies and civil society organizations. She facilitates strategic thinking and collaborative learning journeys that advance organizational culture and institutional strengthening, programmes, policy/ advocacy and resource mobilization strategies. These practices focus on developing trust, wellbeing and care; strengthening women’s rights, advancing gender and environmental justice, and improving access to education and Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights.

Ishita has worked with a diverse group of funders and development organizations including Prospera – International network of Women’s Funds, Global Greengrants Fund, Global Alliance for Green and Gender Action (GAGGA), the Global Partnership for Education – World Bank, Oxfam, World Health Organization (WHO), United Nations Populations Fund (UNFPA), UNICEF, UN Foundation, UNAIDS, Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF), Ford Foundation, American Jewish World Service and the John. D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation amongst others.

She has served on several advisory groups for governments, including the United Nations High-Level Task Force for Population and Development (ICPD), UNESCO’s Global Advisory Group for Sexuality Education, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare Government of India, the Directorate of Education (DoE), Government of Delhi, State Council for Research Training and Education (SCERT) and Delhi Commission for the Protection of Child Rights (DCPCR). She has been as advisor to the Global Fund for Women, a Board Member of the Amplify Change Fund, and is a Founding Member of the transnational alliance Realizing Sexual and Reproductive Justice (RESURJ) and the global consulting firm, The Torchlight Collective. Ishita currently serves as an Advisor for India for Echidna Giving and is the Chair of the Board of Directors of Ipas.

Poonam Muttreja

Executive Director, Population Foundation of India

Poonam Muttreja, Executive Director of the Population Foundation of India, has for over 40 years been a strong advocate for women’s health, reproductive and sexual rights, and rural livelihoods. She has co-conceived the popular transmedia initiative, Main Kuch Bhi Kar Sakti Hoon – I, A Woman, Can Achieve Anything. Before joining Population Foundation of India, she served as the India Country Director of the John D and Catherine T MacArthur Foundation for 15 years and has also co-founded and led the Ashoka Foundation, Dastkar, and the Society for Rural, Urban and Tribal Initiative (SRUTI). Poonam is a member of a committee at The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, Washington DC.

An alumna of Delhi University and Harvard University’s John F Kennedy School of Government, Poonam serves on the governing council of several non-governmental organizations, and is a regular commentator in India and globally for television and the print media.

Advisory Council

The Advisory Council provides guidance and advises on Population Foundation of India’s work and programmes.

Ms Srilatha Batliwala

Chairperson, Advisory Council

Ms Srilatha Batliwala, a social activist, advocate of women’s rights, scholar, and author of many books on empowerment of women is from Bengaluru. She graduated from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai with a Master of Arts degree in Social Work. She has been engaged in promoting the feminist movement, building leadership qualities in women, monitoring and assessing gender sensitive issues, and creating a pool of women activists. She was instrumental in establishing four institutions and two grassroots-level feminist campaigns.

Ms Batliwala has worked for various international institutions, such as the Ford Foundation in New York, the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations at Harvard University and has been Chair of the Board of the Women’s Environment and Development Organization (WEDO). Ms Batliwala is actively involved in many organisations dealing with women’s rights – she is Scholar Associate with the Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID), Co-Chair of the board of ‘Gender at Work’ (a global network of women), and member of the board of Samudaya Nirman Sahayak and IT for Change (SPARC) in Mumbai, founded in 1984 to facilitate urban poor to take part in development works of the community. She has many publications to her credit and is a Fellow, Women’s Policy Research, and Advocacy at the National Institute of Advanced Studies in Bengaluru.

Dr Leela Visaria

Advisory Council

Dr Leela Visaria is Honorary Professor and former Director, Gujarat Institute of Development Research, Ahmedabad. A Princeton University-trained demographer, her research interests include historical demography as well as field-based studies on health, family planning, education, and demographic transition. She has authored several peer-reviewed articles and has co-authored and/or edited six books including Twenty-first Century India: Population, Economy, Human Development and the Environment (2004) and Abortion in India: Ground Realities (2007). Between 1994 and 2008, she served as a coordinator of HealthWatch, a network of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and researchers that engaged in dialogue with policymakers, donors, researchers and activists on gender sensitive population and health policy issues. In March 2008, she was awarded a two-year national professorship by the Indian Council for Social Science Research, a parent body of all social science research institutes in India. She was the first President-elect of the Asian Population Association (2009–10).

Dr Saroj Pachauri

Advisory Council

Dr Saroj Pachauri, MD, PhD, DPH is a Population Council Distinguished Scholar. She joined the Population Council in 1995 as Regional Director, South and East Asia, and established the Council’s regional office in New Delhi. Prior to joining the Council, Dr Pachauri worked with the Ford Foundation, where she developed the Foundation’s child survival and reproductive health programmes. She initiated work on HIV and AIDS when there was little acknowledgement of the problem in India and no government programme was in place. From 1971 to 1983, Dr Pachauri worked with Family Health International and conducted research on international health issues, especially clinical trials on fertility control technologies.

