We have focussed on making curriculum delivery more effective:

In all these years, we have consistently devoted time to introspect and revisit the resource book used for curriculum delivery, the I Change My City Resource Book. We have regularly updated content of the book to include contemporary civic issues. This makes it easier for children to relate and identify to the subject. We have also taken to more visually appealing forms and styles of presenting content to be able to engage with children effectively. One of the most important steps taken to increase the impact of the curriculum is to introduce the resource book in vernacular languages. This came as a suggestion from schools that follow vernacular mode of instruction. Availability of books in hindi, telugu, malayalam and kanada has impacted learning outcomes positively.

This year 36,197 students participated in 1800 Civic Projects from across the country

Civic Projects are an integral part of the Bala Janaagraha curriculum. It has gained popularity among students and has been recognised by school authorities as a well meaning initiative. Civic Projects require students to choose a civic issue that affects them (their school or community at large), discuss and come up with a practical and sustainable action plans to implement the same. This also means that students meet local civic authorities/agencies, citizen groups, other stakeholders to garner their support on addressing the issue. This practical exposure builds critical thinking in students and helps them to work as a team, strengthen communication skills, self-confidence and enables them to better the city where they live.

A group of students from BVB Vidyashram visited the Chief Minister's office and met Ms. Vasundhara Raje. Ms. Raje was very impressed with the project and interacted with the students. She took to twitter to express her appreciation for the hard work the students have put in.

Doon Valley School, Lucknow declared the national champions at the National Civic Fest 2016-17

The Doon Valley School was declared as the national champions by an esteemed panel of judges including Rudramuni B, Executive Director, Head of Dell India R&D and Mala Ramadorai, acclaimed musician & educationalist and Manjunath Prasad, Municipal Commissioner of Bengaluru as the cheif guest. Among all the four Civic Projects presented by the finalists at the National Civic Fest held in Bengaluru, Doon Valley School from Lucknow really impressed the judges with their practical approach to resolve civic issue by directly reaching out to local authorities and making best use of other potential channels like social media, on-ground awareness of citizen groups.

Bala Janaagrahis who went an extra mile were felicitated as Young Champions of Change

We have often come across students who have shown extra ordinary streaks of wanting to bring change in their neighbourhoods by taking ownership of issues affecting them. Their initiatives bear testimony to our belief in the role of civic learning as a catalyst of active citizenship. We are proud of them! Every year we felicitate such students (who are either from an existing batch of Bala Janaagraha curriculum or from an earlier batch) at the National Civic Fest.

We have conducted trainings for our trainers and volunteers

Being spread across cities, we make it a point to bring all the key resources who are responsible for the delivery of the curriculum at one place annually. This year we conducted a three-day centralised training for all 59 Facilitators who deliver the curricullum across 25 cities. The Training was conducted by The Teacher Foundation to help us orient all our resources to the pedagogy of the program.

Bala Janaagraha has a strong base of enthusiastic and dedicated volunteers who support us with their time and expertise. This year 39 Bala Janaagraha Mitras, rightly called so, were also called for an orientation to the program.

Having started with 1 school in Bengaluru in 2002, Bala Janaagraha has slowly but steadily grown in the past few years reaching out to 36,917 students in 25 cities in FY 2016-17. Based on consistent and encouraging outcomes observed in Civic Literacy in students, we now plan to build a comprehensive roadmap to advocate for the inclusion of civic literacy as a part of core curriculum at schools. We aim to advocate for incorporation of the curriculum in the State and Union Education Syllabi by 2020.

Launch of I Change My City in Mumbai

Owing to the popularity and success of ICMyC in Bengaluru, we have recently launched the platform in Mumbai in association with Bombay Chamber of Commerce & Industry, Credit Suisse and Tata Consultancy Services. ICMyC has marked its presence in Mumbai through a series of activities ranging from beach clean-ups, marathons, awareness sessions at Corporate offices on voter registration procedures for the Mumbai Municipal Corporation, meetings with representatives of Resident Welfare Associations.

On this note, ICMyC organised a 'Walk for Change'- marathon for employees of Credit Suisse on 1st April 2017 in Mumbai. The core intent of the initiative was to drive the importance of active citizenship and call out for responsible consumption of water. We invited Mr. Sitaram Shelar, a prominent water rights activist in Mumbai and is the Co-convener of Maharashtra Committee for the People Centric Water Policy to share important facts on water and how responsible use of water in our day to day activities can save a lot of the valuable resource.

