Pravir Krishna, MD of TRIFED, launches his book, Tryst with the Tribes, which is the story of a young IAS officer who fell in love with India’s tribal heartland and how this experience changed him forever
Pravir Krishna (IAS MP 1987), has held various posts from being an assistant collector to secretary GOMP and GOI in which he earned the image of a ‘doer and change maker’. He charted a stellar career course over the past 34 years, setting new paradigms of empathetic service in all the roles that he assayed. These years also helped him curate his vision for serving people in a manner he knows best- with a blend of thought and action.
Krishna came face-to-face with the stark realities of the exploitation of tribal people in Sarguja, Madhya Pradesh. It affected him so deeply that he embarked on a journey towards bettering the lives of tribal people. Ever since, he has helped create an atmosphere where tribal people traded freely and earned more. In fact, his market reforms were listed by the UNO-FAO as among 32 global best practices. Krishna’s close association with the tribes continued in Bastar, and now as MD of TRIFED, it has become even more important with the pan India roll out of the Van Dhan Program. He earned the title ‘Imli Krishna’, when he conceptualised and spearheaded the Imli Andolan of Bastar, helping 30 lakh tribals to get fair deal for their trade and become masters of their destinies.
It is important that we ensure that the tribal communities maintain their traditional skill sets and at the same time we ought to open up new creative livelihood and income enhancing opportunities for them. This is what Krishna has been consistently striving through his stint in the tribal areas and now, with great success.
Revolving around the aforementioned theme and drawing from his experiences, Krishna has written a book, Tryst with the Tribes.
About the book
Tryst with the Tribes is an inspirational story about how a sensitive, committed and intelligent civil servant can transform an entire ecosystem of livelihoods from survival and abject exploitation to one of mutual help, entrepreneurship, and holistic empowerment.
The book encapsulates his tryst with the tribes of India that he has adopted as his own.
His witty writing style and strong emotional quotient place him in the genre of thoughtful writers who make facts seem more interesting than fiction.
The story of how a young IAS officer fell in love with India’s tribal heartland, and how this experience changed him forever.
“I am sure that this book will be very well received as a window to a creative blend of tradition and modernity that the author has brought to the field of tribal development,” commented M Venkaiah Naidu, the Vice President of India.
“He is now applying all these learnings to making tribes of India the ‘ethical-ecological’ brands of our times,” expresses Sanjeev Chopra, former director of Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration, Mussoorie.
The book is a labour of love and sweat, hard work and persistence, telling the story of how he led the Imli Andolan to a nation-wide platform,which he fondly calls the ‘Tribal AMULTransformation’. It is the remarkable story of a bureaucrat whose destiny is forever entwined with that of many of India’s tribal communities.