Meet And Greet With Maharashtra Government Delegation

The Maharashtra Government Delegation consisting of Aseem Gupta, R. Vimla, Nikhil Agarwal and Rubaab Sood met with the members of the Boston community on September 6th at the Billerica Public Library to talk about the Maharashtra State Rural Livelihoods Mission. The event was organized by Sanjeev Tripathi and Dinesh Nagraj.

Assem Gupta talked about the history of rural development initiatives starting with giving cash to individual for cows which led to increased corruption. This was followed by funding groups rather than individuals and finally funding self help women groups. There are over 300K SHGs with over 3 millions women participating in Maharashtra alone. Partnership with Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) led to the establishment of Mahaasmita Innovation Livelihoods Acceleration Program (MILAP).

The government is committed to providing initial funding to help manufacture products and find market for these products domestically and internationally. With this in mind, the delegation is visiting various cities in the US evaluating markets and looking for advisors and entrepreneurs who can help achieve this vision. Vimla talked about the various product being manufactured such as copper glasses, sarees, bags, etc.

The Maharashtra State Rural Livelihoods Mission has been formed under the aegis of the Government for this purpose. The mission is creating inclusive and democratic community organisations to ensure that the poor, marginalized, vulnerable and deprived people lead prosperous, respectable and safe lives. MSRLM has been mobilizing women from poor and vulnerable households and organizing them into Self Help Groups that operate on principles of mutual help. The mission has supported millions of women in rural Maharashtra to lead prosperous, respectable and self-reliant life.

Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), has been a pioneer in the space of innovation and entrepreneurship through its various initiatives in partnership with both Central and State governments. It has escalated businesses of social start-ups through initiatives like Millennium Alliance and India Innovation Growth Programme. FICCI has been instrumental in providing training and mentorship to entrepreneurs across India through its Innovation Incubator xLr8ap in the state of Andhra Pradesh in collaboration with the State Government and University of Texas, and another incubator initiative in partnership with Google, Google Nexus, and many more.

The ongoing efforts of MSRLM and the new and innovative training methodologies of FICCI have given rise to Mahaasmita Innovation Livelihoods Acceleration Program (MILAP) as a joint public venture. The MILAP program will not only provide sustainability to rural enterprises but also ensure business growth and development. MILAP will generate new jobs and help enterprises across all sectors in the industry and help Maharashtraâ€™s rural population at large. This program will be extremely vital for the SHGâ€™s and their economic development.

Born in Bhuvasal block of Jalgaon district, Maharashtra in 1966, Mrs. R. Vimala completed her initial education in her hometown. Always a brilliant student, stood 3rd in the merit list of the HSC board examination and topped her B.A. from university of Pune. She completed her B.A, M.A. and M.Phil with specialization in History. She taught Modern Indian History & Mediaval Indian History to post graduate students as lecturer in University of Pune. Ever since she has been an integral part of the public service sector, which has been an interesting mix of management and administration.

Vimala has been Joint Managing Director of Small Scale Industries Development Corporation and as the Deputy Commissioner for Entertainment Duty and Rehabilitation of Project affected persons. She has also worked as the Joint Manager Director of Dadasaheb Phalke Filmcity and implemented the MGNREGA/EGS as Deputy secretary to the government of Maharashtra. Elections land acquisition are some of the fields in which she has specialized.

With over 25 years of experience in various department of the government, she has contributed significantly to the public welfare schemes. IAS officer, Mrs R Vimala is currently posted as the Chief Executive Officer of Maharashtra State Rural Livelihoods Mission in the Government of Maharashtra and works for the empowerment of the women in Rural Maharashtra. She propagates â€˜Dasha Sutraâ€™, the 10 cardinal principles for social and economic development. She is also in charge of skilling rural youth through Deendayal Upadhyay Grameen Kaushalya Yojana.

Aseem Gupta holds B. Tech. Naval Architecture from IIT Kharagpur and M. Tech. Mech. Eng. from IIT Delhi, topping that he is an Indian Administrative Service officer, which is considered to be the premier civil service of India.