Swacchata Mobile and Web applications developed by ICMyC

Swachhata mobile and web applications have been developed by ICMyC for the Swacch Bharat Mission as per our MoU with the Ministry of Urban Development. The application was launched in August 2016 by the Honourable Union Minister of Urban Development, Mr. Venkaiah Naidu. It has three interfaces to cater to different audiences- for citizens, civic agency officials and nodal officers. We have engaged extensively with civic agency officials across 19 cities to impart training on the different features of the application in order to optimise usability and impact. We have also developed a dashboard that measures critical data assessed for a cities ranking in the Swachh Survekshan Survey conducted across 500 cities. It is made available for all citizens to see the current city rankings and details related to their cities of interest.

Successes of Swachhata App

By February '17 1 million citizens became registered users of Swacchata App

mBillionth Award 2017 by Digital Empowerment Foundation

Swachhata App won the mBillionth Award 2017 by Digital Empowerment Foundation (DEF) in the category Government and Citizenship Participation. The industry – driven and peer – acknowledged mBillionth Award recognised mobile phone-based interventions and innovations in the area of telecom from across eight countries in South Asia. With the user base of 6.2 million citizens and growing popularity among civic agencies across the country, Swachhata application is being recognised as a benchmark for people-oriented innovations in the telecom industry.

"Swachhata App" has been judged as one of the 41 Gems of Digital India

41 Gems of Digital India are innovative initiatives that are set to change the way governance is delivered and are among the crème de la crème of eGovernance Initiatives that innovatively use technology to solve myriad of problems of governance.

Swachhata: Citizen Experiences

What's really encouraging us are the stories of impact coming in from different parts of the country. Here are the experiences of citizens like Varun Gampa and Prithwiraj of getting complaints resolved using Swacchata app.

Swachhata Statistics*

Developing the technology platform for Swacch Bharat Mission has brought to us key learnings that will inspire our approach towards building civic technology platforms going forward. Our experience of building Swacchata application that caters to citizens, municipal corporations, senior government officials has taken us closer to exploring ways to improvise the product to suit all users. We constantly seek feedback from various stakeholders to enhance user experience.

• 2000 municipal engineers have been trained to use the Swachhata app, who in turn will train other agency officials in their respective cities.
• We have a call centre to resolve technical glitches faced by municipal engineers
• The product has been enhanced around 15 times based on feedback/suggestions received from various stakeholders

Janaagraha intends to manage the IChangeMyCity as a brand, while continuing to partner with Government agencies across the country through white labelled Apps such as "Public Eye" and "Swachhata Solutions". We intend to deliver the message of Active Citizenship to 10 million citizens by 2020. This will be done through mediums like digital platforms and on-ground campaigns on diverse neighbourhood issues such as safety and security, elections, ward sabhas and active citizenship awareness modules.

• Use a hybrid model of on-ground civic campaigns on neighbourhood safety, participatory budgeting (MyCityMyBudget) and voter registrations
• Establish the I Change My City brand in Mumbai through Active Citizenship Programs on digital, corporate and college communities
• Launch I Change My City in 20 cities

Community Workshops

We conducted Ward Sabhas to bring together citizen communities, along with the elected representatives of the ward and agency officials. These Ward Sabhas served as a platform for citizens to raise and discuss civic issues in their neighbourhood with civic agency authorities and elected representatives. MCMB presented relevant civic data sets to citizens through reports like Budget Analysis briefs (to be linked). Such information and data sets helped citizens put forth meaningful and data driven inputs for the city budgets and in the due course, also helped them gauge whether these inputs reflect in the city budget.

Submission of Citizens’ Budget 2017-18 Report

The consolidated report of the inputs were handed over to the Mayor of BBMP, G Padmavathi, at an event which had citizens from all over Bengaluru, members from Resident Welfare Associations, Councilors and civic agency officials. Bala Janaagraha students from various schools from the across the city attended the event.

