This is the season of weddings in Tamil Nadu, the time of the year when I meet my long-lost relatives and face their curiosity of what’s happening in my life. The most awkward moment in these interactions at family functions right now is to explain my job to my relatives. Usually, I start off by […]
Working for social impact, was an unfulfilled goal that I hoped I’d be able to do something about before I turned 30. Fortunately, it happened at 26. In November last year, when I got the opportunity to work with Swaniti Initiative, an organization working towards making the government administration more robust, I jumped at it. […]
It was a strongly held belief – that carrying out any work under government systems is next to impossible, that government structure were too complex to navigate and that institutional mechanisms were ridden with archaic systems. Fortunately, by working on ground with Honourable Member of Parliament, Mr. Dushyant Chautala, I was able to challenge those […]
For more than 100 years, International Women’s Day has been celebrated to mark the extraordinary struggles faced by women worldwide for gender equality and to accelerate empowerment in the society. This is a day to reflect on the progress made, to call for a change and to celebrate the acts of courage and determination by […]
“India is not Calcutta and Bombay; India lives in her seven hundred thousand villages.” Mahatma Gandhi mentioned the above statement more than half a century ago. Even today, the statement holds true. As per the Census of 2011, nearly 70% of the country’s population still resides in rural areas. Hence, it becomes obvious that for […]
“I am restless and I don’t mind leaving this comfortable, static life. I could live a year on my own in a remote village”. -Michael Palin Between densely forested areas and breath-taking natural landscape of Ambassa, lies Kathalbari Village Committee (VC)[1]. Dominated by Schedule Tribe population, Kathalbari Village Committee is the first among the Gram […]
It has been a little more than a month since I arrived in Gangtok, and about two months since I started working at Swaniti as a SPARC Associate to Mr P. D. Rai, Honourable Member of Parliament (Lok Sabha), from Sikkim. Ever since I have arrived here, I have been fortunate enough to interact with […]
The following blog was published in Results for All. You could find it here: http://blog.results4all.org/ “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” The underlying theme of this popular adage by Peter Drucker has found much resonance in today’s rapidly changing, if not always evolving, world. Be it collecting information about immigrants to ‘manage’ their […]
I walked into my new office full of excitement. It was my first day of work with a senior member of parliament. To give you a little background, I am working with Dinesh Trivedi, Member of Parliament (Lok Sabha) from the All India Trinamool Congress party, representing Barrackpore, West Bengal. He is a highly respected parliamentarian who has held several […]
“A right delayed is right denied” Martin Luther King Jr. talks about this adage in a letter from Birmingham City Jail dated April 1961. He mentioned this line in a legal context but it’s connotation is applicable across sectors around the world. When one were to look at India, a large section of the population […]