Mr. Biplab Paul is a globally acclaimed development professional with 27 years of multi-disciplinary experience. He is innovator of BHUNGROO®, a unique drought and flood defeating technology. Bhungroo filters, stores, and retains unwanted floodwater within conformable subsoil formations such that it can be retrieved back for defeating drought. To date, more than 150,000 under-privileged farming families across India, Southeast Asia, East Asia and Africa were brought out of food insecurity and abject poverty.

Alongside his partner Trupti Jain, Mr. Biplab established Naireeta Services Private Limited, a social enterprise that is empowering underprivileged women farmers to transform themselves as women climate leaders and help their peer groups for doubling of crop income, disaster risk reduction and climate resilience. Bhungroo and Women Climate Leaders is now globally recognized as a unique development model on Mahatma Gandhi’s principle of Antodaya i.e. serving the last person in the queue in the most sustainable ways.

Biplab’s work is the recipient of over 30 global laurels namely UNFCCC’s Climate Action, USAID’s Securing Water for Food, and Buckminster Fuller’s Global Grand Prize (to name a few). He is juror and mentor of Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur’s incubation center, a Centre for Excellence of India Government. He is also one of the Directors of Gujarat state government’s Ecology Commission.

Mr. Biplab attributes part of his creation of BHUNGROO® to learnings gained during his 2004 study tour of the U.S. on a State Department International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP). Meridian was proud to organize his return visit in 2019 on an IVLP Gold Star tour.