In the past, Mr. Gupta has held various key positions in the govt. sector, such as Assistant Collector, Ratnagiri, Kolhapur; CEO, Satara; Collector, Nandurbar; Private Secretary to Hon. Minister of Home Affairs; He was also the Additional Municipal Commissioner (Eastern Suburbs) in Mumbai and prior to this, he was the Municipal Commissioner of Aurangabad and Nagpur. He was instrumental in starting the city bus service in Aurangabad. Later he was appointed as Commissioner of Thane Municipal Corporation. He has worked over various multi sectoral problems such as water sanitation, solid waste management, infrastructure development etc, to ensure holistic development of the districts.

Aseem has been the CEO of Slum Rehabilitation Authority, Mumbai and at present holds the position of Secretary (Rural Development and Panchayat Raj), Rural Development and Water Conservation Department, Mantralay. He is also the Principal Secretary (Additional Charge), Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, Government of Maharashtra. He was the officer incharge for designing and implementing the startup policy for the state of Maharashtra.

Dr Nikhil Agarwal is alumnus of University of Cambridge and University of Edinburgh in the United Kingdom and is currently working as the Senior Advisor with FICCI BISNET group. He is also the Vice President of MILAP project.

Dr Agarwal is the former CEO, Innovation Society, Government of Andhra Pradesh. The role of the innovation society is to kickstart the innovation agenda and promote entrepreneurship in the sunrise state of India. Andhra Pradesh is now the leader in Innovation in India. He has founded businesses and advised firms on strategic matters in last 20 years of his career. He has worked with global multinationals like Cadbury's and Zensar (RPG Group). He has given lectures at leading global universities like Virginia Tech, University of Bradford, University of Edinburgh and University of Cambridge in visiting capacity. His interviews and work has been extensively covered in international media including HBR, Forbes, CNN Money, BBC Radio, The New York TImes to name a few.

He has serves on many international think tanks and hold leadership positions in global organizations. He has also served as high level advisor to United Nations Global Alliance on ICT & Development (UNGAID) between 2008-12; board member at World-Entrepreneurship -Forum and Open Mind Foundation respectively. He was the first Asian to be elected as Co-Chair of prestigious Internet Society Advisory Council (ISOC-AC) for 2008-10. In 2017, he was nominated as Fellow of IC2 Institute, University of Texas at Austin. He founded EntrepreneurCafe.org, one of the world's largest entrepreneurship networks.

Since 2008, Mr. Rubaab Sood is involved in FICCI (C-TECH) as a core team member. He has successfully implemented partnership programmes with Defense Research & Development Organisation (DRDO), Ministry of Defence, Government of India. He was responsible for detailed evaluation, business development commercialization of technologies from across sectors especially social development sector. He is the Team Lead for implementation of DRDO developed Bio Digester Technology in rural and semi-urban districts under Swachh Bharat initiative of the government. Mr. Sood is also Involved in conceptualization and planning of technology incubators & business accelerators in partnership with multiple state governments in India including Maharashtra, Uttarakhand, Telangana, with special focus on accelerating Rural Women Entrepreneurship & Livelihood.

He is member of the core team involved from the conceptualization stage of one-of-its-kind initiative between INDO-US Governments - Millennium Alliance (MA), a USD$50 million fund, which has now become a multinational programme with Govt. of UK & Netherlands joining hands along with World Bank, Facebook, etc. MA is an inclusive platform to leverage Indian creativity, expertise and resources to identify and scale innovative solutions being developed and tested in India to address development challenges that will benefit base of the pyramid populations across India and the world.

Additionally, Mr. Rubaab Sood, have successfully facilitated partnerships, fund raising activities including CSR for many of FICCIâ€™s Disaster Management initiatives since 2008 from various international developmental agencies, corporate and state & central government departments/ ministries.

Involved in accelerating FICCIâ€™s initiative on Industrial Disaster Management by further strengthening its ties with National Disaster Management Authority, Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister (EAC-PM), govt. agencies/ministries and international developmental agencies to plan, organise and manage over a 30 national and international level workshops/conferences on Chemical (Industrial) Disaster Management (CIDM).