Abey George

LEAD-INDIA

LEAD India is registered as an NGO under the Societies Act and has a membership of 132 Fellows strategically and geographically located across the length and breadth of the country. At present, many Indian LEAD Fellows hold senior positions in Government, Non-Government, Donor agencies, Industry, Media, PSU’s and Academia. Others work at grassroots level with communities and some provide support services, urban and rural, aimed at building capacity for sustainable development. This multi-sector composition places LEAD India in a unique position, not only to deliver quality training, but training that has been validated through a process of cross-sector insights across the entire spectrum and strata of society.

LEAD India’s Decentralised Resource Centres (DRCs) was born out of a realization that there is feedback necessary to develop and bring alive an information, communication and capacity building services that attempts to meet the needs of development practitioners, development organizations, civil society, and the public in general and thus support them in their activities. So far there are three DRCs.

Abey George E-mail: abbey@leadindia.org Dr. Abey George is working on social and environmental issues in the state of Kerala. For the past 15 years, he has been actively involved with environmental issues in Kerala. He has participated in statewide debates over the conflicting demands of environment and development, and has also involved himself in local environmental issues. He has also been actively involved with the Save Narmada Movement (Narmada Bachao Andolan), and later he worked with the Unit for Rural Studies, at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. Subsequently, he worked as the Coordinator of the Oceanic Circles Research Group at Sewagram, (an ashram established by Mahatma Gandhi), at Wardha, Maharashtra. This was followed by a two-year stint as the Deputy Director in an organization under the Rural Development Department of the Government of Kerala. This organisation was the project-implementing agency for an internationally funded project for eco-restoration and tribal development. The project aimed at sustainable natural resource management, in an ecologically disturbed area, with the participation of the local people. Later, he worked as a consultant to the Agro-forestry division of Kerala Forest Research Institute, where he was involved in an international initiative towards developing criteria and indicators for sustainable natural resource management. He is currently working in association with the Kerala Research Programme for Local Level Development, of the Centre for Development Studies, Trivandrum. As a part of the same, he is coordinating a research project dealing with the issue of river pollution, brought about by a private company, and its effects on the local populace, as well as on the river. He is examining the policy issues related to natural resource allocation, in the context of decentralized planning. He is also coordinating an action research project in a tribal area, on the issue of pesticide use in agriculture, especially by small farmers. Environmental education and capacity building are the two key components of this project. Dr. Abey George is a graduate in Physics, and a postgraduate in Gandhian Studies. His Ph.D. in Development Studies is from the Centre for Rural Development and Appropriate Technology, Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi.