Harsh Mander

He was appointed a Member of India’s National Advisory Council by the council President Sonia Gandhi in June 2010. He convened the working groups on the Food Security Bill, Land Acquisition and Rehabilitation Bill, Child Labour Abolition, Urban Poverty and Homelessness, Disability Rights, Bonded Labour, Street Vendors and Urban Slums, and co-convened the groups on the Communal and Targeted Violence Bill, Dalits and Minorities and Tribal Rights, among others. His tenure was not renewed in 2012.

Harsh Mander teaches courses on poverty and governance at the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, and St. Stephen’s College, Delhi. Past teaching assignments include the LBS National Academy of Administration, Mussoorie, and the Nelson Mandela Centre for Peace and Conflict Resolution at Jamia Millia Islamia, Delhi. He has also lectured at the California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco; the Centre for Law and Governance, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi; Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, UK; NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad; MIT, Boston; University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and at the Universities of Stanford, Washington (Stanford), Austin, among others.

Harsh Mander has written and co-authored several books and regularly writes columns for newspapers like The Hindu, Hindustan Times and Dainik Bhaskar, and contributes frequently to scholarly journals. His stories have been adapted into films such as Shyam Benegal’s Samar, and Mallika Sarabhai’s dance drama, Unsuni.

Mander formerly worked in the Indian Administrative Service, serving in the predominantly tribal states of Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh for almost two decades. After Gujarat Riots (2002), Mander left the service and started social activism. He is a founding member of the National Campaign for the People’s Right to Information. He was a Member of the Core Groups on Bonded Labour and Mental Hospitals of the statutory National Human Rights Commission of India; and also on various national official National Committees such as those for Social Protection and the Below Poverty Line (BPL) populations.

Among his awards are the Rajiv Gandhi National Sadbhavana Award for peace work, the M.A. Thomas National Human Rights Award in 2002, the South Asian Minority Lawyers Harmony Award in 2012 and the Chisthi Harmony Award in 2012.

From October 1999 to March 2004, he worked as Country Director, ActionAid India, a development support organization. He is Founder-Chairperson of the State Health Resource Centre, Chhattisgarh, which established the Mitanin Community Health Programme, the forerunner of the Asha Programme, and the Chairperson of INCENSE (The Inclusion and Empowerment of People with Severe Mental Disorders). He is also a member of the Working Group of the Project on Armed Conflict Resolution & People's Rights, University of California, Berkeley.

Harsh Mander (born on 17th of April 1955) is an Indian author, columnist, researcher, teacher, and social activist who works with survivors of mass violence and hunger, as well as homeless persons and street children. He is the Director of the Centre for Equity Studies, a research organisation based in New Delhi. He also served as Special Commissioner to the Supreme Court of India in the Right to Food Campaign and was a member of the National Advisory Council of the Government of India.