About Us › Steering Committee

The Steering Committee conceptualises and envisions FPC and supports the Working Group members accomplish their work plan. Pen-portraits of nine members are as follows:

Aasha Kapur Mehta

Aasha Kapur Mehta

Aasha Kapur Mehta is Chairperson, Centre for Gender Studies and Visiting Professor, Institute for Human Development, Delhi; Senior Adviser, IWWAGE-LEAD at Krea University; and Founder Member, Feminist Policy Collective. Prior to this, she was Professor of Economics at IIPA for many years. She has served on several committees constituted by Government. These include assisting NITI Aayog in formulating the Rural Economy chapter for the Vision, Strategy and Action Plan document; serving as a Member of the Core Group of the Ad-hoc Task Force constituted by Cabinet Secretariat for reviewing the RFDs of Ministries/Departments; Member, Working Group of Feminist Economists constituted by Planning Commission (11th and 12th Plans); Chair, Subgroup on Gender Mainstreaming and Effective Accountability Mechanisms for the 12th Plan; Chair, Subgroup on Gender and Agriculture for the 11th Plan; Member, MoRD Performance based Payments Committee and Member, of the First, Fourth and Fifth Common Review Missions; and Member MWCD Task Force for preparing a Handbook and Manual on Gender Budgeting. She led the work of the Chronic Poverty Research Centre in India for over a decade. Her books, articles and working papers are on poverty, poverty dynamics, human and gender development indicators, gender budgeting, deprivation and data gaps.

Jashodhara Dasgupta

Jashodhara Dasgupta

Jashodhara Dasgupta is an independent researcher with over 30 years' experience in feminist approaches to gender, rights and public health. She has been co-founder of three feminist organizations in Uttar Pradesh that work on women's rights, including the right to health, livelihoods and freedom from violence. Jashodhara headed one of them, SAHAYOG (Lucknow) for over a decade, and has worked with several thousand rural women and adolescent girls to develop leadership in claiming their social, economic and political rights. She has anchored civil society advocacy coalitions on sexual and reproductive health and rights within India and internationally. She has been the first woman head of an Indian philanthropic organization that aimed to promote social justice through shaping philanthropy and strengthening civil society.

Jashodhara has conducted several research studies and published widely on gender issues, public health and women's rights in books, peer-reviewed international journals and the media. She has also co-chaired a Lancet Commission on Global Governance for Health, and continues as Advisor on the subsequent Independent Scientific Panel. She has been part of the High-Level Expert Group on Universal Health Coverage in the erstwhile Planning Commission. Jashodhara has advised UN agencies, the National Human Rights Commission and line ministries.

Renu Khanna

Renu Khanna

Renu Khanna, a Masters in Business Administration from Faculty of Management Studies, Delhi University, India, is a founder trustee of SAHAJ – Society for Health Alternatives based in Vadodara (Gujarat). This is a community based action research and advocacy organisation working on social accountability issues in Maternal Health, Child Rights, Adolescents' Development. She continues to mentor community based women's and health organisations.

Renu was active in the Women's Studies Research Centre in MS University in Vadodara for almost three decades. She was a part of Shodhini, a feminist women's network who wrote Touch Me, Touch Me Not: Women, Plants and Healing published by Kali for Women. As an Erasmus Mundus scholar she taught in KIT Amsterdam and QMU Edinburg in 2008. She has been part of collectives to conduct several pioneering short courses on aspects of Gender and Health. Renu has also published critiques of India's women's health policies and programmes and contributed through GOI technical and working groups.

Renu is actively engaged in several pro-peoples' networks, and is on the governance structures of Jan Swasthya Abhiyan, CommonHealth – Coalition for Reproductive Health and Safe Abortion, Health Equity Network India (HENI). She is also a Commissioner on the Lancet Commission for Gender and Global Health 2020-2022.

Ritu Dewan

Ritu Dewan

Ritu Dewan is Vice President of the Indian Society of Labour Economics, Visiting Professor at Institute of Human Development, Commissioning Editor of The Leaflet.in, Trustee of The India Forum, and President of Indian Association for Women's Studies (2014-17). She was the first-ever woman Director of the Department of Economics, University of Mumbai, and founder-member of the first Centre for Gender Economics in Asia.

She has over 150 publications, including 40 books & monographs, encompassing a wide range of issues including Development Economics, Gender Economics, Rural & Urban Development, Infrastructure, Labour Markets, Environmental Displacement, Peace Studies, etc. She was a member of the Feminist Economists' Group for Engendering 12th and 11th Five Year Plans appointed by the Planning Commission, Government of India. She is also Consultant to UNDP, UN Women, ILO, World Wildlife Fund, World Bank, Asian Development Bank, Action Aid, etc. She is closely associated with training and capacity-building related to gender budgeting and gender issues, and has conducted numerous workshops for the Central Government and also several state governments including Jammu & Kashmir, Maharashtra, Goa, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, etc. Her research focus is generally related to the marginalised, the last two focusing on theoretical-empirical analysis of Paid-UnPaid Work and Demonetisation.

