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Contributor : Profile

Name Surname

Varad Pande

Omidyar Network India
varadpande@gmail.com

Varad Pande leads strategy, impact and new initiatives at Omidyar Network India. A social impact and public policy professional, Varad has held diverse roles across government, strategy, multilateral, investment organisations working on issues of economic development, social impact, and base-of-pyramid (BOP) business models.

Prior to joining Omidyar Network, Varad was Special Advisor to India’s Minister for Rural Development and Environment and Forests, where he drove the agenda on sustainable livelihoods, sanitation, environment, and climate change.

Varad was a member of the Government of India’s Low Carbon Expert Group. He was Principal Advisor to Abhijit Banerjee on the UN-Secretary General’s Panel on the Post-2015 Agenda (SDGs) and was a Sherpa on the UN-Secretary General’s Global Sustainability Panel.

He led the set-up of the Prime Minister’s Rural Development Fellowship that connects India’s youth with grassroots development.

Varad holds an Masters in International Development (MPA/ID) from the Harvard Kennedy School, an Masters in Economics from University of Cambridge, and a Bachelors(Honours) in Economics from St. Stephens College, Delhi.

 

 

Posts by Varad Pande

A five-minute loan to unlock micro-entrepreneurship in India

Micro-entrepreneurs are grossly underserved by traditional lenders, as they typically do not have collateral or credit histories to make them creditworthy. In this article, Pande, Memon and Goyal of ...

  • Notes from the Field

Swachh Bharat Mission: The long walk from rhetoric to implementation

Swachh Bharat Mission – the flagship sanitation programme of the Indian government – aims to realise the dream of a ‘clean India’ by 2 October 2019, the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gand...

  • Perspectives

Creating the climate for India's low-carbon growth story

The ‘Expert Group on Low Carbon Strategies for Inclusive Growth’ recently laid out a detailed roadmap for India to take on climate change mitigation proactively. In this note, Varad Pande – a m...

  • Notes from the Field

Direct Benefits Transfer: An idea whose time has come

About a year ago, the Government of India launched a Direct Benefits Transfer programme that involves transferring government benefits and subsidies directly to residents through a biometric identifi...

  • Notes from the Field

Connecting India's youth with development in red bastions

The Prime Minister’s Rural Development Fellowship is an initiative of the Ministry of Rural Development that recruits young professionals to work with local governments for grassroots development i...

  • Notes from the Field

A second debate on the Land Acquisition Act

Of all the recently enacted parliamentary legislations, none is more important for industrial investment and growth than the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilita...

  • Perspectives

Getting to a greener picture of India's growth story

The Expert Group on Green National Accounting calls for including natural as well as human capital in our national accounts, and defining economic growth in terms of ‘wealth per capita’ instead o...

  • Notes from the Field

India's five-year plan-what's the big deal?

‘Faster, inclusive, and more sustainable growth’ is the defining motto of India’s latest economic plan. But how will it work? This column outlines the five big ideas in India’s Five-Year Plan.

  • Articles

The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act: is it working?

MNREGA is one of the government´s largest flagship schemes, and is the largest job creation programme of its kind in the world. Supporters believe that it is necessary to help rural workers smooth in...

  • Symposium

Himayat - A silent skills revolution in the making

In this Note from the Field, Varad Pande of the Ministry of Rural Development discusses the Himayat programme in Jammu and Kashmir which offers skills-training and a job to unemployed young people in ...

  • Notes from the Field

The fight against left-wing extremism

In this Note From the Field, Varad Pande of the Ministry of Rural Development argues that left-wing extremism and violence is a major challenge for India. He says that while this is definitely a secur...

  • Notes from the Field