Mayukh Hajra

Mayukh Hajra, assistant programme director at Development Alternatives, is a Masters in Zoology with over nine years of action-research and management experience in the design, administration and implementation of community based environment and development action programmes. His core expertise includes programme design and coordination, management and implementation, monitoring and evaluation studies.

As team leader of the state wide Community Led Action Programme for the Indian Government of Himachal Pradesh, Mayukh developed methodologies and resource packages for community based carbon-environment assessment, awareness and Information, education and communication packages and knowledge management protocol and plan.  He managed the programme through a network of 60 NGOs across 12 districts and 76 development blocks.  He has subsequently utilised these tools and methodologies at different geographies in semi0arid central India to mainstream environmental concerns in local development by strengthening community participation in and ownership of governance processes.

Through his work on community based environment management and local area development and livelihood strategies in wildlife conservation, Mayukh has led the development of survey tools, conducted extensive primary surveys and analysis to develop strategies for livelihood capacity building, water resource management and sustainable agriculture practice promotion initiatives.  Mayukh had coordinated the nationwide community environment action based CLEAN-India programme in 2008-10, being responsible for programme events and documentation. He also created IEC material, training modules and interactive tools for student’s programmes on climate change and biodiversity conservation.  He was the lead member in the Evaluation Study of Environment Education, Awareness & Training Schemes of the MoEF wherein he was involved in designing of methodology, conducting field surveys and reporting and documentation. In this period, Mayukh was also actively involved in events and processes documentation processes of one of the largest civil society initiatives supported by the DFID, of the Poorest Areas Civil Society (PACS) programme.

Currently Mayukh guides and directs community engagement programmes in local institution strengthening, local economy and natural resource strengthening interventions.  He is involved in triple bottom line assessments of rural grassroots planning and programme implementation.