Janaagraha envisions to enable 20% of citizens of Bengaluru to determine 20% of the municipal budgets through community participation by FY 2019-20. This would be the next step towards creating a comprehensive advocacy plan to include Participatory Budgeting as a policy reform. The key objective in 2017-18 is to reach 1 million Bengalurueans by actively engaging with elected representatives, civic agencies and citizen communities to prioritise civic projects based on citizen inputs.

This will be done through mediums like digital platforms and on-ground campaigns on diverse neighbourhood issues such as safety & security, elections, ward sabhas and active citizenship awareness modules.

Corrupt Aadhar Official blacklisted:

IPAB is backed by a two member ombudsmen including Dr. Malati Das IAS, Former Chief Secretary, Government of Karnataka and Dr. S T Ramesh IPS, Former DG & IG, Government of Karnataka. They investigate instances of corruption, based on bribe data sourced from Janaagraha’s website www.ipaidabribe.com to create tangible positive impact on retail or petty corruption in Karnataka by engaging with Government departments as well as heightening citizen awareness about the need to fight bribery.

Enquiry put up by the IPAB Ombudsmen to the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) led to blacklisting of a corrupt Aadhar official. Further Rs. 10,000 was levied as fine on the enrolment agency by the UIDAI.

Here’s what Mr. Pronab Mohanty, Deputy Director General, Unique Identification Authority of India, Bengaluru has to say about platforms like I Paid A Bribe (IPAB). He shares how innovative technology platforms like IPAB are enabling citizens like him in fighting corruption.

Need to have a dialogue interface on the portal

IPAB till now had a pre-set Q&A section to cater to citizen's queries, but we felt the need to enable citizens to have a dialogue interface with IPAB Experts to raise customised queries. To cater to this, we have a new feature on the IPAB platform called “ASK EXPERTS”, was launched for citizens to interact with the IPAB Advisors - Dr. Malati Das-IAS, Former Chief Secretary and Dr. S T Ramesh-IPS, Former DG and IG, Government of Karnataka, on their queries related to corruption.

Learnings from IPAB clearly points out the complex systems and processes that citizens have to deal with to avail public services. To add to that, there is a lack of knowledge of basic laws and polices among citizens. These act as key drivers for breeding the anathema. IPAB in its current avatar will continue to monitor, manage and publish data of bribes undertaken at a department levels, to eliminate the drivers which influence corruption. IPAB is working towards strengthening its youth outreach. We will continue to leverage the Jana Mahiti Report as a tool to pursue policy reforms.

Urban Development

Janaagraha is engaged with NITI Aayog (National Institution for Transforming India), Government of India's policy think tank to assist their Urban Development team in preparing a 15 year vision document for urban transformation in India. As part of the engagement, we also hosted Mr Amitabh Kant, CEO, NITI Aayog and shared our reform recommendation based on Janaagraha's City-Systems approach. The recommendations were very well received and will form part of the 15 year vision document.

Bengaluru Blueprint- In December 2015, we brought together stakeholders from different walks of the life to share their perspective on solving issues that mire the city of Bengaluru.

Urban Development

As an outcome of Janaagraha’s advocacy efforts on the need for a comprehensive Blueprint for the city with quantified goals to improve quality of life, Government of Karnataka constituted Bengaluru Blueprint Action Group.

We released 2 reports for Bengaluru Blueprint that highlight the framework created by Janaagraha in association with Bain & Co and the suggestions given by the stakeholders.

Annual Survey of India’s City-Systems: A Tool for Government Engagement

The Annual Survey of India’s City-Systems (ASICS) is a diagnostic health check-up of underlying systems that are key to public service delivery and quality of life in cities. The report is designed to help city leaders pin point issues in urban governance in their cities and help them chart out a reform roadmap to make their cities more liveable.

Release of the 4th edition of the Annual Survey of India’s City-Systems (ASICS)

The 4th edition of ASICS was released in New Delhi in March 2017. The report revealed lingering systemic inadequacies in urban governance that affect public service delivery and hence, quality of life. Thiruvananthapuram held on to the top position in the rankings this year, followed by Pune and Kolkata in second and third positions.

We released 2 reports for Bengaluru Blueprint that highlight the framework created by Janaagraha in association with Bain & Co and the suggestions given by the stakeholders.

