A visit to the Parliament House

Every time I visit Delhi, I feel a sense of awe for the power this city exudes. Countless policy decisions being made every day in various Ministries and the Parliament affect lives of a billion Indians in unimaginable ways. It’s only befitting therefore that most of this work happens in the precincts of the grand architectural area called Lutyens’ Delhi.

So far, I had to stay content with viewing the edifice of India’s power corridor from the outside, save a brief visit to North and South Block a few years back. But the desire to see the Indian Parliament and the LIVE proceedings of a house in action stayed elusive. The fact that most of my Delhi trips were planned at short notice, did not allow me to make any elaborate plans besides official work.

But last week was different. I was on a 3 day visit to Delhi and with the help of a few friends at PRS Legislative Research, I managed to get a pass to the Public Gallery of Lok Sabha during the ZERO hour (12 – 1 pm) on Friday, 5th March 2010. I was so excited that I managed to get an official meeting at Election Commission of India to be re-scheduled by a few hours just so that I wouldn’t lose this opportunity!

On the day of the visit, I reached the Parliament House at 11:30am. Prior briefing ensured that I didn’t carry any prohibited items (i.e. anything except ID card and Currency notes), and breezed through the Reception building security in 10 minutes. This is when you land right in front of the main Parliament House (see image below – I didn’t take it!).

I was gripped by an immediate sense of awe standing in front of this majestic building. Most of us would have seen it a million times on TV but this was different. I think I stood for about 5 minutes to really digest the size and beauty of this view.

I was standing in front of Gate 1 and besides the mammoth bronze statue of Mahatma Gandhi. There were several media persons hurrying around, I could spot 3 to 4 interviews with MPs happening close by. They were talking about the contentious Women’s Reservation Bill that was scheduled for discussion the following week.

Finally, I made my way to a small opening in the building meant for a passage to the Public Gallery. At12:05 pm, after four long security checks, I finally stepped into the Public Gallery of Lok Sabha. My request for a front row sitting when asked to sit in the 4^th row met with a stern response from the guard - “Do what is told to you”. Apparently, the first two rows are reserved for women. Clearly, Public Gallery had implemented the Reservation Bill much ahead of the Lok Sabha itself!

As soon as I took my seat and glanced at the Lok Sabha floor, I couldnt help but notice how small the Lok Sabha floor actually was! Quite in contrast to the exterior of the Parliament House or how the Lok Sabha itself appeared on TV, the real Lok Sabha resembled a small auditorium with dim lighting (it was artificially lit since little sunlight came in) and poor audibility – at least from Public Gallery.

My initial sense of disappointment was made up by the proximity of Public Gallery to the scene of action. I could clearly spot the members on the floor and was delighted to see all key leaders present – PM Manmohan Singh, Pranab Mukherjee, Verappa Moily, Jairam Ramesh, Sharad Pawar, Laloo Yadav, Sushma Swaraj, LK Advani, Deve Gowda, Mulayam Singh Yadav, Sharad Yadav and of course the speaker, Meira Kumar. With recent trends of increasing absenteeism in Indian Parliament, I considered myself quite lucky at witnessing action of a near full house!

Coming to the actual proceedings, ZERO hour is supposed to be a free-wheeling open house when opposition MPs can bring up urgent issues of national interest, without prior notice. The first 40 minutes of the ZERO hour were taken up by a long drawn speech by Murli Manohar Joshi of BJP amidst much fanfare, even though the Speaker made repeated requests to terminate the speech after 30 minutes.

Joshi spoke in brilliant Hindi about diverse issues such as food insecurity and government’s complete ignorance of farmer’s problems, Bt Brinjal debate, reservations on UID etc., though he appeared incoherent in parts. All through his speech, I was treated to the usual tamasha of Lok Sabha – thumping of desks, shouting across the floor, regular warnings by the Speaker, MPs standing up and walking etc. I could see people around me in the Public Gallery giggling when all this was happening.