Sanya Seth

Sanya Seth

Sanya Seth a development professional, with over 11 years of experience working on issues of gender equality and women's rights. Her work focuses on mainstreaming gender within policies and in programmes on violence against women and girls and women's economic rights. She is currently working with the UN Women office for India, Bhutan, Maldives and Sri Lanka as the programme lead for Intergovernmental Processes and Women, Peace and Security. Her work at UN Women largely involves policy analysis, capacity building, advocacy and programme management on substantive gender equality. She holds an MA in Women's Studies from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai.

Sarojini Ganju Thakur

Sarojini Ganju Thakur

Sarojini Ganju Thakur is a retired IAS officer (HP cadre- 1977) with development experience spanning more than 40 years. Her principal interests and work have been in gender, livelihoods, environment and education. She has held various positions in government, at the national, state and district levels; in bi-lateral and multilateral organisations and also headed a HP statutory regulatory authority for private higher educational institutions.

She retired as Additional Chief Secretary (HP), Social Justice and Empowerment and Environment. Prior to that she worked at the Commonwealth Secretariat in London from 2004-2008 as Adviser and Head of Gender, where her primary focus was on women's economic empowerment, including gender responsive budgets, microfinance, gender and trade and social protection. She was Rural Livelihoods Adviser in DFID, India from 2001-2004. She has also worked as Joint Secretary, MWCD. GoI and Deputy Director, LBSNAA, Mussoorie where she established the National Gender Centre and mainstreamed gender training. She has been involved for many years as a resource person for gender training and capacity building and has written on various aspects of gender and governance. She undertakes consultancy work on gender for various organisations including UN WOMEN, UNICEF and DFID.

Sona Mitra

Sona Mitra

Sona Mitra is a researcher, currently working as the Principal Economist at IWWAGE-an initiative of LEAD at Krea University. She has worked in the area of women and development for the last one and a half decades. Her research focus is critically examining the gender gaps in the labour market, using existing labour-force surveys provided by the Government of India. She has also worked in-depth on issues related to gender budgeting and financing using data on public finance.

Sona is also currently a member in the broad based committee for gender budgeting in India, set up by the MWCD; she is adjunct faculty at Ambedkar University, Delhi. Prior to IWWAGE, she has worked with the Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability (CBGA), National Institute for Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP), and Centre for Women's Development Studies (CWDS). She has been an independent consultant with UN agencies working on women's empowerment and has served as technical adviser to several studies conducted by multilateral and non-profit organizations. Sona regularly publishes articles in peer-reviewed journals, chapters in books, and opinion pieces in leading newspapers and magazines.

Subrat Das

Subrat Das

Subrat Das is serving as the Executive Director of Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability since 2010. He has worked extensively towards strengthening policy advocacy efforts of the larger civil society in India around public provisioning of essential services, social inclusion and governance accountability. He has collaborated with grassroots social activists in the country as well as civil society leaders and academic experts from India and other countries.

Subrat laid the foundation for CBGA's in depth research and analysis on Gender Responsive Budgeting in India during the early years of adoption of GRB in the country. Subsequently, he has supervised CBGA's research studies on GRB at the level of Union and State Governments over the last decade. He was empanelled by the Union Ministry of Women and Child Development as a Resource Person / Trainer on GRB for capacity building of Union and State Government officials. He has conducted a large number of GRB training sessions for government officials from different Union Ministries and State Governments. He has also lent strong support to the advocacy efforts by feminist activists and scholars for transformative financing for gender equality in India.

Suneeta Dhar

Suneeta Dhar

Suneeta Dhar has over four decades of work on advancing women's human rights and gender justice. She works across women's groups, community collectives, national and international agencies. Her work has centered around designing multi-stakeholder programs, including on ending violence against women and building safer cities, and integrating gender within large scale on-ground rural programs. She has earlier worked with UNIFEM at their Delhi and New York offices.

Suneeta works with JAGORI as a Senior Advisor. She is a Co-Founder and Chair of South Asia Women Foundation (India). She has served on Expert Committees of NCW (2017, 2019) and of the Supreme Court on Widows' Rehabilitation (2017). She has facilitated several trainings, including for programs of the National Gender Centre, LBSNAA, Mussoorie. She is a member of the CSAG and National Beijing+25 Group of UN Women (India), and a member of the SANGAT Core Group.

Suneeta has a Master's Degree from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. She has been recipient of the Fulbright (1982) and Advocacy Institute Fellowships (1996) for development practitioners. She has written several training manuals, papers for national/international journals/publications on Women's Safety, Access to Basic Services, Governance, Gender and SDGs and the New Urban Agenda.