Vijay Kumar

Advisor to Govt of Andhra Pradesh for Agriculture & Cooperation, and Co-Vice Chairman, Rythu Sadhikara Samstha at Government of Andhra Pradesh

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Advisor to Govt of Andhra Pradesh for Agriculture & Cooperation, and Co-Vice Chairman, Rythu Sadhikara Samstha
Policy Fellow, Centre for Science and Policy

A Physics honor student and a MBA from Faculty of Management Studies, Delhi University he joined the Indian Administrative Service in 1983. After spending 28 years in Tribal and Rural development,he is presently the Advisor to Govt of A.P for Agriculture & Cooperation, and Co-Vice Chairman, Rythu Sadhikara Samstha (a company for Farmers empowerment, set up by the State Govt).

Served in various positions in Govt. of Andhra Pradesh till 2010. Most significant assignment was a record 10 years posting as CEO for Society for elimination of Rural Poverty (S.E.R.P) 2000 to 2010, where he was responsible for implementing a state wide programme of poverty eradication through social mobilization and empowerment of women. The programme with an outlay of over 400 million USD covered all villages in the state of Andhra Pradesh and till 2010 had organized 1.15 crore rural poor women in thrift and credit based self help groups (SHGs), and their federations. In 2005, a Community managed sustainable agriculture (C.M.S.A) was taken up through the women farmers in SHGs. It is a precursor to the present climate resilient Zero Budget Natural Farming initiative in the state.

He was on deputation to Govt. of India for 5 years from 2010 to 2015, as the first Mission Director of the National Rural Livelihoods Mission (N.R.L.M).The work in S.E.R.P contributed to the restructuring of a national program to N.R.L.M. In NRLM his key responsibility was rolling out a nation wide poverty eradication programme based on social mobilization and empowerment of rural poor women. It is the country’s flagship poverty eradication programme through women’s mobilization and its vision is to reach out to 80 to 100 million rural poor households,

He returned to Govt. of Andhra Pradesh in April 2015 as Special Chief Secretary, Agriculture, Govt of Andhra Pradesh. He Superannuated from this position in 2016. He is leading the implementation of climate resilient Zero budget Natural farming in the entire state of A.P. The ZBNF program in the 1st phase will cover by 2019, 500,000 farmers, 500,000 hectares. The vision of the State Govt is to cover all 12900 Gram panchayats, and all 60 lakh farmers, cultivating 80 lakh hectares.

  • In news articles

    Igniting change in Indian agriculture

    For the third in our series of roundtables co-hosted by CSaP and the IIT Delhi School of Public Policy, Vijay Kumar, international CSaP fellow, tackled the questions surrounding the introduction of new technologies and ways of thinking to India's expansive and complex agricultural sector.