Capacity Building for Panchayati Raj Institutions in HP, Farhad Vania holds a Masters in Social Work from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, as well as an MSc in Human Ecology from the University of Edinburgh, UK. He has over 15 years of experience with various projects related to Corporate Social Responsibility, forestry, wildlife conservation, environmental management and social development. He is a specialist in the fields of natural resource management and rural development. He has undertaken numerous research studies, evaluations and assessments on a wide range of issues such as poverty, natural resource management, forestry and biodiversity conservation, watershed development, resettlement and rehabilitation, and social risk management. In the course of his career, he has also worked with various bilateral-multilateral agencies, the NGO sector, research and training organisations and the corporate sector in India.