Board of Trustees
Prof. Vijay Raghavan,
PhD
Prof. Vijay Raghavan, one of our founding trustees, is a distinguished academic at the Centre for Criminology and Justice, School of Social Work, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. Over a career spanning more than three and a half decades, he has worked at the intersection of social work, criminology, law, and social justice, bringing together rigorous scholarship with a deep concern for dignity, equity, and structural inequality.Prof. Raghavan has made important contributions to prison reforms in India. He has been part of several government and court appointed committees and has played a key role in shaping discussions on prison conditions and the need for reform. His work in this area reflects a continued engagement with institutions and their practices.More broadly, Prof. Raghavan’s research has focused on questions of urban poverty, homelessness, and marginalisation. He has consistently challenged reductive understandings of criminality, instead situating individual experiences within their wider social, economic, and institutional contexts.
Mohd Tarique Qureshi, Managing Trustee
Mohd. Tarique has been working on the issue of homelessness and destitution since his college years. Throughout his career spanning close to twenty-five years, he has been working on the issue from both ends: direct field intervention as well as policy advocacy. He grounds his work in systems approach, strongly believing that meaningful structural change can be achieved through sustained engagement with institutions as equal partners. He has served on several state and national level committees on homelessness, destitution and mental health. At present, he is a member of the Monitoring Committee for Shelters for Urban Homeless, constituted by the Supreme Court of India. He has also contributed to the drafting of the SMILE Scheme (Support for Marginalised Individuals for Livelihood and Enterprise) under the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, Government of India. Tarique’s work reflects a deep commitment to situating dignity and justice at the centre of both practice and policy. By working consistently between the urgency of field realities and the slower processes of institutional change, he has sought to ensure that responses to homelessness and destitution remain both grounded in reality and responsive to actual needs of people.
Ms Pallavi Santosh Thakare
Pallavi Thakare, coordinator and one of the senior leaders at Sam-Haq Trust, has over two decades of experience in the development sector, with a strong focus on homelessness, destitution, and the rights of marginalised communities. She has been leading Sam-Haq Trust interventions across both community-based and institutional settings, combining grassroots engagement with systemic advocacy.She has been part of several consultative bodies addressing issues of social welfare, homelessness, and institutional care. She has served as a Member of the Management Committee of the Suburban One Stop Centre, and as a Master Trainer with the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, Government of India. At present, she is serving as a core team member of the Rationing Kruti Samiti, a Mumbai based network of civil society organisations working on the issue of public distribution system and food security.Through her sustained engagement with public systems and vulnerablecommunities, Ms. Thakare has played a significant role in strengthening access to dignity, care, and justice for people experiencing homelessness and exclusion.