Finally, at about 12:45pm, the PM stood up and began with his response. He was barely audible from the Gallery so I couldn’t hear much except for the fact that he was praising the economic progress in India over last 5 years. At 12:50pm, I left the Gallery to catch a 1pm appointment elsewhere! I later read in Rediff that the opposition wasn’t too impressed with PM’s response. On my way outside, I tried recalling the landmark moments in Indian history that were scripted in this great building. Quite an impossible task!

My brief peep into the Parliament's proceedings was quite overwhelming, much more than what I had imagined it to be. I wished I had spent a full day checking out rest of the Parliament House though I wasn’t sure if visitors were allowed to do that.

Launching Jaagte Raho! campaign in Bangalore

(This post of mine has been reproduced from an entry on iJanaagraha blog)

As the memory of our massive national campaign for Lok Sabha 2009 elections fades into the past, we are all set to rollout an even more intense effort to mobilize electoral participation in urban India – the Jaagte Raho! campaign.

Jaagte Raho! is a long term Janaagraha initiative that inspires values of active citizenship in urban India by bringing out the vote for local, state and union elections; and by promoting participation in neighbourhood areas. The campaign aims to redefine patterns of electoral engagement (voter registration and voter turnout) in 10 cities over the next 5 years, thereby creating a successful model for the rest of urban India.

The first step in this journey were taken on the evening of 15th December when Jaagte Raho! was launched in Bangalore. This couldn’t have happened at a better occasion – a few months prior to the all important local elections in Bangalore!

Bangalore is perhaps the most ill-fated mega city in India – the only one with no elected body at the local level for over 3 years now! Given the importance of local governance in our day to day lives, it is almost a miracle that Bangalore has survived over the past 3 years. But that doesn’t mean much for a city that craves to create a global reputation for itself.

Clearly then, the upcoming BBMP elections present a historic opportunity for the residents of Bangalore to put the life back into its day-to-day governance. But do all of us recognize this as an opportunity? Do majority of Bangaloreans even acknowledge the prominence of local governance in their day-to-day lives? If even some of us do, what are we doing jointly to ensure that we don’t miss out on this opportunity?

These questions have shaped the immediate strategy of Jaagte Raho! campaign in Bangalore. Over the next 3 months, Jaagte Raho! will rollout an intensive awareness and mobilization drive to unite all Bangaloreans in the task of ensuring maximum participation in BBMP elections. At the center of action will be the unique grassroots volunteering position created by this campaign – Area Voter Mitra.

Area Voter Mitras provide local leadership in improving electoral engagement within their polling booth areas (about 1000 voters). They are identified and trained by Janaagraha, and work on the field in close coordination with Janaagraha. However, the uniqueness of being an Area Voter Mitra comes from the fact that they receive formal support from Election Commission of India (ECI) to clean up their voter lists.

The challenge therefore that confronts the Jaagte Raho! campaign is the mobilization of enough Area Voter Mitras to cover all 5000+ polling booths covering BBMP area, within a short span of 2 months. This is where we need all stakeholders of Bangalore – individuals and institutions (RWAs, NGOs, Colleges and Companies) to come forward and commit their energies towards better local governance by joining this campaign.

Launching a campaign like Jaagte Raho! has been possible only after months of preparation and planning. But this is only the tip of the iceberg. Chunk of the effort clearly lies ahead of us, the outcomes of which will possibly determine the quality of local governance in Bangalore for the next several years!

My Best Moments from Jaago Re! One Billion Votes campaign

It's incredible that a year has passed away since the Jaago Re! One Billion Votes campaign began. An idea put down into a MS Powerpoint first in early 2008 took the shape of a national voter registration campaign within 6 months, and was launched nationally in Sept 2008. The campaign was active for 8 months targeting the parliamentary elections in April – May 2009.

Over here, I will attempt to put together all the amazing things that I saw happening from the driver’s seat of the campaign. This is not a conclusive piece on the impact of the campaign, just my collection of 10 best moments of this campaign – events and happenings that excited me the most, in no specific order.

