"Work Builds, Charity Destroys." — The founding philosophy of Samaj Pragati Sahayog, inspired by Baba Amte, that guides every member of our core team to this day.
The governance and vision of Samaj Pragati Sahayog rests with a dedicated core team that emerged from the drought-parched tribal hinterlands of Dewas district in the early 1990s. Each founding member brings decades of field experience, academic rigour, and an unwavering commitment to the dignity of the most marginalised communities. Together, they operate through deep dialogue and collective responsibility.
Registered under the Societies Registration Act, 1860, SPS has worked relentlessly for over three decades across 600+ villages in Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra — always guided by community-led institutions rather than paternalistic charity.
Ms. Sini Jolly is an Experienced finance and accounts professional with 31 years of experience. Since 2005, she has been dedicated service at Samaj Pragati Sahayog (SPS), where she currently serves as the Chief Accounts Officer and also holds the position of Treasurer. She has a strong academic background in commerce, having completed her Bachelor of Commerce from Mahatma Gandhi University, Kerala. Ms. Sini has extensive experience in managing FCRA and non-FCRA project accounts, grant utilization tracking, statutory compliance (including IT and TDS returns), audit processes and donor financial reporting. Ms. Sini Jolly is an Experienced finance and accounts professional with 31 years of experience. Since 2005, she has been dedicated service at Samaj Pragati Sahayog (SPS), where she currently serves as the Chief Accounts Officer and also holds the position of Treasurer. She has a strong academic background in commerce, having completed her Bachelor of Commerce from Mahatma Gandhi University, Kerala. Ms. Sini has extensive experience in managing FCRA and non-FCRA project accounts, grant utilization tracking, statutory compliance (including IT and TDS returns), audit processes and donor financial reporting.
For over 26 years, Murli Kharadia has been working as a development professional in different capacities, with Samaj Pragati Sahayog (SPS), one of India’s largest grassroots initiatives for water and livelihood security. He continues to spearhead programmes concerning watershed development and natural resource management. Currently, he’s the programme head and in-charge of the Watershed Development Team at SPS. He has been a master trainer and trainer for over 20+ years for Watershed Development and NREGA Programmes at Baba Amte Centre for People's Empowerment, Madhya Pradesh, NIRD Hyderabad and SIRD Lucknow. Mr. Kharadia has played a pivotal role in preparing the Watershed Manual and training material for barefoot technicians.
Animesh Mondal is a seasoned development professional and alumnus of the Delhi School of Social Work, with over 24 years of experience in rural livelihoods, sustainable agriculture, natural resource management (NRM), women’s empowerment, livestock development, and community institution building across Central India. He currently serves as Programme In-Charge (Livelihood Programme) at Samaj Pragati Sahayog, where he leads large-scale livelihood and agriculture initiatives with women farmers across Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra. His work focuses on Nature Positive Management (NPM), climate-resilient agriculture, women’s land and institutional rights, livestock management, market linkages, and convergence with government programmes to strengthen sustainable livelihoods for rural and tribal communities. Over the years, he has held several leadership roles within SPS, contributing significantly to the strengthening of Self-Help Groups (SHGs), women’s federations, sustainable agriculture systems, and women-led community institutions. He also played a key role in establishing Ram Rahim Pragati Producer Company Limited from the ground up, focusing on aggregation, financial inclusion, and market access for smallholder farmers, and later served as its Chief Executive Officer (CEO). In addition, he has played a pivotal role in strengthening organisational training programmes, supporting volunteer organisations (SVOs), donor and stakeholder engagement, and institutional networking. His core expertise includes programme management, strategic planning, donor coordination, budgeting, livelihood promotion, institutional strengthening,and capacity building. He is widely recognised for his strong commitment to ecological sustainability, participatory development, and women institution-led community empowerment.
Shobhit Jain has been part of Samaj Pragati Sahayog since its early years and has spent over three decades working in the tribal and rural regions of central India. Trained as a film editor at the Film and Television Institute of India, Pune, he began his journey as an independent documentary filmmaker before immersing himself fully in grassroots development work with SPS. Over the years, his work has moved across watershed development, agriculture, livelihoods, community institutions and media, always with a deep engagement with people and place. At SPS, he has helped shape programmes rooted in ecological regeneration, equity and community participation. Along with Pinky Brahma Choudhury, he co-founded SPS Community Media, a filmmaking initiative that grew from the need to communicate rural realities from within the community itself. Over time, it evolved into a unique experiment in participatory filmmaking and people’s media. Young people from Adivasi and rural communities were trained in camera, sound, editing and storytelling, many of whom went on to become filmmakers themselves. The films emerging from this process have travelled widely across India and the world. SPS Community Media films have been screened at more than 100 national and international film festivals and have received several awards, including the National Film Award for Best Location Sound. Yet the primary audience for these films continues to be the villages where they are made and screened through the People’s Mobile Cinema initiative across hundreds of villages in central India. At the heart of Shobhit’s work is a belief in deep documentation, the slow and careful recording of the changes that unfold on the ground over years and sometimes decades. Whether through film or development practice, his interest has been in understanding how communities transform themselves, how landscapes recover, and how memory, culture and lived experience shape social change. His filmmaking process grows out of long relationships and trust rather than observation from a distance.
