Manisha Verma, IAS

Manisha Verma belongs to 93 batch of Indian administrative services and is presently serving as Director, National Advisory Council, Government of India prior to that she was worked as collector solapur in Maharashtra. During her short span, she has distinguished herself as an officer who combines within her courage and compassion, vision of a leader with practical skills of an administrator. She has coordinated with World Bank, UNICEF, ILO, IFAD and other multilateral programs on reproductive child health, education, child labour, agriculture and development. She has presented papers on Child Rights and Land Right to tribals in various forums.

She graduated in History & Law from Delhi University and completed her Post graduation in Human Rights. After completing her professional training from Lal Bahadur Shastri Academy of Adm. at Mussoorrie, she worked as Assistant collector in Dhule & Buldhana, Project officer in ITDP tribal belts of Nasik and Thane, Chief executive officer ZP Thane & Collector Amravati.

As CEO Thane, she initiated campaign of promoting people’s participation in development process through activation of the gram sabhas and social audit that became model for state policy. She took initiatives for empowerment of newly elected women representatives, promotion of women SHGS, programs in reproductive child health care, joyful learning in schools and village education plans. As collector of Amravati, apart from land revenue administration, she took up projects on improving municipal governance, promotion of low-cost water harvesting through people’s participation and promotion of organic farming and elimination of child labour. Her efforts to update and computerized land records of nearly eight Lac farmers (bhoomi abhiyan) and successful settlement of land rights of indigenous communities settled in forest areas (vanputra abhiyan) through transparent and participatory mechanisms with involvement of gramsabhas won CM’s award under Rajiv Gandhi Administrative Reforms for year 2001 and 2002 and were accepted as state policy. The National Commission for Scheduled Tribe recommended its replication to all state govt.

With her vast field experience and administrative acumen imbued with commitment to serve the people Mrs Verma has been able to act as a catalyst to motivate her team to go beyond routine to provide transparent and responsive administration

As a LEAD Fellow, she hopes to use the network for exploring workable solutions through a policy framework that reconciles livelihood interests of indigenous communities with that of forest conservation as well as humane resettlement policies for the people.