Vimala Ramachandran

Vimala Ramachandran has been working on elementary education, girls’ education, women’s empowerment and the intersection between health, nutrition, education and early childhood care and child development. She was involved in the conceptualization of Mahila Samakhya (Education for Women’s Equality) and served as the first National Project Director from 1988-93 in MHRD, GOI. She was the Managing Trustee of HealthWatch from 1994 to 2004. From 2011 to mid-2015 she was a National Fellow and Professor of Teacher Management and Development in NUEPA (National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration). She is now retired and lives in Jaipur.

Over a career spanning 35 years, Vimala has worked with governments and NGOs to get children back to school, address the problem of girls dropping out, and create opportunities to get them back into the formal stream of education. She established ERU Consultants Private Limited in 1998 as a network of researchers and practitioners working on education. As a part of the ERU team, Vimala has been engaged in longitudinal research, handholding/ mentoring and qualitative research—with a focus on pre-primary, elementary and secondary education focusing on gender and equity issues, teachers’ status and motivation and systemic barriers to realizing goals related to equity in India.