Dr Keya Ghosh
Nominated Fellow, August - October, 2026
Home Institution: Adamas University
Dr. Keya Ghosh is a distinguished academician with over 21 years of experience in higher education, research, and academic administration. She serves as Dean (Administration), and Dean - School of Education (Administration), Professor – Department of Management at Adamas University.
Before joining Adamas University, she held academic positions at Swami Vivekananda University, Amity University, and J.D. Birla Institute. Dr. Ghosh has led and contributed to several UGC- and ICSSR-funded research projects and served as Principal Advisor for a World Bank-funded NRLM project focused on entrepreneurship, business development, and rural livelihood enhancement. She was also selected for the Bradley University, USA (August 2025) immersion programme on entrepreneurship in recognition of her work in SHG entrepreneurship initiatives.
Dr. Ghosh holds a PhD in Commerce and is currently pursuing her postdoctoral research at the University of Edinburgh. Beyond academics, she has a keen interest in classical music and dance.
Project title: Community-Embedded Financial Cooperativism: Reconstructing SHG Institutions through Tagorean Rural Thought
This study re-theorizes Self-Help Groups (SHGs) by integrating Rabindranath Tagore's cooperative philosophy with contemporary rural development frameworks. While existing SHG models have significantly expanded financial inclusion and women's economic participation, they remain largely credit-centric and insufficiently address broader dimensions of community development, social cohesion, participatory governance, and cultural regeneration. Drawing on Tagore's writings, including Swadeshi Samaj and Atmashakti, as well as his Sriniketan rural reconstruction experiments, the study develops a Community-Embedded Financial Cooperativism (CEFC) framework that reconceptualizes SHGs as holistic community institutions rather than merely financial intermediaries. The framework emphasizes social trust, collective asset formation, democratic governance, ethical economy, and the integration of education and culture into rural development. The study further proposes multidimensional indicators for evaluating SHG performance beyond conventional financial metrics, incorporating social capital, participatory governance, collective ownership, and cultural-educational outcomes. By bridging indigenous cooperative philosophy with contemporary development theory, the research contributes a normative and institutional model for sustainable rural reconstruction and offers policy recommendations for transforming SHGs into community-embedded cooperative organizations.