Annual Conclave on Shaping India’s Urban Agenda: New Cities and Smart Cities

The 4th Annual Conclave on Shaping India’s Urban Agenda: New Cities and Smart Cities was held in New Delhi in March 2017. The conclave explored how the emerging phenomenon of new and satellite cities can drive job growth and prosperity in urban India and the mechanisms for raising capital to fund smart cities. Mr. Manish Sisodia, Deputy Chief Minister of Delhi and Mr Amitabh Kant, CEO –NITI Aayog were key note speakers at the event.

As a result of Dr. Shashi Tharoor’s (Member of Parliament) participation in the conclave last year, Janaagraha collaborated with him to draft a Private Member Bill on Amendments to the 74th Amendment to the Constitution of India. The bill is aimed at empowering Urban Local Bodies in India with functional, functionary and financial devolution steered by a Mayor with executive authority and secured tenureship. The bill was introduced in Lok Sabha in the 2016 Monsoon Session of the Parliament. This bill received immense traction and revived the discussion on having empowered city leaders for Indian cities. We look forward to more of such collaborations.

Inaugural edition of the ‘V Ramachandran Awards for Excellence in Urban Decentralisation’

Janaagraha hosted the inaugural edition of the ‘V Ramachandran Awards for Excellence in Urban Decentralisation’ in New Delhi on the 2nd March 2017. The award has been instituted in the name of Padma Bhushan V Ramachandran who is one of India’s finest IAS officers and a fervent advocate of decentralisation. Mr Venkaiah Naidu, Honorable Minister for Urban Development, Government of India was the Chief Guest. For more information click here

Voter List Management

Our work in the area of Voter List Management (VLM) has taken many forms since it began in 2003. It started with one of urban India’s largest voter registration drives, Jaago Re! in partnership with Tata Tea to work with the Chief Electoral Officer of Karnataka through an MoU to develop and implement an improved voter registration process.

Janaagraha invited by IIIDEM to hold a session on ways to strengthen the Election Commission of India’s National Electoral Role Purification (NERP) drive

A key development in 2016-17 was the invitation extended to Janaagraha by India International Institute for Democracy and Election Management (IIIDEM), the Election Commission of India’s think tank, to be a part of consultations for setting their research agenda over the next 3 to 5 years. This engagement also resulted in Janaagraha submitting a proposal to pilot the introduction of hand-held networked devices for Booth Level Officers to improve voter list fidelity. As the year ended, the ECI indicated interest in partnering with Janaagraha to action our proposal.

Reports and Publications

The year 2016-17 saw the release of three reports highlighting issues in the ‘Booth Level Officer’(BLO) layer of VLM in India. Two of these, on the state of BLOs in Tamil Nadu and Trivandrum, were released right before Assembly Elections in the two states to try and maximise the impact of our messaging and found mention in the media. The third report, on the state of BLOs in Bengaluru was based on a study involving both quantitative and qualitative phases and included extensive commentary on issues that BLOs. These studies helped deepen our understanding of the issues in this crucial layer within India’s VLM machinery and have better informed our efforts to explore the role of ICT to improve the overall state of VLM.

Impact Assessment for Bala Janaagraha 2015-16

An Impact Assessment study was conducted for Bala Janaagraha on two broad parameters, Civic Literacy and Civic Participation. For FY 2015-16, Bala-Janaagraha Schools saw an increase of 14% in Civic Literacy scores compared to just 1% in Non Bala Janaagraha schools. Also, the Civic Participation levels of Bala Janaagraha Schools saw an increase of 8%; compared to 0.7% in Non Bala Janaagraha Students. To view the detailed report for the year 2015-16,

Research study with Bala Janaagraha and non Bala Janaagraha students

As part of a research study done with Bala Janaagraha and non Bala Janaagraha students, looking at how they perceive urban issues, the team published two reports on children’s views of Bengaluru.

Facilitators Assessment for 2016-17

A Facilitators Assessment Study was conducted for the Bala Janaagraha program. Facilitators are the backbone of Bala Janaagraha as they are ones who deliver the curriculum of the program. This assessment was conceptualised by the R&I team with the objective of gauging knowledge and understanding of all 59 Facilitators on the basic concepts of the curriculum.

Collaboration with IBM

The R&I team received an in-kind grant from IBM which includes licenses and a six day training and consultation on SPSS software statistics from a data scientist. This has enabled us to make our work processes smoother and provide deeper insights in our work.

