Job Description:
About PRAGATI
Rural India is central to India's economic future, accounting for 63% of the population and 70% of the workforce. Yet a large share of rural livelihoods remains concentrated in relatively low-productivity agriculture, creating a significant opportunity to shift towards higher-income economic activity.
PRAGATI (Programme for Rural Advancement, Growth and Transformative Initiatives) is a TCF-incubated organisation focused on accelerating economic prosperity in rural India. Its work is centred on two priorities:
- Increasing agricultural incomes by addressing structural constraints across land, inputs, finance, markets, processing and trade.
Creating scalable non-farm livelihoods by identifying, financing and supporting promising rural enterprises that can generate local jobs.
PRAGATI works with central ministries and state governments to combine policy and economic analysis with hands-on implementation. It identifies high-potential opportunities, partners with relevant government institutions, tests solutions on the ground, and develops models that governments can ultimately own and replicate.
Role Summary
PRAGATI is working with the Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD) to help shape the next phase of rural development—building on MoRD's strong welfare and infrastructure delivery platform to increasingly enable sustained income growth and rural prosperity. The engagement focuses on three pathways: increasing agricultural incomes, creating non-farm local livelihood opportunities, and enabling skilling for remunerative migration.
The Associate Director – Rural Economic Transformation (MoRD) will lead this engagement and the embedded PMU on a day-to-day basis. This is a senior leadership role combining strategy, policy, government engagement, execution and team leadership.
The role requires someone who can build trusted relationships across levels of government, understand institutional context and decision-making dynamics, and exercise sound judgment in balancing stakeholder priorities with the broader objectives of the engagement. The individual should be able to bring an evidence-based point of view, navigate differing perspectives constructively, and help keep the PMU focused on the highest-impact priorities as the agenda evolves.
The person will work closely with senior MoRD officials and PRAGATI leadership and coordinate with state governments, financial institutions, experts and private-sector partners. The role requires comfort moving between high-level strategic questions and the practical details of implementation.
Key Responsibilities
- Own the day-to-day agenda, priorities and delivery of the engagement, working closely with MoRD and PRAGATI leadership.
- Identify high-impact opportunities for increasing rural incomes and translate complex problems into clear hypotheses, analytical workstreams and practical interventions.
- Build trusted relationships across senior and working levels of government, understand institutional incentives and processes, and use sound judgment to build alignment and move priorities forward.
- Develop policy and programme designs, implementation models, financing mechanisms and outcome frameworks, and drive initiatives from concept and approval through execution.
- Translate broad priorities into clear workplans, milestones and accountabilities; surface bottlenecks early; and ensure the PMU remains focused on the most consequential issues.
- Coordinate across ministries, state governments, public institutions, financial institutions, experts and private-sector partners to create practical pathways for implementation.
- Manage and mentor the PMU team, setting a high bar for analytical rigour, ownership, stakeholder judgment and execution.
- Establish effective review mechanisms, track progress against outcomes, and ensure discussions and decisions translate into timely follow-through.
- Capture lessons from implementation and help develop approaches and playbooks that can be adapted across states and programmes. PRAGATI's broader model is explicitly built around embedding PMUs to solve bottlenecks and drive implementation at scale.
Qualifications and Skills
- We are looking for someone with 10+ years of high-quality professional experience, with evidence of progressively greater responsibility in complex, multi-stakeholder environments.
- The individual may come from management consulting, strategy, transformation, public policy, economic development, government advisory or a similar problem-solving and execution-oriented environment.
- The strongest candidates will demonstrate:
- A track record of leading complex programmes end-to-end, from problem definition and strategy through stakeholder alignment and implementation.
- Significant experience working with government and the maturity to engage effectively with stakeholders at different levels of seniority.
- Strong institutional judgment and the ability to understand context, reconcile differing priorities and influence outcomes without relying on formal authority.
- Independent, structured problem-solving, with the ability to form a clear point of view while remaining open to evidence and stakeholder perspectives.
- Strong quantitative and analytical skills, with comfort working across policy, economics, strategy and implementation.
- The ability to distinguish high-value priorities from activity that consumes effort without materially advancing outcomes.
- Strong people leadership, including the ability to set direction, develop teams and create ownership and accountability.
- Excellent written and verbal communication, including the ability to simplify complex issues and make clear recommendations to senior stakeholders.
- High ownership, persistence and comfort operating in ambiguity, while adapting quickly when circumstances or evidence change.
- A strong orientation towards measurable economic outcomes, practical implementation and institutional sustainability.
- Comfort working in an early-stage organisation where roles are broad and leaders are expected to step beyond formal boundaries when required.
- MBA or postgraduate degree from a leading institution is preferred, but not mandatory.