A group of young professionals have set up the Human Development Foundation (HDF) to bring together people from Academics, NGOs, Government, Private Sector and International Agencies to address the issues of under-development, primarily in the eastern and north-eastern parts of India, by undertaking teaching and evidence-based advocacy through its Academic and Development Action and Research wings respectively.
The Development Action and Research wing undertakes programmatic interventions to focus on Education, Community Health, Livelihoods, and Governance. Its activities are to be supplemented by research and action programs to set up model institutions and demonstration projects involving traditional and emerging opportunities; and to develop enabling policies.
Both the wings are linked with each other by a two-way flow of resources in the form of knowledge, technology, finance, personnel and competence.
We believe
The scope, direction and pace of development are not in tune with the concerns of backward regions and marginalized sections of society.
Development of human capacity and ethical institutions are the keys to comprehensive development of a society.
Weakness in development plan formulation (not content) and implementation processes do not achieve the desired plan objectives.
Government owned academic and research institutions are becoming weaker day by day due to the systemic effect of factors which have endogenous and exogenous origins.
Many private academic institutions which have emerged in recent years appear to have taken an easy path of becoming teaching shops with unethical governance system. It is not surprising that the students of private institutions often do not get the value for their money, faculty have little say in governance system, staffs are exploited and overall academic environment is depressing.
Accordingly, to move out of such a vicious system we work
- to strengthen existing government owned academic and research institutions,
- towards ethical governance system that promotes academic excellence, non-exploitative fees,
- and high level of transparency and accountability, and for evidence-based advocacy.