1. It was absolutely thrilling to see the number of voter registrations that the campaign managed to rake up, and the associated feeling of “making a difference”. We celebrated the first 1000 and first 10,000 sign-ups by cutting a cake at office. Realizing that the ticker was moving too fast, we made a prudent choice to celebrate only multiples of 1 lakh. The first lakh registrations happened around end of Nov 2008, almost 2.5 months after the campaign launch. The subsequent ones averaged a month each. We celebrated each of them by cutting a cake. Here’s a picture from our celebration of 4 lakh voter registrations.

2. The experience of working with an extraordinarily passionate team at Janaagraha. We started out as a 4 member team (Rajesh, Praveen, Deepthi and I – all from IIT Madras) in July 2008 and expanded to 15 member full time team by Feb 2009. Looking back at the way the team got formed so quickly and with such amazing people, I cannot help but think of it as an act of divine intervention. The average age was just 26 yrs, making it a truly youth driven campaign. The bonding was so strong that we would stay together for a majority of the evenings, not always for work though :). See one of the team pics below:

What was equally amazing was the kind of volunteer energies this campaign attracted across India. More than a thousand volunteers participated, either on a one-off or regular basis, to take leadership in the outreach drives of the campaign.

3. My first meeting with NR Narayana Murthy and Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra – two absolute luminaries, to ask them to join on the Advisory Board of this campaign. I was quite nervous on both the occasions and hadn’t it been for Ramesh (Co-founder, Janaagraha) who joined me for both these meetings, I doubt if the outcome would have been the same.

I still recall how talking to Rakeysh for about 20-30 min straight without getting the slightest of reaction (he was completely stone-faced) made me certain that he would junk the idea. Instead, once I finished, he responded saying “It’s a giant of an idea, treat me as your slave…”. That’s Rakeysh for you!

Both NRN and Rakeysh continue to be the Advisory Board of Jaagte Raho campaign, and are as committed to support our work as they were on Day 1. I cant describe the feeling I get when I hear them talk so passionately about this campaign. Following is a pic that shows all three of us, shot at a campaign event at Infosys.

4. The day I participated on the BIG FIGHT show of NDTV, one of the most popular television debate shows in India. The topic was “Youth and Politics” and my co-panelists were Sachin Pilot, ‘Pappu’ Yadav, Sudheendra Kulkarni et al. I didn’t speak too well against these seasoned politicians but I remember how electrifying the atmosphere was the moment debate was thrown open. My best moment came out of a remark Sudheendra Kulkarni made to me before the show began. He complimented me for the campaign and said that if 10 yrs down the line if we see the youth rising to prominence in Indian politics, you should know that Jaago Re had a role to play in that.

5. After the campaign ended, I sent a mail to the team asking them to share their funniest moments. I was totally unprepared for the response the mail received. Some dangerously hilarious stuff came to the front! Sample a couple of these:

• (Rajesh) I got a simple mail from one of our registered users from Gurgaon saying “Your Site Sucks”. As is the standard policy, I wrote back apologizing him for any inconveniences he may have faced and asking him to share what part of our website he faced issues with. The guy replies back promptly, “Sorry there was a typo in my mail, I meant to say - Your Entire Site Sucks”
• (Praveen) I get a call at 3pm on April 30^th, the day Mumbai went to polls. It was a lady from Mumbai complaining that she wasn’t able to register on our website. I told her that we were facing some technical issues and asked her to check after 24 hrs. She insisted that I helped to register her right away. When I asked why was it so urgent, she said because the polling booth is going to close at 5pm today

6. When Meera Sanyal (Country Head, ABN Amro and a candidate from Mumbai South constituency) said in a “We The People” show of NDTV that it was “Jaago Re” voting campaign that inspired her to stand in elections

7. The commitment with which Tata Tea, our partners and sponsors, marketed the campaign. It was a blitzkrieg effort – TV ads, radio spots, internet banner ads, Vote ya Vaat show on Channel V, messaging on millions of tea packs etc. One of these days, I was dialing on the Indian Railways enquiry no. to check the reservation status for my dad and I discovered that the waiting tune was the Jaago Re jingle! I was caught by such surprises at many instances since Tata Tea independently drove their marketing campaign.

