The Devis

Amla RuiaFounderAakar Charitable Trust

Archana KapoorFounderRadio Mewat

Archana Kapoor

Those who think video killed the radio star have never tuned into Radio Mewat. It is through this community radio initiative in Haryana’s Mewat district that Archana Kapoor gives backward communities a chance to speak and be heard. This Delhi-based publisher, filmmaker, author, and activist travelled 70 km into Haryana and launched the project five years ago. While most radio channels in India are commercial, with content that defines easy and constant entertainment, the prime focus of Radio Mewat is to disseminate information that benefits and empowers the local residents and provide a platform for the marginalised and vulnerable sections of society to share its stories. Most of the staff, which consists of 11 full-time reporters, a managerial team and an administrative team, are local residents.
The radio station, which has received two national awards from the Union Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, has been instrumental in reviving the lost cultural and oral traditions of the Meos, local Sufi singers who have been reciting the Mahabharata. Kapoor believes the key reason why the channel has become “the voice of the vulnerable is because radio allows people to maintain anonymity and still have a wide and direct reach.” Yes, she had to deal with paucity of funds, lack of trained manpower and no proper power supply when she was starting out. The NGO shook up the local bodies and re-awakened the community’s consciousness. “Initially, our programmes were subjected to hard scrutiny by the village elders and conscience keepers of the community to ensure that they did not threaten their beliefs,” says Kapoor, also an elected member of the governing body of the Community Radio Association. The organisation promotes and lobbies for community radio in India. Kapoor believes that radio can bring back patience, slowness and sense in a progressively restless world.

Basanti DeviFounderEnvironmentalist

Basanti Devi

In a country where rivers are worshipped, floods cannot be averted and urban thirst persists, women like Basanti Devi also live. This child widow-turned-social activist has educated women woodcutters on the dangers of deforestation, and prevented the Kosi from drying up.
Basanti behen, as she is known, convinced the women in the valley to fight opposition from men and forest guards and form community-based organisations for forest conservation. In the early nineties, when the recently widowed Basanti behen was looking for a purpose in life, she started teaching at one of the Baalwadis set up by the Lakshmi Ashram foundation in the hills of Kumaon. She continued to work with schools and Mahila Sanghatans. For a few years, she worked in Dehradun, but her love for the mountains stayed with her. She returned to Kausani in 2002, determined to work in the mountains to dedicate her life to the threepart cause of jal, jungle and jameen. After spending years conversing with women, she realised the necessity to school them in two things: one that the forests belong to them and not the government and the other that the wellbeing of the forest is tied to that of the river. Gradually, the women refrained from cutting live wood, especially oak. As a result, in the last couple of years, the government has begun active afforestation in the area. The sparse pine forests are now being replaced by broad-leaved trees; the forest floor has fresh saplings of rhododendron, oak and myrica nagi. Additionally, the seasonal springs at Rauliyan and Kaphadi that used to dry up in the summer, have been perennial since the past couple of years.
Today, her mahila sangathan is actively involved in gram panchayats and women sarpanches in the area aren’t mere tokens of representation. She believes that if she manages to inspire even a handful of women to think like her, Indian rivers will never run dry.

Bhakti SharmaFounderOpen Water Swimmer

Chandrima ShahaDirectorNational Institute of Immunology

Chandrima Shaha

Nobody knows how it will end, and just as few know how it all started. In her twenties, Chandrima Shaha decided to dedicate her life to the research of cells, the first and most crucial life form. At the inception of her career, she initiated a research program to understand the mechanisms of cellular defense and modalities of cell death. The major impact of Shaha’s work has been insights into the intricacies of cell death processes in various model organisms and the development of therapeutic purposes from the findings. She did her doctoral research at the Indian Institute of Chemical Biology, Kolkata.
Subsequently, she joined the University of Kansas Medical Center as a Ford Foundation Fellow that was followed by a post-doctoral stint at the Population Council, New York. In 1984, she joined the National Institute of Immunology, in New Delhi. Today, she serves as its Director. Shaha is also an elected fellow of the World Academy of Sciences at Trieste, a JC Bose National Fellow and an elected Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, Indian Academy of Sciences and the Indian National Science Academy. Shaha received the Ranbaxy Science Foundation Award for Basic Medical Research, Shakuntala Amirchand Award of ICMR, Special Award from DBT, the Darshan Ranganathan Memorial Lecture Award and Chandrakala Hora Memorial Medal of the Indian National Science Academy and Prof. Archana Sharma Memorial Lecture Award of the National Academy of Sciences.
Shaha, who has served as a member of multiple committees including the Steering Committee for the Task Force on Regulation of Male Fertility of the World Health Organization, Geneva and the International Consortium on Male Contraception, New York, recently instituted ‘Science Setu’, a science and society programme that enables students to come and learn about science at the institute and allows faculty to go to colleges and teach.