She has published extensively on family planning, maternal and child health, sexual and reproductive health, HIV/AIDS, adolescents, and reproductive tract infections, played a major role in influencing policy and been a board member of numerous national and international organisations. An awardee of the Grant’s Gold Medal at the University of Calcutta, Dr Pachauri specialised in community medicine.

Professor Suneeta Mittal

Advisory Council

Dr Mirai Chatterjee

Advisory Council

Dr Mirai Chatterjee is an Indian social worker who works at the Self-Employed Women’s Association, SEWA in Ahmedabad. She was appointed a member of National Advisory Council in 2010.

Dr Chatterjee is the Director of Social Security at SEWA. She is responsible for SEWA’s Health Care, Child Care and Insurance programmes. She is currently Chairperson of the National Insurance VimoSEWA Cooperative Ltd and of LokSwasthya health cooperative, both promoted by SEWA. She joined SEWA in 1984 and was its General Secretary after its Founder, Ela Bhatt. Dr Chatterjee has served on the Boards of several organisations in India, including the Friends of Women’s World Banking (FWWB), and the Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI). She was advisor to the National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector and is in the Advisory Group of the National Rural Health Mission. She was also a Commissioner in the World Health Organization’s Commission on the Social Determinants of Health.

Dr Chatterjee has a B.A. from Harvard University in History and Science and a Masters from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, U.S.A.

Mr Sanjoy Hazarika

Advisory Council

Mr Sanjoy Hazarika is a human rights activist recognised internationally for designing and developing innovative strategies for inclusive health and governance. He is also a scholar, author, journalist and film maker, and currently the Director of Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI). Prior to this, he was honorary research professor at the Centre for Policy Research. Mr Hazarika held the Dr Saifuddin Kitchlew Chair at Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, where he also directed the Centre for North East Studies and Policy Research of which he is a founder. He has been a member of various academic organisations and official committees, including the Justice Jeevan Reddy Committee to Review the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), the Society of Indian Institute of Advanced Studies, Shimla, and the North East India Studies Programme at Jawaharlal Nehru University

Mr Prem Das Rai

Advisory Council

Mr Prem Das Rai, one of the most distinguished alumni of Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur, is an Indian politician from the Sikkim Democratic Front (SDF) party. He has been associated with the party since its formative years and has helped shaping the party’s manifesto and vision. Mr Rai has held all the key posts in the party including being the party’s General Secretary. In 2009, he earned the distinction of being the first and only Member of Parliament with degrees from both an IIT as well as an Indian Institute of Management (IIM) after being elected to the Lok Sabha from the Sikkim constituency.

Mr Rai continues to work towards the betterment of the Sikkimese people. Being a technology and a management expert, Mr. Rai is credited for introducing IT and Sustainable Eco-tourism to Sikkim. Through social networking, he has facilitated exchange programmes and promoted diversity. He has played a crucial role in strengthening the network of NGOs and creating an environment for a proactive Sikkimese civil society. In 2002, he was awarded the prestigious Eisenhower Fellowship (USA) for making tremendous contributions to Sikkim’s economic and industrial growth.

Ms Karminder Kaur

Advisory Council

Ms Karminder Kaur has been working in the field of eliminating domestic violence against women and prohibiting child marriages for the last nine years. Prior to this, she was in the Research, Monitoring and Evaluation Wing of the Haryana State Resource Centre, which works on adult literacy and gender sensitisation in Haryana. She has made a mark as Protection Officer-cum-Child Marriage Prohibition Officer of Rohtak and Jind, and was presented with the state-level Woman Achiever Award by the Haryana Government in 2017. Selected for her achievements and outstanding work in the field, Ms Kaur has been recognised for her exemplary performance in preventing child marriages and checking instances of domestic violence in these two districts. She was also awarded by the State Commission for Women during the International Women’s Day programme held in Gurugram in 2017, and honoured by the Rohtak district administration on Independence Day in 2010 and on Republic Day in 2016.

She represented Haryana in an episode of the Aamir Khan production, ‘Satyamev Jayate’ that focused on female foeticide. She has published articles on different social issues in Dainik Tribune and other newspapers.

Dr Meenakshi Gopinath

Advisory Council

Dr Meenakshi Gopinath is an Indian educationist, political scientist, writer and a former principal of Lady Shri Ram College (LSR), New Delhi. She is the founder and incumbent director of the Women in Security Conflict Management and Peace (WISCOMP), a non-governmental organisation promoting peace and socio-political leadership among the women of South Asia and a former member of the National Security Advisory Board, the first woman to serve the Government of India agency.

