Sandeep Chachra, Executive Director, ActionAid Association recently joined NewsX for a conversation as part of NewsX India’s special A-List series. A social anthropologist by training and a development activist who has lived and worked with Indigenous people and Dalit communities in India all his life, Sandeep Chachra is currently the Executive Director of ActionAid Association. Prior to this, Mr Chachra was the International lead for ActionAid International, just and democratic governance and economic justice theme. He has worked in several capacities in ActionAid International and other development organisations for the last two decades.
Giving us a peak into his journey in the social sector so far, Sandeep said, “I did my research and studies in social anthropology and interned at social work, and perhaps it’s my time I spent in Jharkhand with the tribal communities there as a student in school and later researches living with the Mundari tribes, or perhaps is the fact that my father is a first-generation refugee from Multan. We grew up in an environment where there were difficulties, perhaps those factors which contributed to me to commit myself to social change and justice efforts.”
Talking about his long association with the ActionAid, he highlighted, “ActionAid provides a platform for change for the most vulnerable communities, their movements and their formations. Over decades, some of which I have been part of, it makes several advances. I will take a few examples, back in early 2000 We took up the cause of homeless people. We organised homeless people and we provided support to homeless people in several cities of the country. Homelessness was then not on the national agenda, so i am working there to bring it to the national agenda to an extent. We went to the court and to the-then governments. Now. we have a national policy scheme for shelters for the homeless. So, it keeps you inspired when you see change happen not just on the ground but also in the policy framework.”
“We did our bit, so did other civil society organisations and formations. You’re right in celebrating and acknowledging their contributions over the last one year, we did our bit as well. Actually, more than about eight months in the last year after the lockdown. We did a bit to reach out for support to inform our workers more popularly we call them migrant workers, the kind of situation that all of us are in. So, we need to reach rations to them, food supplies to them, set up a community and mobile kitchens.”
On a concluding note, Mr Sandeep Chachra spoke about Action Aid’s plan to combat the second wave of Covid-19. He said, “We are in the middle of the second peak, so we will need to go back to some of the lessons in terms of what needs to be done, particularly for workers. We’re preparing ourselves to once again provide full support and action support. This time around, the question of medicines comes, the question of encouraging people to vaccinate where they’re qualified to vaccinate comes. We are part of a national level campaign, the People’s vaccine Alliance, which is campaigning for universal free vaccination for everybody, particularly in countries where vaccines are even down reaching so it’s not as national but globally also I think a lot needs to be done.”