Back to resources

India’s NGO Sector is the most diverse in the world

Civil Society | Aug 1, 2008

Writer and philanthropist Rohini Nilekani, wife of Infosys co-chairman Nandan Nilekani, has been deeply involved in development issues for many years now. She is the trustee of Akshara Foundation, which works to bring literacy and teaching programmes to poorer children; she co-founded Pratham Books, a non-profit publishing enterprise to produce high-quality, low-cost books for children in several Indian languages; end, with a private endowment, she started Arghyam, an NGO committed to sustainable water for all, in 2001.

View PDF

More like this

Strategic Philanthropy  |  Civil Society  |  COVID-19

Samaaj, Sarkaar and Bazaar: The New Normal in Times of COVID-19 Pandemic

This is an edited version of Rohini Nilekani’s conversation with ET Now, about the Coronavirus pandemic and the changes it has brought in her work and in society at large. The pandemic has brought many changes in our lives, some for better and others for worse. The negative repercussions are being felt by people of […]
Jun 22, 2020 |

Strategic Philanthropy  |  Civil Society

Philanthropy and Corporate Social Responsibility in South Asia and the US

This is an edited version of a panel discussion on “The Use of Philanthropy and Corporate Social Responsibility for Social Change in South Asia and the US” with Rohini Nilekani, Geeta Pradhan, and Alnoor Ebrahim. The event was presented by The South Asia Institute at Harvard University in 2014. It was cosponsored by the Hauser […]
Jan 7, 2015 | Panel Discussions

Civil Society  |  Strategic Philanthropy

Rohini Nilekani on the Secret to Successful Governance | Grand Tamasha

Rohini Nilekani is an author and philanthropist who has worked for over three decades in India’s social sectors. She is the founder of Arghyam, a foundation for sustainable water and sanitation, and she also co-founded Pratham Books, a nonprofit which aims to enable access to reading for millions of children. With her husband Nandan, she […]
Oct 5, 2022 |

Civil Society

Skills vs. Passion: The Challenges for Corporate Professionals Who Move into the Social Sector

Professionals “are very impatient to scale, and don’t realize that in the social sector, what to scale is more critical than how to scale,” says Rohini Nilekani, philanthropist and founder of Arghyam, a Bangalore-based NGO. Corporate professionals, Nilekani adds, tend to have a strong and mistaken belief in the power of the markets to solve […]
May 19, 2011 | Article