About Us

Mission

Seva Mandir’s mission is to make real the idea of society consisting of free and equal citizens who are able to come together and solve the problems that affect them in their particular contexts. The commitment is to work for a paradigm of development and governance that is democratic and polyarchic.

Seva Mandir seeks to institutionalise the idea that development and governance is not only to be left to the State and its formal bodies like the legislature and the bureaucracy, but that citizens and their associations should engage separately and jointly with the State. The mission briefly, is to construct the conditions in which citizens of plural backgrounds and perspectives can come together and deliberate on how they can work to benefit and empower the least advantaged in society.

Dr Mohan Singh Mehta a social worker and an educationalist, founded Seva Mandir.
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Moving beyond education
From its inception, Seva Mandir has sought to help the poor change their circumstances of deprivation. In the early phase of Seva Mandir’s work, the focus was on promoting adult literacy among poor peasants. It was believed that with literacy, the poor would become more aware of their rights and entitlements. It was not long before Seva Mandir was made to realise that this single-minded stress on literacy was not enough. The organisation, therefore, extended the scope of its work to include developmental programmes that would benefit people in economic terms.

Giving impetus to local governance
By the late seventies, people associated with Seva Mandir’s programmes had become popular and well respected within their communities. Some of them successfully competed for elected office in the village council and other tiers of local self-government. Seva Mandir at that time felt that these developments would lead to improvements in the functioning of the village councils and also in the government agencies responsible for delivering development services. The experience subsequent to their gaining office however belied expectations. Most of the elected representatives, albeit sponsored by the community of poor peasants, could not bring any meaningful change in the institutions responsible for development. Their inability to change these structures of governance was a consequence of the fact that their substantive authority, control and negotiating power over resources was dependent on getting along with authorities in the higher echelons of the political and administrative structures. By not conforming with those in the power structure they ran the risk of losing what little support and patronage was available for development from the State, and if they conformed they became indistinguishable from the people they replaced on grounds of their being corrupt and neglectful of the poor.

Building village level groups
Looking to these structural problems and to the fact that the nature of people’s participation (in Seva Mandir’s programmes) had a patron client dimension to it, Seva Mandir tried to redress these imbalances by building village groups in the early eighties. The intention behind this was to enable villagers to demand accountability from their representatives in the village councils and to pressurise the government to expand the actual scope of people’s entitlements. These groups were also encouraged to solve their (community) problems by co-operating among themselves. However, except for a few exceptions, most of these groups were not able to generate sufficient pressure to make a significant difference to their situation. Apart from the fact of acute poverty, the villages in this region are small and dispersed, which made co-ordinated action extremely difficult. Thus while people lacked the institutions and resources to bring about their own development, the hierarchical systems of the government, even with the best intentions, were inherently incapable of responding to the localised needs of the village groups.

Building a village cadre of paraworkers
In the late eighties, Seva Mandir undertook to create additional capacity at the level of the people. The key idea was that rather than the poor having to depend only on the State to promote their development and provide services, there should be alternative institutional support for the poor to service their development needs. Village Committees were set up to manage and monitor these programmes and Seva Mandir systems geared up to respond to village plans for development.
A cadre of village based professionals called paraworkers was slowly built up in the fields of health, education, forestry, childcare, community organisation, etc. They were provided training in the requisite skills by Seva Mandir, and were given a small stipend. Over time, many paraworkers have moved into formal leadership positions through the Panchayats. Strong paraworkers have also increased the community’s ability to hold outside interveners (such as Seva Mandir) more accountable.

Board of Trustees

Ajay S. Mehta, President, Board of Trustees
Mr Mehta is at present the Executive Director of National Foundation of India, New Delhi. He was the chief executive of Seva Mandir from April 1990 to March 1999 and the general secretary from 1986 to 1990. Mr Mehta has also been a consultant for the United Nations Development Programme to evaluate poverty alleviation programmes in the Middle East and Africa. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics from Yale University, and a Master of Philosophy degree in economics, from Jawaharlal Nehru University. VB Eswaran, Member , Board of Trustees VB Eswaran is a retired IAS officer. He has served in Gujarat government as secretary in the public works and finance departments; in the central government as director in the prime minister’s secretariat as adviser (energy), planning commission, finance commission, and as adviser to the governor of Gujarat.

