Shashank Deora (He/Him)

I work at Living Landscapes, the secretariat for the Common Ground Initiative.

I am also pursuing a PhD from the Centre for Technology Alternatives for Rural Areas of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay.

After completing my undergraduate degree in engineering, I started my professional career as a Software Engineer in 2010. Later, I pursued my master's degree from the Indian Institute of Forest Management (IIFM), Bhopal. After that, I worked mostly in central India first as a practitioner exploring better livelihoods with rural communities and later as a researcher trying to understand the challenges to, and implications of, these efforts of livelihood improvement. The focus of my work has remained around land, water and forest governance and management.

Following is a brief of my work experience in an anti-chronological order.

2025 - currently working ||  Common Ground Initiative (Living Landscapes)

Common Ground Initiative is a collaborative systems-change initiative in the domains of environmental governance and rural livelihoods in India, jointly led by several organisations and anchored by a secretariat organisation called Living Landscapes. I work on the knowledge commons within the Common Ground collaborative and in the ecosystem at the intersection of environmental governance and rural livelihoods in India.

2018 to 2020  ||  VikasAnvesh Foundation (VAF), Pune (Maharashtra), India

VAF is a research centre based in Pune working on the development issues faced by various communities and grassroots workers. During my association with VAF, I contributed primarily to the research work on natural resource (land and water) management. I was part of a team involved in the impact evaluation of water harvesting structures and some organic agriculture interventions. I was also involved in a one-of-a-kind pilot exercise to evolve a process for the documentation and the formal recognition of the de facto customary regimes around the commons.

2014 to 2018  ||  Professional Assistance for Development Action (PRADAN), Tokapal, Bastar (Chhattisgarh), India

PRADAN is a non-governmental, not-for-profit organisation (NGO) that works in the rural regions of multiple Indian states. While at PRADAN, I was part of a team working with women collectives from the rural Adivasi communities on identifying and promoting alternative livelihoods as well as strengthening existing livelihoods such as crop cultivation. I was also engaged in training and capacity building of local communities on natural resource (land and water) management practices.

2010 to 2012  ||  Accenture Services Pvt. Ltd., Bengaluru (Karnataka), India

At Accenture, I worked as a software developer writing codes in the SAP ABAP language. I was part of a team working on customising existing Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software products.