8. When I heard a couple of songs composed exclusively for this campaign. Both are brilliant tracks, though I preferred the 2nd one more!

• Thermal and a Quarter did a 5 city rock show tour called “Shut Up and Vote” tour for this campaign, and also composed a title track for this campaign.
• A band from Pune (led by Tamir Khan) got inspired and recorded a brilliant song for the campaign, at their own expense! I ended up making this my morning alarm tune, listening to it over 100 times by now.

9. Numerous small stories that I have heard (and keep hearing till date) from complete strangers that shows how the campaign touched them and made a difference:

• A young girl traveling on Shatabdi Express alongside me flashed a Voter ID card as the identity proof. My eyes opened up and I asked her how she got her Voter ID card made. She said she saw the Jaago Re ad and used the facility on www.jaagore.com to fill out her form. She found the process damn easy and said she even got 10-15 of her friends to register through www.jaagore.com. She had voted for the first time in these elections
• A retired Brigadier I met at Pune a few weeks back told me how much he regretted missing out on his vote all his life since he used to be posted away from home during every election, and because the postal vote system never worked. But during the past general elections, he had returned home. His young college going son got inspired by Jaago re campaign and insisted that his father registered. Both of them registered through the campaign and voted in the elections

10. The change this campaign brought about in me, as an individual. I consider myself very fortunate (a great coincidence of time, circumstances and above all an institution called JANAAGRAHA) to have seen an idea planted by me with modest ambitions take the shape of a dream national campaign. Frankly, within a couple of months of its launch, the campaign outgrew all expectations I ever had from it. By the end of it, a couple of lessons got firmly engraved in my heart, soul and mind:

• No one will believe in your idea unless you do, and keep pushing until the entire world follows suit
• I had heard this before and liked it instantly, but now I live by this quote of Margaret Mead - Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.

Managing Social Sector Projects : Importance of a Method in Madness

How project management can help bring in more focus and effectiveness in any social sector project

(This article of mine has been published in the November 2009 issue of MANAGE India - the online magazine of Project Management Institute, India)

The social sector in India faces tremendous challenges; this includes NGOs and community groups working on a range of development and governance related issues – in rural and urban India. The potential impact of this work needs no emphasis. While it can significantly impact various development issues, it plays an important role to keep our governments accountable and our democracy vibrant.

Therefore, it is extremely important for the social sector to operate within strict bounds of professionalism and use best available tools and techniques to manage their projects successfully.

Unfortunately, this does not match with the current reality. An overwhelmingly large majority of social sector projects in India are managed in an ad hoc and informal manner even today. Project management hasn’t matured to the extent it has in the private sector. Most of the organizations working in this space rarely take the typical approach to project management – defining clear targets, defining an action plan and timelines, allocating resources, mapping out dependencies, regular tracking and reviewing.

The reasons for this are varied, some of which are genuine. It is true that the vagaries and external dependencies that a social sector project is subject to, are rarely seen in other sectors. This is compounded by the fact that most NGOs have highly heterogeneous teams with non-uniform understanding on project management, and the tools that enable the same. In many cases, especially in rural NGOs, technology skills are a big impediment. On the other hand, many NGOs don’t feel the need to apply modern project management practices because they do not commit themselves to clear annual and quarterly targets.

But is it a wise choice not to adopt standard project management practices due to the inherent complexity of this space? I would argue this otherwise.

It is because of the fact that social sector is fraught with challenges and external dependencies – a chaos or a madness of sorts, it is even more important to deploy relevant practices in project management. To add to this, the resources available are so limited and the windows of opportunity so narrow, that one rarely gets a second chance to make an impact. Clearly then, little or no project management reflects poorly on an organization’s commitment to change.

