India, Nepal and Sri Lanka

Vasant Saberwal

Program Officer New Delhi

Vasant Saberwal works on environment, natural resource and development issues from the foundation's New Delhi office. His grant making focuses on the Indian dry lands, which account for nearly 60 percent of the country and the bulk of its rural poverty. The goal of his work is to stabilize dry-land agriculture through improved implementation of existing government programs that target the Indian dry lands (such as the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act) and via the articulation and implementation of policies in support of low-input rain-fed agriculture and animal husbandry.

Before joining the Ford Foundation in 2004, Vasant was director of research at Moving Images, an independent environmental documentary film production company. Both his academic work and his documentary films have explored issues relating to the politics of access to natural resources. His films include the award-winning documentaries "River Taming Mantras" and "Hunting Down Water," part of a five-part series on the political economy of water.

His books include "Pastoral Politics: Shepherds, Bureaucrats and Conservation in the Western Himalaya" (New Delhi, New York: Oxford University Press, 1999) and, "Democratizing Nature: Politics, Conservation and Development in India," which he co-authored with Ashwini Chhatre (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006). He helped launch the interdisciplinary journal Conservation and Society and was executive editor from 2002 to 2004.

Vasant has a Ph.D. in environmental studies from Yale University, and conducted postdoctoral research at Harvard University and the Institute for Social and Economic Change.