Know our Trustees: Prableen Sabhaney

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The Fabindia School is managed by a not-for-profit Society called the Bhadrajun Artisans Trust, registered with the Registrar of Societies in Delhi. The Bhadrajun Artisans Trust (BAT) was established by William and John Bissell to build social development programs with a focus on education and crafts.

Prableen Sabhaney, a member of The Fabindia School Board, heads Communications and Public Affairs at Fabindia Overseas Private Limited.

Besides brand perception management, she specializes in strategizing, preparation and management of messaging and communication initiatives to facilitate information flow and dissemination of knowledge.

Prableen is of the firm belief that focused communications is the final differentiator and should be viewed as a strategic investment. In her previous capacity as an independent consultant, for over two decades Prableen has worked with companies, organizations and institutions across a variety of sectors and verticals, providing strategic inputs and creating individualized programmes which have included media training and the use of multimedia platforms to facilitate effective outreach in a constantly changing landscape.

She has also worked with and participated in a number of panels examining concepts relating to Brands and the idea of Social Entrepreneurship and Responsibility, which is an area of particular interest.

Fabindia Overseas Pvt Ltd is India’s largest private retail platform for a wide range of contemporary, lifestyle, craft-based products produced largely in rural areas, using traditional skills and techniques.

Know our Trustee: Dr Babli Moitra Staff

Pic courtesy IP College website

Dr Babli Moitra Saraf Principal, Indraprastha College for Women, University of Delhi, India.

Principal, Babli Moitra Saraf, is an Associate Professor in the Department of English and Head of the Department of Multi-Media and Mass Communication. She has received her M.Phil degree in English and PhD in Sociology. She is fluent in several Indian and foreign languages. Her doctoral thesis studies language change in the advertising industry in India in the first phase of globalization (1984-94), and the emergence of the Indian urban middle-class identity. Active as a teacher both within and outside her College, her teaching interests include Translation, Poetry, Modern Indian Literature in Translation, Classical Literature, Renaissance and Modern European Drama, Poetry, The Bible, Cultural Studies, Communication Studies, Literary Theory, Literature and the Arts and the Hindi Film Song. She presents her academic work regularly among national and international peers. Her ongoing research examines traditions of Orality, Embodied Languages and Performance in the context of Translation and Translation Studies.

Dr Moitra Saraf taught in the Department of English in Delhi University’s Ramjas College for 29 years before joining I.P. College as Principal on 1 July 2009. She has studied the Corso Superiore at the Università per Stranieri at Perugia, Italy. She has taught Italian at the Istituto Di Cultura Dell’Ambasciata Italiana at New Delhi. She has a Diploma in Spanish from the Department of Germanic and Romance Studies, University of Delhi. She translates from several Indian languages as well as from Italian, into English and Hindi. Among others, she has translated the Bengali activist-novelist Mahasweta Devi’s works into Italian in collaboration with Maria Federica Oddera. Her publications, La Cattura (Theoria, 1996) and La Preda e altri Racconti (Einaudi, 2004), are acclaimed translations. Her work Rajouri Remembered (2007), is a translation of a family narrative, from Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi and oral history, recounting the effects of the Partition of India in the state of Jammu and Kashmir. She has co-edited with Shormishtha Panja Performing Shakespeare in India: Exploring Indianness, Literatures and Cultures (New Delhi: Sage, 2016). Her latest publication is Hey Diddle Diddle: Tun-Tun Tara-Tara (New Delhi: Vani Prakashan, 2017), which are Hindi adaptations/translations of popular nursery rhymes in English.

She is on the editorial board of Translation: a transdisciplinary journal (Rome), and on the editorial board of Saar Sansaar (New Delhi) – a journal translating from original foreign writings into Hindi.  She is a member of the Scientific Board of In Other Wor(l)ds: Project Book Series on translations from Asia and North Africa. Department of Asian and North African Studies, Ca’Foscari University, Venice, Italy. Dr Moitra Saraf serves on various academic and administrative committees of the University of Delhi, and the Govt. of India.

