Celebrating 2 Years of CMGGA
On the 29th of June, 2018, Ashoka University hosted a showcase event to celebrate the successful closure of the second cohort of the Chief Minister’s Good Governance Associates programme and to welcome the incoming cohort. The event was held at the India Habitat Centre, New Delhi and had over a 100 attendees, including friends and faculty of Ashoka University, professionals in the development sector and supporters of the Programme from the private sector.
Through the course of the evening, the audience listened to stories, experiences and learnings from the two years of the CMGGA Programme. The visionaries behind the Programme, the management who made it all possible, and the Associates themselves spoke at the event.
Vineet Gupta, Founder and Trustee, Ashoka University began the evening with a welcome address. He gave the audience an overview of the Programme and the different opportunities it offered to its Associates, and went on to recount their key contributions in improving governance in the state of Haryana. The three projects mentioned included — improving citizen grievance redressal, service delivery in the revenue and transport departments, and raising learning level outcomes of government school children.
While the CMGGA Programme is a unique partnership between the government and academia, there are other Programmes like it, most notably the Prime Minister’s Rural Development Fellows. Gaurav Goel, Founder and CEO of Samagra | Transforming Governance, who coordinates the work of the Programme, took to the stage to highlight the structure of the CMGGA Programme. He spoke about the field and forum approach, and the various work streams — modules, capsules, pilots and dissertations — the Associates were involved in.
Work modules, one of the work streams mentioned by Gaurav, focused on the states flagship development programmes were conducted uniformly and simultaneously by Associates in each of their districts. Avantika Thakur, a member of the CMGGA Programme team and Karn Ailawadhi, a second year Associate posted in Yamunanagar, spoke about two of the work modules that they had been involved in. Avantika spoke about how the Associates transformed into catalysts of change through the work on the Saksham Haryana campaign — a true marker of the success of the CMGGA Programme. Karn Ailawadhi went on to speak about facilitating citizen grievance redressal by scaling up and implementing district level initiatives across the entire state.
Many of the Pilots that Associates initiate are digital solutions, as they are efficient, increasingly quicker to build, and have positive externalities with respect to data analytics, tracking and monitoring. From an online grievance redressal portal, to an app to detect malnutrition or smart classrooms, the CMGGAs have experimented across the board. Bhaskar Rochak (CMGGA Sonipat) and Shaliza Mayal (CMGGA Karnal) shared their learnings about piloting digital solutions, through their talks titled Frugal Innovations for a Technology Turnaround and Designing Technology for Users.
While many Associates developed digital solutions to the challenges experienced in the districts, there were other approaches that were also experimented with. When Abhinav Vats joined the CMGGA Programme, he had to shift gears — from working in the private sector to the public sector, living in a predominantly rural district compared to his urban background and trying to make change happen in a resource constrained environment. In the face of adversity, Abhinav initiated the Super Village Challenge, with the help of the Deputy Commissioner of Palwal, using the example which he presented in the video, Gamifying Rural Development.
As a CMGGA, the Associate is given the opportunity to work on a wide variety of challenges, some are structural or administrative like file indexing or monitoring development works, but others deal with more crucial aspects of change, such as behaviour. Akshita Jain (CMGGA Panipat), Palak Rawal (CMGGA Rohtak) and Archana Gupta (CMGGA Ambala) spoke, consecutively, about how they built solutions towards long standing social and behavioural problems. Akshita shared her learnings from a year of implementation on making anemia free villages in the Panipat district, Palak spoke about how change is slow, yet definite, based on her two years of work on gender sensitization in Rohtak and Jhajjar districts, and Archana screened two videos which narrated the story of OYE! Ambala, an awareness and mobilization campaign on waste management in Ambala city.
Through the CMGGA Programme, the Associates focused on standardizing processes across all districts, and for all citizens. Some capsules, however, focused on more specific challenges, or a particular department or district. Nilanjana Sen (CMGGA Kurukshetra) and Nishita Banerjee (CMGGA Jhajjar) took on a lesser known challenge, the handloom and handicrafts industry in Haryana. They spoke on Crafting Livelihoods in Haryana.
Associates work across departments and districts, and feel the pleasure of creating change on the ground, whether it is making an anemic mother feel strong, or a child enjoy a lesson at school, or a citizen have their grievance heard satisfactorily, or making a women feel safer. They’ve all felt the support of the Deputy Commissioner and other officers and experienced the success of presenting their work to the Chief Minister of Haryana. Between these opportunities, they’ve had the chance to reflect on the meaning of governance. Manish Kumar Jaiswal (CMGGA Bhiwani) spoke to the audience about what he had learned about Public Dealing and Democracy, while Mohit Soni (CMGGA Nuh) stole the hearts of all the Associates gathered with his reflection on CMGGA and the System.
Manish and Mohit, our next two speakers had anecdotes to share, one personal the other philosophical.
Once the Associates had spoken, Vineet Gupta, Dr. Pratap Bhanu Mehta, Pro-Vice Chancellor of Ashoka University and Dr. Rakesh Gupta, Additional Principal Secretary to the CM of Haryana released Durbeen: A Young Perspective on working with the Government, a book that reviews the second year of the CMGGA Programme.
Following the presentation from the Associates and the book release, Dr. Pratap Bhanu Mehta addressed the audience. He marveled at how the Programme positions Associates at the center of where change can truly happen — the Deputy Commissioners Office. He expressed pride and hope in the educational and experiential value of the Programme and congratulated the Associates on their accomplishments, before handing out their graduation scrolls.
To close the evening, Dr. Rakesh Gupta, Additional Principal Secretary to the CM of Haryana, was called on stage. Dr. Gupta engaged the audience with anecdotes from the bureaucratic set-up in Haryana and the experience of the Associates in it, contributing and supporting its many efforts with the zeal and passion of young change makers. He recounted their numerous accomplishments and contributions to the state. Reflecting on what the Programme had truly brought to fostering Good Governance in Haryana, Dr. Gupta mentioned how the government was slowly moving towards being a learning organization, one that believed in citizen participation, technological transformation and external partnerships — all of which the CMGGA Programme had demonstrated was possible.
On the 15th of July, 2018, a new cohort of Associates joined the CMGGA Programme. Stay tuned!
