The Trust's social development initiatives cover a range of areas, including community development, human rights, family welfare, the physically and mentally challenged, civil society, art and culture, and relief.

In the field of community development and civil society organizations, the Trust has been partnering integrated development initiatives in rural communities. In an effort to re-look at the area of focus, an approach paper was commissioned in 2004. While this sector covers a gamut of projects, its core activities aim at building the capacities of communities through awareness programs, advocacy and fellowship support and holistic grassroots interventions.

The Trust also supports initiatives, which promote institutions of local self-governance in tribal, rural and urban areas, with a particular focus on building the capacities of Panchayats, CBOs and people’s organizations.

The Trust has been supporting programs working on human rights policy-advocacy, the review of existing legislation, as well as on sensitization of lawmakers and administrators. Grants cover projects in diversified fields, ranging from rights of prisoners and prison reform to access of justice to the right to information.

The Trust has also focused on the issue of food security. An important development in this regard has been the Supreme Court Order of 2001 directing the central government and all state governments to take urgent and effective measures to ensure implementation of the eight centrally sponsored food-related schemes. The Trust has supported a pilot project in Madhya Pradesh and similar efforts in Maharashtra to address the issues of access and availability of food.

Programs in this sector support those initiatives that focus on the rights of women and children.

Unequal gender relations and power structures are manifested in various pervasive forms in society, mostly socially sanctioned, through gender violence and discrimination. In addressing the issue of violence against women and other relevant issues, the Trust supports organizations that work through a range of interventions and community initiatives. This may be in form of direct action, education, advocacy, legal aid counselling and gender sensitive training.

Every child has the right to equal opportunity without discrimination as enshrined in the Constitution of India and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), ratified by India in 1992. The Convention on the Rights of the Child spells out the basic human rights that children are entitled to and the Trust’s work is guided by those principles. The focus areas are projects working with street children, disabled children and child trafficking.

In India, 70 million people are affected by physical or mental disabilities, presenting many challenges to the work of this sector including the lack of mobility for the disabled and understanding of care within the community. The Trust supports a variety of projects that address the issues of accessibility and mobility for the disabled and use innovative methods of rehabilitation. It also supports community-based rehabilitation and outreach programs as well as early intervention and vocational training for children with special needs.

In the Art and Culture sector, the Trust engages in a variety of projects that foster artistic expression while also addressing issues of art conservation and the revival of dying art forms. One of the primary thrust areas is to support programs that create a second line of scholarship in the arts, either by promoting and developing performers who will be tomorrow’s leaders or by supporting institutional initiatives that directly engage in arts scholarship.

Grants in this sector provide much-needed and timely relief measures in times of natural and man-made disasters and calamities. The Trust works on relief and rehabilitation efforts, which look at short-term and long-term projects.