Babli Moitra Saraf has been a scholar under the Indo-Italian Cultural Exchange Program, a Research Associate at the NIDA School of Translation Studies (NSTS), Misano, Italy in 2009 and Visiting Faculty at NSTS 2011. She received the Distinguished Teacher Award of the University of Delhi in 2009, the Amity Women Achiever in Education Award in 2010. In 2010 she was invited to be part of the first all-women, six-member Indian delegation to visit Saudi Arabia on a people to people contact program under the Delhi and Riyadh Declaration and represented the Education sector. She received the 27th Dr. S. Radhakrishnan Memorial National Award for Teachers in 2011, the Fulbright- Nehru International Education Administrator Seminar award in 2011. She also received the “C.F. Andrews Distinguished Alumnus Award for Lifelong Pursuit of Excellence” from St. Stephens College in 2015, the “Women of the Decade in Academia”, Award of the Women Economic Forum in 2017 and the Certificate of Felicitation of the International Women’s Club (Unit of UNF), for “Remarkable Contribution in the Field of Administration & Education for Girls”, also in 2017. In 2018 she was felicitated with the “Girl Centric Tertiary Education and Training” award from the Women’s Agency for Generating Employment (WAGE), New Delhi. She also received the Lifetime Achievement Award from TESTCOIN, CIU, NICER, and IIEE, on the occasion of United Nations World Teachers Day Celebration, 2018.

As the 10th Principal of the historic Indraprastha College for Women, the oldest women’s college of the University of Delhi, her professional experience of over three decades with young adults as a teacher and education administrator, has enabled her to actively engage and make interventions in the particularities of the female experience. She has presented extensively on gender and institutional structure and processes. Dr Moitra Saraf’s constant effort is to blend tradition and modernity and preserve and promote the College’s heritage and revolutionary legacy. She has made significant interventions in academic and co-curricular activities, created centres of research and training, augmented learning resources and introduced new courses of study. She has introduced and promoted innovative measures to preserve the historical legacy of the College and its natural green cover and environment. The crucial element of her vision is to mainstream the marginalized sections of students. She has introduced many empowering facilities for economically and socially weaker sections of girls, enabling measures for disability access including a barrier-free institution. I.P. College today boasts of global level infrastructure for a wide range of academic, outreach and extension programs. The College was accredited with A Grade by NAAC in 2016 and has gone on to win national and international awards.   

Bhadrajun Artisans Trust (BAT) is a Society, registered with the Registrar Of Societies in Delhi. The society operates The Fabindia School.

The Members of the Society are:

1. Mr Sandeep Dutt - Chairman

2. Ms Prableen Sabhaney - Treasurer

3. Ms Poonam Singh Chauhan - Secretary 

4. Mr Ravi Kaimal

5. Mr Rajkumar Rodla
6. Dr Babli Moitra Saraf

7. Ms Anjana Batra

- Source www.bateducation.org (website of the Society)

Himmat Kalsia joins as Trustee and Chairperson- Award Programme Foundation

A big welcome to Mr. Himmat Kalsia as Trustee and Chairperson of the Award Programme Foundation. We bid adieu to Ms. Kidwai and are grateful to her for the exemplary leadership. Mr. Kalsia's extensive experience will help us build IAYP to be the 'Programme of Choice' for all Young Indians.

Mr Kalsia has over 28 years of experience in commercial policy, country risk analysis and control, correspondent banking and finance in the Africas, South East Asia and Far East Asia regions. Some highlights of his extensive career include serving as Deputy Manager for CALYON in South Africa , General Manager of Banque Internationale des Mascareignes, Mauritius (Crédit Lyonnais Group), Deputy General Manager for Crédit Lyonnais Group in India, Deputy Manager for Asia and the Pacific Basin in the International Division. He currently holds directorships at CIM Financial Services, Multiconsult, IMM based in Mauritius and Investrade Securities India Pvt Ltd.

Mr. Kalsia strongly believes that the Award Programme is specifically significant for young women in a developing economy as India. Fair economic and social progress will take place only when we focus on developing all women. He certainly looks forward to more women participating in the Award. Congratulations and good luck!


Photo L to R: Mrs Naina Lal Kidwai, Mr Himmat Kalsia and Craig Andrew, Executive Director: International Development