Nikita Madan

Personal Experience

Nikita is an Environmental Planner from the prestigious School of Planning & Architecture, New Delhi. With 7+ years of experience, her areas of expertise include water-sensitive urban planning with special focus on river management & revival of water bodies. Other areas of her experience include preparation of environment improvement plans, climate change adaptation, planning for urban greens, environment planning, and detailed formulation of plans, policies, schemes and projects.

At NIUA, she is associated with ‘Addressing the Urban Drivers of River Health in the Ganga River Basin’, led by the National Mission for Clean Ganga. Within this project, she primarily focusses on the component for mainstreaming river management into the long-term city planning process. She has also been associated with the water and environment sector for the development of Master Plan for Delhi-2041. Apart from these, she is engaged with the preparation of a unique index for rapid assessment of the health of urban water bodies, a task in association with UNESCO, New Delhi.

Prior to joining NIUA as a Research Associate, Nikita was working with the Landscape & Environmental Planning Department at the Delhi Development Authority, where she was engaged with the preparation of a revitalization plan for Yamuna floodplains, up-gradation of biodiversity parks in Delhi, revival of water bodies and planning strategies for management of urban greens. She also has an experience in Corporate Social Responsibility. She has a master’s degree in environmental planning and a Bachelors in Physical Planning from SPA, Delhi. When away from work, she follows her passion for baking and art.

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Vishakha Jha

Personal Experience

Vishakha is a Senior Environment Specialist at National Institute of Urban Affairs (NIUA). She has over 8 years of experience working on cross-cutting sectors of environment, water and climate change across Indian cities. In her current role, she is creating strategies, building capacities and providing technical support in varying capacities to National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG) and Master Plan Delhi (MPD) 2041.

Her current work focuses on mainstreaming integrated Urban River management in Ganga towns as part of National Clean Ganga Mission; building capacities for development authorities for adopting river sensitive master plans; water sensitive urban development and green-blue infrastructure. While working on MPD 2041, she has worked on developing city-wide strategic policies and implementation framework for Delhi through a mix of planning and economic instruments that have inter-sectoral implications. Her past work involved working with Members of Parliament on urban policies, developing city wide heritage plans and on redevelopment projects.

Vishakha holds a master’s degree in Urban Design and Development from University College London, United Kingdom and a bachelor’s degree in Architecture from Sushant School of Art and Architecture, India.

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Lovlesh Sharma

Personal Experience

Lovlesh is the Senior Infrastructure Planner at the National Institute of Urban Affairs (NIUA), India. Lovlesh has 11+ years of experience as a development expert & Urban Infrastructure Planner, Architect and Academician in India and UAE. His areas of expertise include city master planning, infrastructure services including urban water supply, Urban waste management, Blue green Infrastructure. At NIUA, Lovlesh leads the infrastructure section for various projects including Master Plan Delhi (MPD-41), Urban River management framework plans (URMP) for Ganga basin towns, in association with NMCG, Formulation of City Water Forum (CWF) for Under-advantage communities of Delhi with WRI, MCGREGOR Coxall (Australia), and MHT.

Prior to joining NIUA, Lovlesh worked as an academician. As an assistant professor for Architecture and deputy HoD for urban planning program with Amity University Dubai (UAE) and Noida, (India). Lovlesh has worked for Center for Research and Development consultancy at CEPT Ahmedabad, India, where he worked on various Master Plan projects including Hyderabad master plan for Hyderabad Municipal Development Authority (HMDA), India and Reliance SEZ, Jhajhhar, Haryana, India. Gujarat Industrial Development Authority, Industrial Area Master Plan, Gandhinagar, India.

Lovlesh has also worked with Center for Public Policy (CPP) at Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Bangalore, India for a water security assessment project for Bangalore city with Bangalore water supply and sanitation board (BWSSB). He is also a guest faculty with University of Petroleum and Energy Studies (UPES)-Dehradun for Urban Planning Program.

Lovlesh holds a Bachelor of Architecture degree from Govt. College of Architecture, Lucknow, India and a postgraduate degree: Masters of Planning (Infrastructure) from CEPT university Ahmedabad, India.

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Rahul Sachdeva

Personal Experience

Rahul is a Project Coordinator at Water and Environment vertical of the National Institute of Urban Affairs (NIUA), the think tank of Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA), Government of India. Rahul is an environmental scientist by education and urban environment planner by practice with over 19+ years of experience across countries like India, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Tanzania.

His area of expertise includes citywide planning for urban water, sanitation, wastewater and solid waste management with focus on integrating decentralized approaches for service delivery with mainstream sanitation planning in urban and peri-urban areas. He has worked at various levels on professional assignments with rich field experience blended with macro level planning projects.

He was actively engaged in preparing couple of earliest City Sanitation Plans prepared in India after the launch of National Urban Sanitation Policy in 2008. Prior to joining NIUA, Rahul worked at Consortium for DEWATS Dissemination (CDD) Society (Bengaluru), where he worked with state governments, academic institutes and private sector on aspects of decentralized sanitation planning for urban areas.

He has a master’s degree in environmental science and a bachelor’s degree in Bio-chemistry, both from Gujarat University, Ahmedabad. He is fond of music and an avid cricket lover.

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Victor R. Shinde

Personal Experience

Victor R. Shinde leads the water and environment portfolio at the National Institute of Urban Affairs (NIUA). In this position, he has spearheaded two national level initiatives for managing urban rivers. The first is a framework called ‘Urban River Management Plan’ that requires river cities to take actions against a common ten-point agenda to ensure the holistic rejuvenation of rivers. The second is a strategic guidance document for preparing river-sensitive Master Plans. He has also led the development of the Environent and Infrastructutre chapters for the next Master Plan for Delhi (2041).

He has over 17 years of experience in diverse domains such as urban environmental management; integrated water resources management; water security enhancement; climate change adaptation in water sector; flood risk assessment; and M&E frameworks for water and environmental sector.

Prior to joining NIUA, he worked as a scientist and technical expert in nine countries in Asia and Africa-Bhutan, India, Japan, Mauritius, Philippines, Seychelles, South Korea, Thailand, and Vietnam. He has carried out joint research and development projects with several international organizations such as APN, CTCN, DAAD, GIZ, GWP (Thai Chapter), IWMI, UNDP, UN Environment, USAID, US Army Corps of Engineers. His prior achievements include developing a performance indicator system for assessing the efficiency of small water utilities in Japan; devising a framework to quantify urban water security and demonstrating its application in India, Thailand and Vietnam; and designing an assessment system for holistic measure of the river health for rivers in Thailand.

A recipient of several awards and scholarships, he has 35+ publications as journal articles, books chapters, conference papers, and knowledge products.

Victor has a PhD in Urban (Environmental) Management from Kyoto University Japan, Masters in Water Engineering and Management from the Asian Institute of Technology Thailand, and Bachelors in Civil Engineering from Karnatak University India.

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