I am Rajendra Prasad, alumni of the “Deshpande Fellowship Program” cohort-1. I completed my graduation in rural development by Karnataka University in 2004. . I am quite interesting in rural development sector. That’s why I chose rural development as my career. Currently I am associated with Small Scale Sustainable Infrastructure Development Fund (s3idf) as project officer. The way of approach of this organization is entirely different from the traditional non-profit organizations. S3IDF leverages its financing support by providing a “gap filling” menu of finance types that facilitates access to finance from banks and other local sources. Generally it provides critical financial support through guarantees or other forms of credit conditioning. S3IDF also provides other types of financing.
Prior to joining the DFP, I was working with BAIF Institute for Rural Development-Karnataka, as a block program officer for 4 years. There is no doubt that the DFP has impacted a lot in my professional and personal skills and knowledge growth. Interestingly, I came across different areas of diverse experience like soil and water conservation practices, people organization management and microfinance at different locations in Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. Luckily I got an opportunity to work with veterans in my professional career.
I was quite scared of English language earlier. But the fellowship has made so many changes in my personal perspectives. However, I would like to share one incident during DFP interview. The interview panel board asking technical aspects of the projects. At that movement I was unable to answers in English. But Mr. Naveen Jha, reminded me frequently to answer in English language. Any way I tried to answer in English at best of my knowledge. One fine day evening, I was briefing the project activities to the MSW internship students at my job. I got a call from Mr. Naveen Jha and heard about that I got selected for the DFP. I exited so much. At the end of the call, he put a condition and said “your English is very critical to understand and unless I improve my English within 2 months, you will be terminating from the fellowship”. It was a happy movement and also quite challenging job to survive in DFP. Never mind, I had put efforts to improve myself.
Fellowship is a comprehensive training which included theoretical as well as practical application. I got more exposed to the development sector. In my own words, it is completely converting non- professionalism to professionalism in the booming development sector. Now I am looking for more challenging where my skills and knowledge and experience will yield effective results. The first write up in English was during fellowship was village stay module. As part of fellowship I stayed in a village for 3 days, and to be submitting the village stay report. I got quite confident in English writing.
During this course, I have come across different development sector modules encompassing livelihoods, health, agriculture, natural resource management, education, gender issues and management information system. These sectorial studies have helped me to improve my project as well as organization management skills.
When I was working at NRM project, the team need to implement the project activities in coordination with community organization. That’s why one federation has been established. In the beginning as staff of the organization we were discussing about the financial strengthen of the federation. I suggested it is better to start business deal with Indian Tobacco Company (ITC). They require neem fruit as raw material which is plenty available seasonally in this area. I found that there is huge opportunity to deal with neem fruit business. Anyway I had good rapport with ITC officers, So, I communicated with them and had done the business deal. The federation has able to get a net amount of Rs.26,000 within 45 days of span. I attained in tapping the opportunity in my coordination. I voluntarily had taken up the activity. ITC officials visited the place and discussed with possibilities of business linkages in future. Along with I achieved the highest progress ever before in NRM project activities.
I was assigned to implement waste land development when I was working at ITC Green water shed project, sponsored by ITC at Guntur and Prakasham districts of Andhra Pradesh. I was in charge of waste land development project and the subject of the project was new to me. The farmers of these locations were tended to grow “Subabul” as main crop. While executing aforesaid project, I came to know the whole process in Subabul cultivation. Based on my personal interest and opportunity for Subabul business in Andhra Pradesh, I conducted field survey for the scope of the outlet. I prepared a business plan to grab the business opportunity for Subabul seed; I suggested opening an outlet through organization. Due to hierarchy conflictions it couldn’t happened.
Finally I would like to summarize my career. In terms of professional experience throughout last five years, I have coordinated and executed diverse projects in Natural resource management, livelihoods, micro finance, people organization management, improved agriculture practices and entrepreneurship development programs in renewable energy sector.
