Dr. Rajesh Tandon is president of the Delhi-based PRIA (Participatory Research In Asia, estb.1982), an institution of repute in the field of community-centric research, and co-chair of Unesco’s Community-Based Research and Social Responsibility in Higher Education. An alumnus of IIT-Kanpur and IIM-Calcutta, Dr. Tandon was awarded his doctorate by the Case Western Reserve University, USA. 

Newspeg. A consortium for training in community-based research, christened Knowledge for Change (K4C), was launched in Delhi on November 13. Dr. Tandon as Unesco co-chair and PRIA president has been instrumental in promoting this path-breaking global initiative, under which higher education institutions and civil society organisations will co-create knowledge through collective action by academics and community groups. 

K4C will establish training hubs around the world for enabling the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), especially goals 4-7 (equitable education and lifelong learning, gender equality, universal water and sanitation and sustainable energy for all). The initiative will be launched in ten countries — Cuba, Canada, Columbia, Brazil, Uganda, South Africa, Italy, India, Philippines and Indonesia. 

PRIA genesis. Born into a family of teachers, soon after graduating from IIT-Kanpur and IIM-Calcutta, Tandon opted to teach at the latter though he had qualified for the IAS. After lecturing at IIM-C for a few years, he pressed on for a Ph D. “For field work for my thesis I went to rural Rajasthan. That’s where I learnt first-hand of the wide gap between local and academic knowledge,” he says. 

Academic collaborations. PRIA’s feelers to universities to introduce community-based research received tepid response initially. But when its work started being noticed and referred to by international organisations such as the World Bank, CIDA and others, PRIA initiated formal collaborations with some Indian universities in the areas of social work, sociology and nutrition. However, it was in 2003-04 after Delhi University established the Centre for Social Justice, that the university formally endorsed what Tandon had been championing for years. And Unesco’s Higher Education Conference, 2008 in Paris, firmly established PRIA on the global scene. 

In 2012, in recognition of his work in this domain, Tandon was appointed co-chair of Unesco’s Community Based Research and Social Responsibility in Higher Education along with Prof. Budd Hall of the University of Victoria (Canada) for four years. This appointment has been renewed for another four years until 2020. 

Future plans. Training of the first batch of mentor/trainees under K4C will begin in January 2018, over a period of 21 weeks per batch. “Our aim is to scale this up in the next three years. We want to create hubs around the world so that community-based research is mainstreamed at the earliest. This will not only enrich higher education but help in attaining the SDGs,” he says. 

Autar Nehru (Delhi)