He has been associated with non-government and voluntary agencies in the fields of natural resources management, rural and community development and is also associated to many educational institutions in India. He has chaired central government committees in the power, petroleum, urban development and finance ministry.

Jagat S Mehta, Member, Board of Trustees

Jagat S Mehta was the president of Seva Mandir from 1985 to 1994. He was also the former foreign secretary of the government of India. In addition to this, he has been a part of special negotiating assignments and special missions on behalf of the government. He has participated in commonwealth conferences, Afro-Asian conferences and been a member of state and governmental delegations. On 26 January, 2002, he was awarded the Padma Bhushan by the president of India.

Dr Prabhu Lal Agarwal, Member, Board of Trustees

Dr Prabhu Lal Agarwal is a consultant on steel plant operation and management, and director of three diversified companies. He has a Ph.D. from the University of Sheffield and a B.Sc. in metallurgy. He has held various positions such as technical adviser, Krakatau Steel, government of Indonesia, chairman, SAIL, GM and CEO, Rourkela Steel Plant. He was assistant professor and reader at the Banaras Hindu University.

Dr Agarwal has won a number of awards. These include the Cross of the Order of Merit – First Class. This was given to him by the President of Federal Republic of Germany for turning around the Rourkela Steel Plant. He has received the Platinum Medal and Tata Gold Medal of the Indian Institute of Metals, and, finally, the National Metallurgists Award of the government of India.

Mohan Singh Kothari, Member, Board of Trustees

Mohan Singh Kothari has a Masters in Engineering and Business Law from Louisiana State University, USA. He has been a scientist and head of engineering & design in CSIR National Institutions, adviser to the government of Sikkim for development, director for industrial and technical development, government of Sikkim, chief consultant for industrial development in Punjab and founder GM of soyabean project in Rajasthan.

He was the President of Seva Mandir from 1994 to 1997. He has participated in the management of Ramakrishna Mission and is presently the Chairman, Udaipur division for WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature – India). He has notable publications in the fields of culture, religion, history and public administration to his name.

Indu Kapoor, Member, Board of Trustees

Ms. Indu Kapoor is the Director for CHETNA Center for Health Education, Training and Nutrition Awareness, Ahemdabad. She has recently joined as a member of Board of trustees in 2003. Kanchan Chopra , Member, Board of Trustees Ms. Kanchan Chopra is also a new member of our Board of Trustees. She is Professor and Head of Department of the Environmental and Resources Economics Unit of the Institute of Economic Growth, New Delhi.

Staff at Seva Mandir
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Where We Work

Seva Mandir operates in the southern part of Rajasthan. Seva Mandir’s work area encompasses 626 villages and 56 Urban Settlements. Majority of these villages are located in Udaipur District. In total the organisation reaches out to around 70,000 households, influencing the lives of approximately 360,000 persons. The region is characterized by rocky and hilly terrain of the Aravalli hill ranges, moderate to low rainfall (400-600mm/year), and large temperature variations (4-48 degree C).

The rural population in this area consists primarily of tribal (68%) and other disadvantaged communities, whose resource base is severely depleted. People are dependent upon subsistence agriculture, animal husbandry, and wage labour for their livelihoods. The absence of genuinely empowering institutions through which citizens can come together on an equal basis—particularly women, youths, children, and lower-caste groups—presents a major impediment to the development process. Without appropriate structures in place at the village level, norms relating to the management of common resources are abandoned, resulting in the degradation of the natural resource base on which the people depend, and communities remain too unorganized to work together for their common development. Coupled with inadequate service delivery from the government and the private sector, which almost systematically fails to respond to local realities, this results in widespread deprivation in terms of various factors critical to human well-being, particularly in the areas of health and education.