Durga BaiFounderGond Painter

Mamta SinghIGP-South RangeRewari, Haryana

Mehvish MushtaqFounderDial Kashmir

Namita GautamManaging TrusteeSleepwell Foundation

Patricia NarayanFounderSandheepa Restaurants

Pooja SoodFounderKhoj International Artists’ Association

Pooja Sood

Pooja Sood, who has recently been appointed Director General of Jaipur’s multidisciplinary cultural space Jawahar Kala Kendra, feels art is inherently mad and hence it is all the more important to have a method in place so it reaches where it has to. By envisioning interactive spaces, writing and editing books and guiding art foundations, Sood contributes her cause of choice.
She is the founding member and Director of Khoj International Artists’ Association. This is an autonomous, not-forprofit society committed to experimentation and exchange in the visual arts space in India. Under her stewardship, Khoj has grown from an annual event in 1997 to a small but vibrant building-based institution, which plays a central role in the development of experimental, interdisciplinary and critical contemporary art practice in India and South Asia.
As Director of Khoj, Sood has worked actively to build a robust network of experimental spaces across south Asia resulting in the South Asian Network for the Arts ( SANA). Her contribution has been in the field of curating alternative contemporary art practices in India as well as exploring different models of collaboration and institution building in India and South Asia.
Since 2009, she has also been the founding director of Ar-ThinkSouthAsia, which is an arts management programme for young cultural leaders in south Asia. In its 6th year now, it is dedicated to building a cadre of cultural managers in South Asia. Sood has served on several international juries, most recently, she was on the jury of the IAPA award of the Institute of Public Art, Shanghai (2014), the Asia Pacific Breweries Signature prize hosted by the Singapore Art Museum (2014-15) and the Korean Art prize, Seoul (2013). She has been a patron of the international organisation More Europe and in 2014, became a member of the Steering Group Committee on Arts Management for the Government of India.
Sood was the editor of The Khoj Book, which was published by Harper Collins in 2010 and also edited SANA - the South Asian Network for the Arts publication, 2014, amongst others. She is a Chevening scholar for the Clore Leadership Programme, UK (2009-2011).

Ritu BiyaniFounderHighWays Beyond Cancer

Smriti NagpalFounderAtulyakala

Thinlas ChorolFounderLadakhi Women’s Travel Company

Vidhi SinghaniaTextile Revivalist

Vidhi Singhania

The story dates back to a time when Kota was just another town, and hadn’t become the hotbed of engineering aspirants. All it had were Kotah sarees. “When I got married and moved there in 1995, I was excited thinking about all the fabulous sarees that I would be able to gift my family and friends,” reminisces Vidhi Singhania. “But, I couldn’t find anything nice, both in terms of design and quality.
The craft was dying. The younger lot wasn’t faintly interested in the craft of the elders; it was out looking for jobs.” Singhania took it upon herself to bring the fabric back to life.
“It was like reviving a forgotten art,” she says. Thanks to her persistence and passion, she was able to slowly built a rapport with the weavers who started trusting her. It didn’t take her long convince the weavers to give the old craft another chance.
Looms were brushed clean, spools of thread were attached to the looms, and beautiful textiles began coming off them, to be dyed in gorgeous hues and set out in the sun to dry. “I ensured everything that came out of our unit had an impeccable finish,” she says.
Two decades later, Singhania works closely with over 3,000 kaarigars and Kotah weavers to create sarees in playful colours. Some boast meticulous embroidery, others hand painting and intricate motifs. Her designs are accentuated with pure gold thread. She also works with silks, leheria fabric, tie-and-dye and Indonesia’s batik blocks—creating a perfect blend of traditional and contemporary styles. Little wonder her Delhi studio is the go-to place for all lovers of textile heritage and the Kotah weave that Singhania guards so passionately. Back in Kota, the weavers are now mostly women, and their craft is a matter of huge pride for them having pulled them out of abject poverty. Her Delhi studio, where she retails her sarees from, is a hub for textile enthusiasts.