What is it like to dedicate one's life to working for some of the most under-represented groups? Nandita Pradhan Bhatt is the Director of the Martha Farrell Foundation, an NGO that supports informal, migrant workers, mostly female domestic workers and adolescent children to build their leadership and collective voice against injustice. Nandita has been a civil society practitioner decades, and has worked extensively on gender inclusion and the prevention of sexual harassment against women.

In this episode of No-Cost Extension, Nandita speaks of her childhood on tea plantations in Dooars and Darjeeling, where her father was a senior manager and she had an upbringing that cultivated a deep sense of respect, dignity and privilege. Deval and Nandita discuss the issues that workers face and how they were invisible to her growing up.  But as the Director of the Martha Farrell Foundation these deep issues are now only too obvious to her now that she’s ‘on the other side’. 

After training as a special educator and working with young people, Nandita went back to college for a gender studies degree. She then worked with Dr. Martha Farell at PRIA, working in the space of gender mainstreaming in leadership and conducting gender audits of panchayats. From there her work has gone on to encompass sexual harassment at the workplace, the rights of domestic workers, and more. 

Nandita and Deval discuss equality and equity and the difference between the two, how young people have very definite ideas about what they want, and the Rebuild India fund, which Nandita says her heart is tied to. 

The Martha Farrell Foundation supports practical interventions which are committed to achieving a gender-just society and promoting life-long learning. You can find out more about them at https://www.marthafarrellfoundation.org/

For more information on No-Cost Extension go to https://www.dasra.org/nce and follow Deval on X at @deval_sanghavi  and @Dasra