18 July 2012

Kumar Das, an alumnus who studied MA Development Studies in 2009 – 10, was awarded an IDS alumni bursary to participate in the STEPS Centre Summer School, which took place at the Institute in May. We caught up with Kumar, who is currently working as the Monitoring and Evaluation Manager at Agri Business Systems International, to see what he thought of the course and being back at IDS.

The best thing about being at IDS, explains Kumar, is the people, the bar, the teaching team and BLDS. Kumar left IDS in July 2010; he believes that IDS has given a theoretical base to his work. Discussions that he had during his time at IDS, around poverty, power and policies have given him a framework for understanding the issues faced by the people that he has gone on to work with. Participatory approaches learnt from the Robert Chambers workshops, have equipped him with tools to understand and interpret the voices of poor people in India.

The impetus for attending the summer school was a drive to look at and approach sustainability in a more innovative way. Since returning to India, Kumar feels that he has been able to apply some of these innovative ways of thinking to his work.