Dr Gopinath has served as a member of the selection panel of the Lokpal, a legal body which has jurisdiction over legislators and government officials of India. The Government of India awarded her the Padma Shri in 2007, for her contributions to the Indian educational sector. Dr Gopinath did her graduate studies (BA honours in political science) at LSR, her master’s from Massachusetts University and doctoral degree from the University of Delhi. Earning a Fulbright Scholarship, she did post-doctoral research at Georgetown University. She started her career as a member of faculty at Jawaharlal Nehru University

Dr Pramath Sinha

Advisory Council

Dr Pramath Sinha is the Founder and Managing Director of 9.9 Media. He has worked in diverse fields spanning business and strategy, consulting, leadership and academia. He spent 12 years with McKinsey & Company in North America and India, heading leadership and media practices. He was the Group MD and CEO of ABP Pvt Ltd., a $200 million Indian media conglomerate with interests in newspapers, magazines, television and online. Passionate about education, he forayed into the field as the founding Dean of the Indian School of Business (ISB). Setting it up in collaboration with Wharton, Kellogg and London Business School, Dr Sinha was instrumental in building ISB into a world-class business school in India. He is the Founder and Trustee of Ashoka University (ashoka.edu.in), India’s first liberal arts university. The Young India Fellowship (youngindiafellowship.com) launched under its aegis in 2011, was another first of its kind scholarship programme in the country.

Dr Sinha mentors and advises various educational groups that seek his expertise. In addition, he is currently a Senior Counselor with Albright Stonebridge Group, helping international businesses set up operations in India. Pramath holds a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania, and a BTech degree from IIT, Kanpur.

Dr Raman Kataria

Advisory Council

Dr Raman Kataria is a founding member of Jan Swasthya Sahyog (JSS – People’s Health Group). JSS works in providing and developing low-cost and effective health programmes in rural India. A paediatric surgeon from All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), a premier medical institute in India, Dr Kataria and five other doctors from AIIMS relocated to serve in the remote villages of Chhattisgarh in 1996. With a deep understanding of the social determinants of health, recognising that people everywhere have complicated health needs, JSS reaches out to 225 remote villages through its community health workers and sub-centres. Today JSS has become a resource centre for government and NGOs working on public health in India.

Ms Sonalini Mirchandani

Advisory Council

Ms Sonalini Mirchandani has three decades of experience in social sector communication in India. Her work in the subcontinent in communications research, strategic design, capacity building and implementation of interventions has spanned sectors including reproductive health, child rights, communicable diseases, gender-based violence, governance, and others. Ms Mirchandani started her career as a civil servant in the Indian Foreign Service. Moving on to work in the private sector, she was Vice-President of Operations Research Group (presently AC Nielsen- ORG) before joining Johns Hopkins University (JHU) in 1995 as Resident Advisor on the Innovations in Family Planning Services Project (IFPS) in Uttar Pradesh. Subsequently, as Country Director JHU (2004-07), Ms Mirchandani led the design and implementation of a USAID-supported HIV/AIDS communication programme in India.

She has handled an array of communication consultancy assignments for the private sector and also for leading bilateral and multilateral organisations including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Bank, the Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and UKAid, among others. Today she heads The Communication Hub, an organisation founded by her in 2007. Besides addressing several forums on communication, she also scripts for documentaries and audio visuals, and is a visiting faculty at leading communication institutes in India.

Dr Vikas Amte

Advisory Council

Dr Vikas Amte, medical doctor and social worker, heads the Maharogi Sewa Samiti, Warora, (MSS) a pioneering institution and an apex non-governmental referral centre for people afflicted with leprosy. The organisation is headquartered at Anandwan in Chandrapur district of Maharashtra. MSS was established in 1949 by his father, Muralidhar Devidas alias Baba Amte with the basic objective of treating and rehabilitating leprosy patients and giving them a life with dignity and self-respect through productive work.

Dr Amte is an innovative scientist by knowledge, a creative researcher by need, a developed environmental entrepreneur by trade, a liberated management executive by profession, a genuine financier by intelligence, a sincere social worker by roots, and a learned physician by education. He would have liked to become an engineer, but seeing the need for a doctor at Anandwan, he studied medicine.

Dr Rajani Ved

Advisory Council

Dr Rajani Ved is currently the Executive Director of the National Health Systems Resource Centre (NHSRC), which provides technical support to the National Health Mission. She has worked for over 25 years with grassroots NGOs, governments, donors and private foundations in programme implementation, evaluation, research and policy formulation in women and children’s health and nutrition. She has worked on strengthening convergence between women’s empowerment and reproductive health among self-help groups. Dr Ved is actively involved in analysis, documentation and scaling up of innovations led by NGO and government health systems and has conducted seminars and workshops for scaling up training.