Deepa Pawar: As mediators for our community’s rights, we remain accountable to them

Deepa Pawar is the founder and director of the Anubhuti Trust, an organization formed and self-led by women, with the intention to work with youth on developing their leadership so that there are aware and responsible youth in society who can lead change for a more just and equitable world.

In this episode of No-Cost Extension, Deval and Deepa sit down at the Dasra office to talk about the stigmatization of Nomadic and Denotifed Tribes in India from the time of colonial rule, their unacknowledged role in the freedom struggle and how they have been historically viewed as outlaws. 

Deepa speaks of how NDT communities cannot be viewed only through the lens of vulnerability and marginalization, the contribution of women in keeping the culture of the community alive, and how Anubhuti Trust places agency and liberty at the heart of their approach to movement building.

She speaks of her accidental entry into the NGO sector, how Anubhuti came to be formed, the various areas their work touches upon - from Dalit activism to anti-caste feminism to environmental justice. 

Deepa is also a member of the Rebuild India Fund Investment Committee and discusses the need for the development sector to be experimental, the myopic lens through which we often look at results and success and how funders can sometimes get in the way of the work organisations are trying to do.  

For more information on Anubhuti’s work check out their website at https://www.anubhutitrust.org/. 

For more information on No-Cost Extension go to https://www.dasra.org/nce  and follow Deval on X at @deval_sanghavi  and @Dasra

All additional audio courtesy of Anubhuti Trust/Youtube and field recordings.