PRADAN — BUILDING STRONGER ORGANIZATIONS
Building Systems for a New Model of Sustainable Agriculture

​About PRADAN

PRADAN (Professional Assistance for Development Action) works in some of India's poorest regions — helping vulnerable communities, especially women, build livelihoods, access information, and engage effectively with government systems. They recruit well-educated, empathetic young professionals to work directly alongside people in marginalized villages, focusing on building community-led solutions rather than top-down delivery.

 

Context

Through a new initiative called 'Evergreen in the East', PRADAN set out to establish a new model of sustainable agriculture in West Bengal — helping farming communities break the cycle of high input use and low productivity. The initiative covered 2 blocks in Bankura, spanning 13 Gram Panchayats, 285 villages, and over 35,000 farming households. Central to the model was building a cadre of village-based para-agronomists (called Chashi Bandhus) and formalising farmer collectives. Phicus was brought in to design the team structure and systems that would make this work.

 

The Collaboration

Phicus began with field visits and stakeholder conversations — meeting the women farmers, the Chashi Bandhus, and the master trainers who would drive the transformation on the ground. This was complemented by research into best practices in building field cadres in similar agricultural development contexts.

 

Working through a series of workshops and design sessions with the PRADAN program team, Phicus helped operationalise the transformation strategy — seasonal operational plans with milestones and targets; personas, skills descriptions, capacity building plans, engagement plans, and performance metrics for both the Chashi Bandhus and the master trainers. The central program team structure, key roles, stakeholder engagement plans, and performance metrics were defined and handed over for implementation.

 

Going Forward

Phicus completed this engagement having designed and handed over a fully operational team structure, field cadre systems, and seasonal plans — leaving PRADAN with the institutional infrastructure to run and scale the Evergreen in the East initiative independently. This engagement is a strong example of what bespoke OD looks like in an agricultural development context.