Harsh Mander

Harsh Mander (born 17 April 1955) is an Indian author, columnist, researcher, teacher, and social activist who started the Karwan-e-Mohabbat campaign in solidarity with the victims of communal or religiously motivated violence.

He is the Director of the Center for Equity Studies, a research organisation based in New Delhi.

He also served as Special Commissioner to the Supreme Court of India in the Right to Food Campaign and was a member of the National Advisory Council of the Government of India, set up under the UPA government.

Mander formerly worked in the Indian Administrative Services(IAS), serving in the predominantly tribal states of Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh for almost two decades.

From October 1999 to March 2004, he worked as Country Director, ActionAid India, a development support organization.

He is Founder-Chairperson of the State Health Resource Centre, Chhattisgarh, which established the Mitanin Community Health Programme, the forerunner of the Asha Programme, and the Chairperson of INCENSE (The Inclusion and Empowerment of People with Severe Mental Disorders).

He is also a member of the Working Group of the Project on Armed Conflict Resolution & People's Rights, University of California, Berkeley.

After the Gujarat Riots, Mander left the service in 2002, and started social activism.

He is a founding member of the National Campaign for the People’s Right to Information.

He was a Member of the Core Groups on Bonded Labour and Mental Hospitals of the statutory National Human Rights Commission of India; and also on various national official National Committees such as those for Social Protection and the Below Poverty Line (BPL) populations.

Among his awards are the Rajiv Gandhi National Sadbhavana Award for peace work, the M.A. Thomas National Human Rights Award in 2002, the South Asian Minority Lawyers Harmony Award in 2012 and the Chisthi Harmony Award in 2012.

He was appointed a Member of India’s National Advisory Council by the council President Sonia Gandhi in June 2010.

He convened the working groups on the Food Security Bill, Land Acquisition and Rehabilitation Bill, Child Labour Abolition, Urban Poverty and Homelessness, Disability Rights, Bonded Labour, Street Vendors and Urban Slums, and co-convened the groups on the Communal and Targeted Violence Bill, Dalits and Minorities and Tribal Rights, among others.

His tenure was not renewed in 2012.

Mander is against the death penalty.

He was among the people who signed the mercy petition of Ajmal Kasab.

In March 2023, Ministry of Home Affairs has recommended a CBI inquiry into Aman Biradari, an organisation run by Harsh Mander to probe the alleged FCRA violations by Mandar’s organisation.

Harsh Mander teaches courses on poverty and governance at the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, and St. Stephen’s College, Delhi.

He taught at the Nelson Mandela Centre for Peace and Conflict Resolution at Jamia Millia Islamia, Delhi and at the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration, Mussoorie while he was Deputy Director of the institution, during which he also played a dominant role in the Right to Information Act (RTI).

He has also lectured at the California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco; the Centre for Law and Governance, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi; Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, UK; NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad; MIT, Boston; University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and at the Universities of Stanford, Washington (Stanford), Austin, among others.

Harsh Mander has written and co-authored several books and regularly writes columns for newspapers like The Hindu, Hindustan Times and Dainik Bhaskar, and contributes frequently to scholarly journals.

His stories have been adapted into films such as Shyam Benegal’s Samar, and Mallika Sarabhai’s dance drama, Unsuni.

Some of his selected publications include: