Meet our Secretariat - nfcoalitions

Steering Committee, Advisors, Secretariat Team

Listed below are the Coalition’s steering committee members, advisors and secretariat team. Click on the respective Steering Committee Member to know more about them.

Steering Committee

Dr. Mihir Shah (Chair)

Distinguished Professor, Shiv Nadar University

Jagdeesh Rao (Co-chair)

Former Chief Executive, Foundation for Ecological Security (FES)

Kavitha Kuruganti

Co-Convenor of Alliance for Sustainable and Holistic Agriculture (ASHA - Kisan Swaraj)

S.M Vijayanand

Retd. IAS, Former Chief Secretary, Kerala (India)

T. Vijay Kumar

Executive Vice Chairman, RySS; Ex Officio Spl Chief Secretary to Govt (Natural Farming) Agriculture and Cooperation Dept Govt of A.P.

T. Vijay Kumar

Executive Vice Chairman, RySS; Ex Officio Spl Chief Secretary to Govt (Natural Farming) Agriculture and Cooperation Dept Govt of A.P.

A Physics honour student and an MBA from Faculty of Management Studies, Delhi University (1977). He joined the Government, in 1983, in the Indian Administrative Service. Allotted to Andhra Pradesh (A.P) cadre. In his 37 years of Govt. service, he has spent about 25 years in large scale community mobilization and promotion of livelihoods of rural women, tribal communities and farmers. He spent a record 10 years, 2000 to 2010 as CEO of Society for elimination of Rural Poverty (S.E.R.P) in A.P and led the mobilizing and empowerment of 11.5 million rural poor women into thrift and credit-based self-help groups (SHGs) and their federations, to enable them to come out of poverty. From 2010 to 2015, was the first Mission Director of the National Rural Livelihoods Mission (N.R.L.M), Govt of India. He has taken the lessons of SERP to the whole country, with a vision of mobilising 100 million rural women into S.H.G s and federations. As on date, NRLM has been successful in organizing 70 million rural women in India into SHGs and federations. He returned to Govt. of AP in April 2015 as Special Chief Secretary, Agriculture Dept. After his retirement in September, 2016 he has been appointed as the Adviser to Govt, Agriculture Dept. For the past 5 years, he has been leading the climate resilient, A.P Community managed Natural Farming, also known as Zero budget Natural farming. Renamed as Andhra Pradesh Community-Managed Natural Farming in 2020, he is currently, serving as Executive Vice-Chairman of RySS and Ex Officio Spl Chief Secretary to Govt (Natural Farming) Agriculture and Cooperation Dept Govt of A.P. This programme has enrolled 750,000 farmers and farm workers in A.P. This work builds on the large scale mobilization of rural women in the State by SERP, from the year 2000. The vision is to enroll by 2027, all the 80 lakh (8 million) farmers and farm workers in AP and to make the whole state a natural farming state. He was also the Vice Chair (Productions) of the Champions Network for the United Nations Food Systems Summit held in September 2021.e.