Vivek Bhandari is an Indian academic. From 2007 to 2011, he served as Director of the
Institute of Rural Management Anand
Institute of Rural Management Anand (IRMA) is an autonomous institution and premier business school located in Anand Gujarat, India with the mandate of contributing to the professional management of rural organizations. IRMA was founded with the ...
(IRMA), a premier management school located in India. Bhandari was one of the youngest business school directors in India when he took over this responsibility, and during his tenure IRMA's research impacted policy at the national level in a variety of fields related to rural development. As a result, the institute also received national and international recognitions under his leadership, most notably from the Canadian agency, the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), as well as ministries in the Government of India. He is now on the faculty of
Krea University
Krea University is an Indian state private university located in Sri City, Andhra Pradesh. The liberal institution is backed by IFMR and focuses on interwoven learning. It was founded in 2018 by a team of academicians and industrialists. This ...
.
Early life
Bhandari spent his early years in various parts of Rajasthan (India). He completed his BA and MA in History from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi. He went on to do a second Master's in South Asian Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA, and proceeded to complete his doctorate from the same university.
Career
After completing his education, Bhandari became a faculty member at Hampshire College in Amherst, MA, in the USA. In this capacity, he also taught and researched at academic institutions in the Five College Consortium (which includes Amherst College, Smith College, Mount Holyoke College, and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst) located in Massachusetts, USA. In 2007, he returned to India as director of the Institute of Rural Management Anand (IRMA).
In 2010, Bhandari was a visiting scholar at the Center for the Advanced Study of India at the University of Pennsylvania. From 2013 to 2018, he served as Ratan Tata Chair (Visiting) Professor at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. He was also a founding faculty member of the Young India Fellowship Program (associated with Ashoka University) in New Delhi.
From 2011 to 2015, Bhandari worked as consultant to philanthropic trusts such as the
Sir Dorabji Tata Trust
The Sir Dorabji Tata Trust was established by Sir Dorab Tata (fondly called ''Sir Dorabji''), the elder son of Tata Group founder Jamsetji Tata. Founded in 1932, it is one of the oldest non-sectarian philanthropic organisations in India.
Histor ...
,
Sir Ratan Tata Trust
Sir Ratan Tata Trust (SRTT) came into being in 1919 with a sum of Indian currency 8 million. It is under the ownership of Ratan Tata. Established in accordance with the will of Sir Ratanji Tata, the Trust is now one of the oldest grant bestowing ...
, and the
Reliance Foundation
Reliance Foundation is an Indian non-profit organisation which was founded in 2010 by Mukesh Ambani. It is wholly owned by Reliance Industries Limited and is one of the largest non-profit foundations in the country.
History
Reliance Foundati ...
. He was affiliated with the World Economic Forum's
Global Shapers
The World Economic Forum (WEF) is an international non-governmental and lobbying organisation based in Cologny, canton of Geneva, Switzerland. It was founded on 24 January 1971 by German engineer and economist Klaus Schwab. The foundation, ...
Program from 2012 to 2014. Since late-2017, he has been serving as an Advisory Council member of the
Copenhagen Consensus Center
The Copenhagen Consensus Center is a US non-profit think tank based in Lowell, Massachusetts, founded and headed by Bjørn Lomborg. The Center organizes the Copenhagen Consensus, a conference of prominent economists held every four years, where p ...
.
Over the years, Bhandari has held appointments at the
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health is the public health graduate school of Johns Hopkins University, a private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. As the second independent, degree-granting institution for research in epi ...
(Baltimore), the
Indian School of Business
The Indian School of Business (ISB) is a private business school established in India in 2001. It has two parallel campuses in India, in Hyderabad (Telangana) and Mohali (Punjab). It offers certificates in various post-graduate management prog ...
(Hyderabad), and
IIHMR University (Jaipur); and taught at the
National Institute of Design
The National Institutes of Design (NIDs) are a group of autonomous public design universities in India, with the primary institute, founded in 1961, in Ahmedabad, with extension campuses in Gandhinagar and Bengaluru. The other NIDs are locat ...
(Ahmedabad).
Since 2017, Bhandari has been serving as chairman/independent director of the
Jio Payments Bank Limited, a joint-venture of the State Bank of India and Reliance Industries Limited.
Bhandari's writings have been published in the ''Journal of Asian Studies'', ''Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East'', in edited volumes, and reference works such as the ''International Encyclopedia for the Social Sciences'' and the ''Encyclopedia of Modern Asia''. He is a co-author of the "State of Panchayats Report: An Independent Assessment, 2007-08," which was commissioned by the Government of India and was India’s first macro-study of institutions of local self-governance in India (called
Gram Panchayat
Gram Panchayat () is a basic village-governing institute in Indian villages. It is a democratic structure at the grass-roots level in India. It is a political institute, acting as cabinet of the village. The Gram Sabha work as the general bod ...
). The study allowed him to explore his particular interest in the study of grassroots development, social mobilizations and community organizations in India.
Recognition
A year into his term as director of IRMA in 2008, Bhandari was included in ''Business Today'' magazine's list of India's Top Twenty-Five Young Executives under the age of 40.
'Young Executives Under the Age of 40'.
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References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bhandari, Vivek
Living people
Academic staff of the Institute of Rural Management Anand
Delhi University alumni
1970 births
Jio Payments Bank