Our Mission

Twenty-first century education has evolved to necessitate the delivery of learning environments that promote critical thinking, complex communication skills, collaboration, and a positive approach towards public service and engaging with the world.

The majority of university graduates today work and live in environments that are multicultural, interdisciplinary, interconnected and technology intensive, and our higher education systems act as the last mile where many of these crucial skills have to be honed. While matters relating to pedagogy, curriculum delivery, benchmarking programmes and systems are of concern even in well-established higher education systems, India has not kept pace in even more essential aspects such as integration of digital learning into standard curricula, leveraging technology to improve higher education administration and internationalisation of higher education.

The Pranab Mukherjee Foundation —

• Builds strategic partnerships with advisors, experts, and practitioners working in the education sector to identify and address higher education challenges that stem from the secondary and senior secondary school levels.
• Collaborates with key partners to strengthen training for teachers, administrators and university leaders.
• Works with key partners to promote internationalisation of higher education institutions.
• Contributes to policy making in the higher education and broader education sector in India and developing countries.
• Assists in improving public policies for achieving a more focused outcome by initiating and supporting cutting-edge research, contributing to the existing body of knowledge and disseminating findings for public debate for building and strengthening institutions for overall improvement of quality of life in rural, semi-urban and urban areas.

The challenges of public policy and supportive legal reforms that are imperative to our time require reforms in governance and law. Central to this are the reform of public institutions and public law; promoting governance mechanisms that are more inclusive and participatory; and establishing greater accountability and transparency in our public systems in order to promote greater equity and justice.

The Pranab Mukherjee Foundation —

• Serves as a platform that promotes dialogue among government, academia, policymakers, civil society and other national and international stakeholders.
• Encourages inquiry on policy and advocacy, and evaluate the links between established legal frameworks and governance in practice.
• Initiates campaigns for policy and institutional changes.
• Create networks of engaged scholars and citizens.

In a world where change is the only constant, complex, dynamic and interconnected approaches are required to address the most critical problems. Societal inequities and environmental challenges necessitate innovative and creative solutions to tackling poverty, human rights, education and other crucial issues. Encouraging innovation for social change is the key to responding to these challenges.

• Aims to promote social innovation and entrepreneurship through ways which will ensure that the value it creates not only benefits the individual but accrues to the wider communities that they inhabit.
• We partner with government to strengthen its efforts to incubate new ideas and enterprises.
• Build networks that bring together the public, private and non-profit sectors to collectively engage with and support entrepreneurial ventures.
• Encourage wider distribution of private capital and philanthropic support for innovators and entrepreneurs.
• Contribute in developing an ecosystem that catalyses sustainable and inclusive growth in India and developing communities.
• We engage with innovators, leverage their knowledge, generosity and sharing spirit to bolster keeping the unmet social needs of the grassroots level in focus.
• We also setup demonstration units based on innovations (including grassroots innovations) in selected rural areas in hub and spoke model to promote entrepreneurship, generate employment opportunities and enhance incomes at the village level.

As economic development has created wider opportunities for access to jobs, education and health care for people across the world, unequal growth has left the most marginalised, particularly in developing countries, without the same opportunities. Reducing economic disparities and creating sustainable growth in India will be imperative not only to lift entire communities out of poverty and unstable livelihoods, but also to secure physical and territorial security in India and its neighbourhood.

The Pranab Mukherjee Foundation works on —

• Works on Issues including enabling rural communities to become as self-sufficient as possible through innovative and entrepreneurial approaches; empowering women to create stable livelihoods; highlighting India’s unique arts and handicrafts while creating national and international enterprise opportunities for our artisans; and sharing examples of successful approaches with other developing communities.
• Initiate and collaborates with other organisations for capacity building, awareness and knowledge dissemination in the areas of education and technology with the objective of uplifting the status and economic condition of marginalised communities.

Among other global challenges that will have a substantial impact on national and global security is climate change and its effects on the environment we inhabit. Across the world, low lying and coastal communities have lost their lands to rising sea waters, or are at risk of inundation. Climate change, sea-level rise and melting of glaciers are expected to affect water balance and ground water quality in India and other regions of the world, with agricultural yields, droughts and human morbidity and mortality likely to be affected. The work of many enterprising organisations has shown that the effects of climate change can be managed through adopting an integrated approach where individuals, communities, businesses, and governments adopt innovative and sustainable paths to achieve their outcomes.

The Pranab Mukherjee Foundation —

• Works to identify and address the effects of climate change on agricultural communities.
• Partners with government to ensure that adaptation strategies are brought into the mainstream in India’s development planning.
• Promotes action on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, avoid forest degradation and increased use of renewable energy.
• Encourage cross-border partnerships in India’s neighborhood to address short and medium term implications.
• Actively collaborates with businesses, civil society groups and other stakeholders to promote clean technologies, environment-friendly business practices, and other grassroots interventions.

The Foundation will work towards ensuring environmental sustainability, ecological balance, protection of flora and fauna, animal welfare, agroforestry, conservation of natural resources and maintaining quality of soil, air and water and to establish wildlife and biodiversity conservation mechanisms with complete community participation, afforestation of degraded land, agrarian land and protected farms through joint forest management and enrolling all the farmers in agriculture insurance.

The Pranab Mukherjee Foundation envisions holistic and sustainable growth of communities that enables its members to be self-sufficient and happy based on the 5H model of SmarTgram Mission – “a Humane, Hi-tech, Healthy and Happy village.”

The Pranab Mukherjee Foundation works on will reform/ rejuvenate villages by improving areas of livelihood, education, water & sanitation, healthcare & nutrition, farming & food processing, natural resource conservation and infrastructural challenges in multiple states across India through the implementation of the SmarTgram initiative that will lead to an inclusive growth model for scaling up and transforming villages towards self-sustainable development.

Read more about our SmarTgram Initiative