Joe Madiath founded Gram Vikas in 1979 after nearly a decade of working alongside communities in some of India’s most difficult circumstances — refugee camps during the Bangladesh war, cyclone-affected villages in Odisha, and the Kerandimal hills of Ganjam where Gram Vikas first took root. He led the organisation as Executive Director for nearly four decades, building it into one of Odisha’s most respected development institutions. He is now its Founder Chairman.
At the core of Joe’s work is an uncompromising belief that poor communities deserve the same quality of solutions as anyone else. Under his leadership, Gram Vikas established community-owned water and sanitation systems two decades before India’s national missions, insisted on 100% inclusion before any household received services, and demonstrated that communities given genuine agency build systems that last. His contribution to India’s rural water and sanitation policy was recognised through his role on the Planning Commission’s Working Group on Water and Sanitation for the 12th Five Year Plan.
Joe is a Skoll Awardee and Schwab Fellow for Social Entrepreneurship. His work has been recognised with the World Habitat Award, the Kyoto World Water Grand Prize, and the Asian Development Bank’s Water Champion citation, among others. He remains one of the clearest voices in Indian development practice on what it means to work with communities rather than for them.