Udaipur’s literacy rate, as of the 2001 National Census, was 59.26%. However, for the rural areas, the rate is much lower. The health parameters for the women and children of Rajasthan rank amongst the worst in the country, with extremely high levels of malnutrition, infant mortality rate (IMR), and maternal mortality rate (MMR). The IMR for South Rajasthan stands at 86.3 per 1000 live births. MMR for Rajasthan stands at 670 cases per 100,000 live births. The region is plagued by high incidence of tuberculosis (TB) and malaria, at 420 cases per 100,000 of rural population and 4,458 cases per 100,000 of rural population respectively. Complete immunization rates for children in our area stands at a dismally low figure of 5%. 90% of children under 3 years are malnourished.

What we do

Seva Mandir seeks to institutionalise the idea that development and governance is not only to be left to the State and its formal bodies like the legislature and the bureaucracy, but that citizens and their associations should engage separately and jointly with the State.

This is achieved through the following overlapping strategic objectives:

- To create and strengthen institutions for development (at the village, organization and society levels)

- To enhance people’s capabilities for self-development (both at individual and community level); and

- To create sustainable improvements in the livelihoods base;

These three objectives form the basis for Seva Mandir’s three program sectors. Each of these programs, in achieving its respective goals, is also designed to build values and social capacities needed to achieve development and democracy for the poor.

Programme

Education

Health

Women’s Empowernment

Village Institution Building

Natural Resources Regeneration

Sadhna – Patchwork Programme

Delwara Urban Project

Kaya rural training centre

Delwara urban governance project

Child representative program

Capart

Project

The Delwara Urban Governance Project

In 2003, Seva Mandir and the National Foundation for India (NFI) embarked on a new initiative in Delwara, a small town situated some 28km to the north of Udaipur. Seva Mandir has had a long association with Delwara through the activities of Sadhna. Sadhna has enabled many women…… read more……

Youth Resource Centre Programme

The work with youth in Delwara, seeks to engage the youth in both their own individual development and the development of Delwara through a variety of interventions that will be outlined in this paper. In the context of the work in Delwara, youth have been perceived as a critical stakeholder group. They represent the citizens and leaders of the future. By engaging the youth in a process that help……
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Patchwork Programme – Sadhna

Nirmala lives in village Sisvi. She is in her early thirties and has three children. Her husband works in an electronic shop in Udaipur. He would spend all his money in liquor and would beat his wife. The fodder and grain production from their agriculture land was also not adequate. Nirmala therefore wanted to earn some money on her own. She got to know……
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Our Supporters

Our Support Chapter in UK

Our Support Chapter in USA

Rafe Bullick Memorial Foundation

Give Foundation

Others

How Can I Help

We look forward to your support
Seva Mandir seeks to build on the strong foundations it has created in over 600 villages. Seva Mandir believes that the complex problems facing the disadvantaged communities require complex and integrated solutions. Seva Mandir works on almost all aspects of development (education, health, environment, livelihoods, institutions, advocacy etc)- and looks forward for partnerships in all or any of these areas. You can support us both financially and through volunteering.
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Publications

List of Publications

Annual Report 2006 – 2007

This last year has been marked by many transitions. As India prospers in the eyes of the world, international willingness to extend development aid to development institutions in India is beginning to wane. This is cause for concern for many institutions such as ours. Seva Mandir, in this last one year, has had to curtail its field programmes and adjust to the reduced availability of funds.

Another consequence of the booming economy is the attrition of staff due to rising salaries in the country. More and more people working for organizations such as Seva Mandir are finding it difficult to resist the temptation of taking up jobs that effectively triple their salaries. Adjusting to the pressures of declining funding and staff attrition poses a serious challenge. In response, Seva Mandir has started making concerted efforts to adjust to these new realities. Fund-raising has been started in the United States along the lines of the efforts made by the Friends of Seva Mandir…..

Click here to download the entire report

Newsletter (July 2007 – September 2007)
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Contact us

Seva Mandir
Old Fatehpura, Udaipur – 313004,
Rajasthan, India
Phone: +91 294 2451041/2450960
Fax: +91 294 2450947
Email : info@sevamandir.org

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