Speakers
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Anjali Karol MohanDr. Mohan’s research and professional practice over the last twenty-seven years straddles development, institutional and policy frameworks, urban planning and management and information and communication technologies and development (ICTD). She has successfully completed several planning assignments in her individual capacity and as part of multi-disciplinary teams, both as a team leader and a team member. She is a faculty at the Centre for Public Policy at the National Law School University of India, Bangalore and the Takshashila Institutions, a public policy think tank headquartered in Bangalore India. She teaches Urban Development and Planning, Technology and Urban and Governance and Public Policy. She has published in academic journals as well as popular media, in addition to delivering talks and presenting her work globally
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Babu Jacob -
Dr. Jeevan Kumar -
Sandeep AnirudhanSandeep Anirudhan is a full time volunteer, building communities to promote ‘conscious living’ as a tool to catalyze awareness and drive action, in areas such as Sustainability, City Governance, Climate Change, Citizen Engagement, Grass-root democracy, Education/Learning, Water Security, Sustainable Mobility, Lake Activism, Urban Community Farming, Natural Farming, Conservation, Green Activism, Restoration of our planetary ecosystems, etc., Please find his communities listed here: bit.ly/ConsciousCommunities
What inspired him? Sandeep Anirudhan was a Serial Entrepreneur and Management professional, whose witnessing of death up close opened up the self awareness that ‘death’ is ‘real’, that our ‘time’ in this ‘life’ is limited, and one must use the time we have on meaningful things; this realisation made him revisit all his life choices, prompted him to audit what he was doing with the time he has on hand. Realising that it is being wasted in a conventional lifestyle, he turned his back on it, and decided to use his time on ‘earth – our only home’, for its betterment.
Ever since, he has been living a life of questioning everything, and contribution to the planet and society. His personal and public lives are an example of ‘minimalism’, non-transactionalism and community engagement. He has not earned a penny since 2013, does not have any savings, survives on the hospitality of his family, spends all his time on advocacy and activism on myriad causes, supported by occasional public crowd-funding. He has put his trust in the universe. And that trust has paid off, enabling him to create so many different platforms for change. From experience, he says: ‘when one contributes selflessly to society, society has your back!
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T.R RaghunandanConsultant, trainer and author on decentralization, anti-corruption and heritage conservation. He was born in Ernakulam, and did his schooling there, and went to Delhi for college education.
He served in the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), holding positions of Secretary, Rural Development and Panchayat Raj Department. Karnataka (2000-2004) and Joint Secretary in the Ministry of Panchayati Raj in the Government of India (2004-2009), noted for pioneering initiatives in strengthening grassroot democracy.
Has worked in several Indian States and the Indian Union Government on decentralised public governance. He was a member of several Expert Committees constituted by the Government of India and some States on decentralised public governance. He also headed consultancy teams for the 14th and 15th Central Finance Commissions of India and submitted reports on local government finances to these Commissions.
He also serves as a member of several committees on capacity development and regular speaker at the NIRDPR Hyderabad, LBSNAA Mussoorie, KILA, Trissur Kerala and ANSSIRD, Mysore, Karnataka. Wide international experience in design and delivery of face to face and online courses on democratic decentralisation and fiscal decentralisation for the UNDP, the World Bank and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, with consultancy experience in several Asian Countries.
After leaving the government, headed and ran the ipaidabribe.com initiative (2010-2011), which crowd-sources reports on corruption from citizens. Currently he is a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi, and a visiting faculty at the Institute of Federalism and awarded the Doctorate Honoris Causa by the University of Fribourg.
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Tathagata ChatterjiDr Tathagata Chatterji, is Professor of Urban Management and Governance, Xavier University Bhubaneswar, India. His research interests are urban economic development and political economy of urbanisation. He had published two books – ‘Local Mediation of Global Forces in Transformation of the Urban Fringe’ and ‘Citadels of Glass – India’s New Suburban Landscape’; He received the Gerd Albers Award in 2016 from the International Society of City and Regional Planners (ISOCARP), for his research on comparative modes of urban governance in India. He has a PhD in Urban Planning and Governance, from the University of Queensland Australia.
Local Time
- Timezone: America/New_York
- Date: Jul 13 2023
- Time: 8:30 am - 10:30 am
Urban Planning & Governance – Beyond the 74th Amendment
SWARAJ for Cities is a nationwide initiative to help shape ‘Self Governance of Cities’. It is a year-long series of webinars, hybrid conferences, and publications that will focus on the Urban Challenge that India faces, that of Planned and Orderly Growth, and better governance of our cities, towns and peri-urban areas; that is, the fulfilment of the promise of the 74th Amendment of our Constitution.
India’s urban landscape is plagued by rapid unplanned growth; coupled with poor governance, this is leading to challenges such as overcrowding, mismanagement, poor infrastructure, civic apathy, congestion, pollution, degrading environment and climate change impact, among others, making our urban spaces unliveable. This is amplified by the dereliction of State Govts in abiding by the 74th amendment, and not instituting a Planning Authority or a devolved and unified City Govt.
As a curtain-raiser to the series, this Webinar will hold a discussion on the present state of Urban Planning and Governance in Indian cities, and the broad outlines of how to drive the agenda to improve them. The panel will discuss issues such as legislation, state level adoption, the problems of peri-urban areas, and how to build public and political demand for these reforms.
The webinar will also include the release of the first Position Paper on State of Urban Governance in India: “Urban Democratic Decentralisation; tamed, listless and in spiralling decline.” – by Dr T R Raghunandan.
A short introduction on the position paper by its author will be followed by a Panel Discussion on the state of Urban Governance in India with the theme: “Beyond the 74th Amendment”. The panellists are from backgrounds in Bureaucracy, Urban Planning and Academia, which will bring together diverse perspectives.
