Chetna Gala Sinha

Sinha was born in 1958 in Mumbai and took a master's degree in commerce and economics from the University of Mumbai in 1982. She was involved in student politics and in the Bihar movement led by Jayaprakash Narayan, and later moved to Mhaswad after marrying the farmers' rights activist Vijay Sinha.

Sinha founded the Mann Deshi Foundation in 1996 to work on the economic and social empowerment of rural women. The following year she applied to the Reserve Bank of India for a licence for a co-operative bank owned by rural women. The application was refused on the ground that several of the promoting members could not read or write. The women organised literacy classes, learned to calculate interest, and the application was granted at the second attempt, making Mann Deshi Mahila Sahakari Bank the first co-operative bank in India run by and for rural women.

The bank lends to women running small businesses, including street vendors, farmers, goat rearers and small manufacturers. By 2018 it reported around 100,000 account holders and cumulative lending of tens of millions of dollars.

Alongside the bank, the Mann Deshi group runs business schools for rural women, a chamber of commerce for women micro-entrepreneurs, a community radio station, a sports and development programme for girls, and a cattle camp providing fodder and water during droughts.

Sinha is a fellow of the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, an Ashoka Fellow and a Yale World Fellow. In January 2018 she was one of seven women who co-chaired the 48th annual meeting of the World Economic Forum at Davos. She has received the Nari Shakti Puraskar, the Government of India's national award for women.[2][3][4][5]