OUR BIO

Jalpaiguri Vivekananda Education Society (JVES) is a Non-Governmental Organization registered under the West Bengal Societies Act, 1961 and was initially formed in 2002 to provide educational support for the marginalize people and young bright students. While trying to educate the mass, a major hurdle was observed which could only be addressed through providing nutritional food support and health awareness. The future of our Society is at stake if we do not involve the farmers as a major stakeholder in our sustainable approach to livelihood. Our food has taken the shape of poison due to lack of knowledge, proper training and most importantly threat of pest and nutritional deficiency in plants. We observed it is high time that something needs to be done to bring life back to Nature and create awareness amongst the farmers and consumers to grow safe food.

The endeavour to start an institution slowly culminated into giving birth to a Society with major interest in Agriculture and allied services for the small & marginal farmers. With a small initiative towards Sustainable Agriculture project and working with farmers and villages to organize Bio-village programme, the present team got intertwined towards making the farmers self-sustainable and to have a better livelihood. With this approach, the founding members came across many like minded people and the team evolved with participation from various other people and stakeholders.

The organisation is bestowed with a young and diverse team who are open to accepting and adopting to the changes happening all around us including Agriculture & we have collaborated with several organisations to bring this path breaking technologies and experiences for better livelihood impact through social entrepreneurship for the benefit of the farmers of the State.

Smt. Sunanda Sen, B. Sc in Home Science, Chairwoman of JVES is the key founder member on whose initiative to give something back to the Society in terms of intangible wealth, the founding pillars of the Society came into formation. She has always been the shadow beside her husband and Chariman of PCIL, Mr. D. R. Sen, but with JVES she took a major interest for giving back to the Society.

Though initially she wanted to be an educator and provide the support of education and knowledge to the poor and marginalised section of the Society but soon with her son, came to realise the need for food security amongst the poor. Slowly, with her consent and advice JVES diverted to the core issue of providing sustainable source of farming to the poor and marginalized population.

Born in Kolkata to an effluent family, she went to live with her husband at Jorhat after marriage and travelled the North Eastern part of the country extensively. With her knowledge and immense experience of over 50 years in professional life, handling crisis in business, social life and amongst the poor people, she is the person to go for by the team of JVES for any advise, suggestions and critical decision making.

Ranjan D Sen has been associated with JVES since its inception in 2002 as founder Secretary of the Society. A social entrepreneur in agriculture and allied sector, has considerable experience working previously as CEO of PCIL, Consultant to Agribusiness Companies like AMALFARM etc.

He delved into advancement in farm technologies, mechanization, agri digitization, farm solutions and IoT in Agriculture and has experience working across multiple agro climatic zones with multiple crops in both backward & forward integration.

Former Chairman of Agri Sector Council, ASSOCHAM for East & NE India, has interacted with many policy makers, advisors, Industrialist, Entrepreneurs and as a Social Entrepreneur worked with many farmer clusters and groups for bridging the policy gaps.

He is currently completely involved with JVES and is spearheading a young and energetic team towards Sustainable Agriculture, Organic Farming, Carbon Sequestration through intervention in farming system, Water Conservation initiatives, Women centric livelihood impact projects, Agri Skill Development, Environmental protection projects and working with multiple agencies, stakeholders including Agri Universities to achieve the desired results / objectives.

Smt. Rajni Sen Chatterjee, educated from the prestigious Jadavpur University with MA in Philosophy got involved with JVES from the year 2009 onwards.

She is currently the Treasurer of JVES and under the support of the Chairman Smt. Sunanda Sen has given the much needed touch of empathy to JVES as a Social Enterprise which has helped to create the right balance for selection of projects to reach the women as their primary beneficiary and also impacting positively to their livelihood.

A strong administrator, Smt. Rajni Sen Chatterjee is a key pillar of its current foundation. Her love for plants and the necessity for nurturing them has guided JVES to take up Social forestry and plantation drive in Rabindra Sarovar Lake area with other stakeholders.

Ajay P Bothra  a graduate in Commerce & Diploma in Networking and computer languages, guided him to the well cushioned work place in Wipro Ltd. as BDM (IT Solutions) in Kolkata.

But soon he got saturated with the corporate life and wanted to work in Social sector. His chance interaction with the Secretary, Mr. Ranjan D Sen at a Social conference of NGOs bought them closer and soon joined the JVES family in 2014.

From joining as an executive member soon with his hard work and commitment, became VP Operation and is currently the Vice Chairman and heading multiple operations and project execution team. Currently Ajay has become a part of the core family member of JVES and his contribution to get the job done at the field level for the benefit of the small & marginal farmers has helped our Society achieve several milestones and acknowledgements from the funding agencies.

After working for 10 years in companies like Infosys and  Timken, he dropped the plan of going and settling abroad and chose to move into agriculture to make the farmers realise their value of produce.

He worked for 5 years in agri tech startups at leadership and consulting roles to get the deep insights of the ecosystem. With a mission to connect the roots with the society and help farmers grow, he came up with an idea to create ecosystem that of bringing local produce at center stage and remain vocal for it.

His chance interaction with the Secretary JVES, got him associated as our key advisor and team member. Today, Rahul is one the strategic advisor to JVES as his start-up Company Amalfarm Solutions Pvt. Ltd. provides a major support system to the Organic and sustainable crop marketing and knowledge support system to the JVES project team.

Dr. Dutta obtained M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Plant Pathology (biological control) from Assam Agricultural University (AAU), Jorhat, Assam, India and Post-Doctoral training in Nanotechnology from FERA, UK. Served for AAU, KVK-West Tripura, and Central Silk Board. His research area includes biological control, nanotechnology, ecotoxicology, and plant defence. Actively involved in teaching, research, and extension activities for the last two decades.

We at JVES family is grateful to have him as our mentor and advisor for the Agri-Extension projects that we undertake and require multiple research and knowledge support which is provided by him on regular basis.