• One challenge we have faced is how to monitor and check data being collected by external agencies on our behalf. Our recent work interviewing Booth Level Officers for example, was being conducted in 18 cities across India, so we had a regular in-flow of data over two months. To that end, we decided to create syntax through SPSS Statistics which could be re-run every time new data came in. This syntax generated data tables and allowed the team to quickly look for inconsistencies and/or erroneous data.
• Another challenge has been more generically on data availability, ambiguity, extraction and analysis. This includes double sourcing the same data from different sources which do not match like crime statistics or voter list information. We are now giving more time to validate data sources and working with partners to extract larger data sets for analysis. Additionally, this year, the team will be setting up a data bank, collecting all data held within Janaagraha in a central place with catalogued data sources and additional information.

In addition to widening the scope of Research across all verticals and programs within the organisation, we hope to take our conversations with the Election Commission of India on our Information Communication Technology driven VLM reform agenda ahead. We plan to start the implementation of our proposal to introduce hand-held networked devices in the BLO layer of functioning to improve voter list fidelity. Going forward, another high priority agenda is to bring together ICT (Information & Communication Technology) industry champions and the ECI to start dialogues on developing solutions customised to India’s challenges. We also hope to continue to study issues in VLM focusing not just on technology, but also the human angle. We believe that the nature and scale of challenges urban India faces requires a ‘physital’ approach i.e. bringing together the best of human and technology processes.

Omidyar Network (ON) Partnership

In between 2010 to 2017, ON and Janaagraha entered into 2 three year partnerships, which concluded on 31st March, 2017. ON has invested in Janaagraha with the belief that Urban Governance and Citizen Participation requires a strong institutional framework, time tested scalable models, deep on-ground execution capacities, cutting edge technology platforms and a persistent focus on outcomes which informs policy reforms to enable transformational change.

The partnership has been pivotal in allowing Janaagraha to invest in building robust state of the art technology platforms, which are now playing a key role in taking Janaagraha’s Civic Participation initiatives nationwide.

Tata Group Partnership

Tata Sons signed a four-year, multi-crore support agreement for Janaagraha’s Bangalore operations commencing from 2012, to support scale up of our pilot programs and to support capacity building for Program Design, Planning and advocacy with the Government. The partnership has been enriching, in terms of financial investments made by the group and the access to the Group’s intellectual capital.

We are in discussions with the Group to extend the partnership to dramatically scale up our highly successful programs in the areas of Civic Learning and Civic Participation. Support from other companies in the Group such as Tata Consultancy Services and Tata Chemicals (which played a key role in our stitching a partnership with the Bombay Chamber of Commerce and Industry) continue to strengthen our initiatives.

Bombay Chamber of Commerce and Industry

Janaagraha entered into a 3 year partnership with the Bombay Chamber of Commerce and Industry in the year 2015 to formally get IChangeMyCity platform to the city of Mumbai. This partnership has aligns to the Corporate as a Citizen theme of the Bombay Chamber of Commerce under which the industry body has been promoting Good Governance and ethical conduct in business as well as public life towards the greater good of society.

Credit Suisse India

Credit Suisse has invested in Janaagraha’s Civic Learning and Civic Participation programs under their corporate citizenship theme for a period of 3 years which ends in the year 2017.

HSBC

HSBC started its investments in Janaagraha’s Civic Learning Program in 2012 and over the last 5 years have been a valuable partner in supporting scaling up of the Program significantly.

Shakti Foundation

Shakti Foundation has invested in Janaagraha’s policy reforms work in Municipal finance reforms which promises to play a transformational role in the area of Urban Mobility. Other interested policy reform areas in which Shakti has shown interest are Climate Change and Energy. Other key donor institutions managed by the Development team include Acacia Conservation Fund, Mindtree, Edelgive Foundation, Friedrich Naumann Foundation, The Asia Foundation, IDFC Foundation and their likes. The Development team has been successfully engaging with a small pool of donor institutions, foundations, and philanthropists striving hard to ensure donors remain invested deeply in the cause.

Janaagraha receives very valuable in-kind contributions from various donors. However, for the purposes of financial reporting, we have included only software and hardware receipts, whose values have been fully certified by our auditors. For specific details of our contributions, kindly refer to ‘Notes to Accounts’ in the audited financial statements.