Over the last few years, Janaagraha has taken important strides towards better project management in its various programs. Defining clear targets and action plans, and reviewing the same periodically are a norm. Weekly review meetings are conducted within programs and at the organizational level to ensure alignment of all staff and volunteers. All of these are open door meetings, where any kind of external input is welcome. This is complemented by a monthly review by the Executive Body and a Quarterly review by the Advisory Board.

Earlier this year, Janaagraha successfully executed India’s largest voter registration campaign – Jaago Re! One Billion Votes campaign – in partnership with Tata Tea. Strong project management practices were the backbone to running this nationwide campaign successfully.

Recently, Janaagraha has initiated an exercise based on Balance Scorecard approach to better define organizational goals and ensure alignment among its various programs. There has also been a shift from excel based project planning towards professional open source tools for project management. I am sure this will yield significant outcomes in the short and long term.

An Indian Shame in Professionalism

The worrying saga of India’s preparedness for 2010 Commonwealth Games at New Delhi reached a new low few days back when the President of Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF) Michael Fennell announced that the Games was heading for “partial failure” and decided to setup a special monitoring panel with international experts to oversee preparations on a monthly basis for the rest of the year.

Why this is a big slap on India’s image as a professionally reliable nation is because this is the first time ever in the history of Commonwealth Games when such a step has been taken. Apparently, the only other instance that comes close to this was the case of 1982 Asian Games when a similar monitoring panel was setup. Guess what, this was the Delhi Asian Games! Clearly, some things in India never change.

Subroto Bagchi’s latest book “The Professional” does a great job of defining what being a professional really means. It says:

First and foremost a professional is a person who can self-certify completion of a task and can work unsupervised. If somebody else is required to certify that this task needs a particular standard then you are not a professional. This is a very small, but very subtle and important, distinction between being competent and being a professional.

Now apply this definition to all the monitoring going on with the Commonwealth Games. Lets begin with the latest one to join the group, the special monitoring panel setup by Michael Fennel out of utter frustration to trust his Indian counterparts.

Countering this development, the Games Organizing Committee chairman Suresh Kalmadi says “We don't want multiplicity of agencies, there are already agencies, including the Co-ordination Commission, which are monitoring the Games preparations”. Notice the words “there are already agencies, including the…”, clearly acknowledging that more than one group is monitoring the same project.

Now since that doesn’t sound like enough monitoring, Chief Minister Shiela Dikshit asks all her ministerial colleagues to regularly inspect various project sites and do the needful to ensure that all the projects are completed well ahead of the deadline. I wonder how on earth can all ministers together get into the act of ensuring timely project completion? Another example of “everybody’s responsibility and nobody’s accountability” syndrome so frequently seen in Government projects.

One would assume that this is enough of an overdose of monitoring. But wait, here comes the best. Enter the Sports Minister M.S.Gill and along with him the only man India can trust, Dr Manmohan Singh. Gill says, “The Prime Minister takes meetings regularly and has given the Group of Ministers under Jaipal Reddy the mandate to ensure that we are ready and complete for the Games”. Note the statement carefully “… Group of Ministers under…”. So half of Union Government has joined in the act as well.

What does one glean out of all this?

First, the easiest way to show you bother about the Commonwealth Games is to join in the act of monitoring it. Little doubt that the BJP has raised a demand that the PM appoint yet another Monitoring Committee, which can have members from different walks of life. A novel idea I think, perhaps it can take the added responsibility of ensuring that all the other monitoring groups are doing their monitoring jobs well.

Second, it shows an utter lack of faith in the abilities of those who are meant to deliver the Games in the first place. Clearly, Suresh Kalmadi has been caught in the act and he doesn’t mind showing off his frustration in pictures like the one above.

