Dr Maitrayee Bhattacharya

Dr. Maitrayee Bhattacharya brings forty-five years of field experience to the SLRD Board of Advisors. A Senior Development and Holistic Health Consultant, she has spent her career working at the meeting point of rural livelihoods, natural resource management, and community health, the same intersection that defines SLRD’s own mission.

Her work spans Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, and the North Eastern states of Assam, Meghalaya, and Nagaland. She has partnered with NGOs, development organisations, government bodies, and international funding agencies, always with a focus on marginalised and tribal communities and on enabling them to take ownership of their own development.

Across these decades, her thematic range has been wide and deeply practical. In human resource development and capacity building, she has designed and delivered trainings for women in self help groups, farmers, youth, and adolescent girls, and has strengthened village institutions and the staff of partner organisations. In sustainable rural development, she has championed the move from hand holding to handover, so that communities lead their own progress rather than depend on external support. In natural resource management and climate change adaptation, she has promoted soil and water conservation, watershed development, food security, suitable cropping systems, kitchen gardens, horticulture, and afforestation. In sustainable livelihoods, she has built micro-enterprises around oyster mushroom cultivation, garments, soap, and sanitary pads, including face mask production during the Covid period. In holistic and preventive health, she has worked on naturopathy, acupressure, stress management, herbal gardens, medicinal plants, safe motherhood and child survival, nutrition for malnourished children and mothers, and adolescent reproductive and sexual health.

She has led feasibility studies, evaluations, impact assessments, and project proposal development for a long list of respected institutions. These include Catholic Relief Services, Caritas India, the Watershed Organisation Trust, the Japan International Cooperation Agency, Karl Kübel Stiftung Germany, CARE India, and Manos Unidas Spain. Her assignments have covered climate resilient livelihoods in Rajasthan, food security in Jalna, women’s economic empowerment through micro-enterprises in Bihar, Jharkhand, and Odisha, holistic development in Dharavi, and watershed projects across Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. Her international experience includes a study exchange with funding agency Misereor in Germany and a month of project development work with the Religious of Jesus and Mary Sisters in Timor Leste.

From 1990 to 2002 she held middle management roles with Catholic Relief Services in the West India Zone, counselling partner organisations on programme planning, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation, and managing USAID supported organisational strengthening grants. Earlier in her career she coordinated population and women’s health projects at the International Institute for Population Sciences and the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, both in Mumbai, and began as a lecturer of Psychology in Rourkela.

Dr. Bhattacharya holds a Ph.D. and an M.Phil. in Population Sciences from the International Institute for Population Sciences, Mumbai, a Post Graduate Diploma in Special Education from Bombay University, and a Gold Medal M.A. in Psychology from Ravi Shankar University, Raipur. She is certified in Naturopathy and Yoga by the National Institute of Naturopathy, Pune, under the Ministry of Ayush. She is fluent in English, Hindi, Bengali, and Oriya, converses in Marathi, and understands Gujarati and Assamese.

Her conviction that livelihood, health, and ecological care must advance together, and that real development means handing ownership back to the community, sits at the heart of what SLRD works to achieve. Her counsel strengthens the institution’s commitment to climate action that raises rural incomes and builds lasting community enterprise.