But most importantly and most unfortunately, this significantly compromises India’s image as a professionally competent nation. This at a time when China has pulled off the grandest Olympics ever and Brazil has clinched the 2016 Olympics from the jaws of US. It shows that not only are we quite far from achieving our targets for 2010 Commonwealth Games in a professional manner, but few of our public leaders even understand Bagchi’s golden definition of what being a professional really means.

Aruna Roy on Indian Democracy

Read this from a rediff interview by Aruna Roy today. A fabulous statement at the end!

Q: Have you lost faith in our democracy?

No, I haven't lost my faith in democracy. I have lost my faith in the way democracy is used by the people who go into certain institutions (Parliament) in this manner.

I think it's like the parson's egg which is good in parts. Even our government is good in parts in the sense that the same Parliament gave us the Right to Information Act and the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act as well as the Special Economic Zone Act.

But then we need to educate our parliamentarians; we need to educate our politicians. Their levels of literacy is so low, their levels of exposure (to people's problems) are so low.

After all, politicians are really the custodians of our Constitution, of the people but today they have become custodians of themselves.

Getting a new political party will not solve the problem; it is the interaction with the people that will help. After all, where will we go?

It is my country, an independent country. I can't ask for any outside intervention to cleanse it. I think it is the failure of the so-called literate people, of my generation, the generation after me and also the current generation who think that running the country is not their business.

In a democracy it is your business and my business to see that the country works properly.

How do we Define a Great Leader?

I read this statement from Mr NR Narayana Murthy’s interview in TOI (Bangalore edition) today:

Q: How would you describe a great leader?

A: A great leader is one who is not only good in creating a vision, creating the big picture, but also ensuring that he goes into the nitty gritty, into the details of making sure that the vision actually translated into reality through excellence of execution. In other words, great leaders have great vision, great imagination, great ideas, but they also implement those ideas through hard work, commitment and flawless execution. In doing so, they motivate thousands of people.

I think the need for “excellence of execution” (EoE) couldn’t have been stressed better. The private sector in India has learnt this the hard way. Thanks to globalization, this is a constant challenge for them, something which they can ill afford to ignore. This has also resulted in bringing to fore some truly exceptional leaders like NRN and Ratan Tata, separating out the giants from the men and boys.

Unfortunately, our governments and our politicians are never measured by a similar yardstick that lays emphasis on EoE. Victory is hailed when annual budget allocations are made or new schemes announced. There is little focus or talk on how a particular scheme or project is going to achieve EoE and thereby its intended outcome. In most cases, the outcomes themselves are never defined!

Take the case of recent spurt in metro rail projects for eg. the one in Bangalore. What could be the most important outcome of a project like this, something that would be a result of EoE? I would say a marked reduction in door-to-door travel time for an average trip in the city. Now do we know what this metric is currently, and how will it be impacted after the project because of EoE? We rarely hear, read or discuss these things.

The flip side to this is that we fail to recognize instances of exemplary public leadership that still exist today. These are the individuals (politicians and bureaucrats) who know that the battle has only begun when a project is launched, and that much of the hard work lies in achieving EoE.

The only figure that stands out here as an exception is E Sreedharan of Delhi Metro. Off late, also Mr. Madhavan Nair of ISRO but only thanks to our ability to define outcomes clearly – the rocket launch finally did yield some path breaking findings on lunar surface. But for every ‘x’ number of such examples that we do recognize, we miss perhaps ‘10x’ others – big and small.

One such example I feel is Project Arrow of the Department of Post. A Google search will reveal a lot of information on its vision and the wonderful work that is already under way, but public awareness on this mammoth project is extremely poor! What is largely unknown therefore is the name of individual (s) who displayed leadership in envisioning and implementing this initiative. One of them, I have learnt, is Jyotiraditya Scindia who played a key role in launching this initiative when he was the Union Minister of State for IT & Communications in 2004 UPA government.

One only hopes that we come across more and more visible examples of great public leadership characterized by “excellence of execution”!