Key Accomplishments
Well run cities, providing a great quality of life to her citizens requires the application of a systems approach. This approach includes all aspects of city planning, managing city finances, people management, performance of the city, accountability to citizens, participation and empowered elected representatives – what we call "City Systems”.
The core idea of our work does not revolve around ‘fixing problems’ but instead ‘fixing the system’ that can solve the problems. We work with citizens to catalyse active citizenship and with governments to institute city governance reforms, called “City-Systems.” All our interventions are population-scale interventions in which the target stakeholder group is the entire urban population of Indian states.
We began as a movement in 2001 to include people’s participation in public governance. We have now evolved into a robust institution for citizenship and democracy.
Strengthening City Finances
We conceived and launched www.cityfinance.in, a national framework of standardized, timely and credible financial information on cities in association with the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs(MoHUA). For the first time in history, municipal financial documents of over 1,800 cities are uploaded and available at a central repository. . We supported MoHUA in publishing “A Toolkit for Property Tax Reforms”, a comprehensive study of property tax in India with reform roadmap for cities to improve the quantum of own revenues, assisting a high-level Consultative Group of Ministers and Committee of Secretaries...
Advocating for Municipal Finance
We closely worked with XV Finance Commission, a high-powered constitutional body constituted once in five years, on a Municipal Finance Blueprint report for India. We advocated for reforms in municipal finance. there has been significant acceptance of several groundbreaking ideas, including publication of audited annual accounts of all 4,500+ ULBs on www.cityfinance.in.
Signing of MoU with the Government of Odisha
Signed an MoU with the Government of Odisha on municipal strengthening covering city finance and performance management across property tax, accounts and audits across all 114 cities in the state. Improved property tax collections by 30% in 2021.
Inclusion of the Public Disclosure Law
We drafted and successfully advocated for the inclusion of the Public Disclosure Law under JnNURM. Engaged on urban governance reforms with the 2nd Administrative Reforms Commission, 13th and 14th Finance Commissions and Planning Commissions
Diagnosing Urban Governance in cities
We conceived and continue to publish the Annual Survey of India’s City-Systems (ASICS),
a diagnostic on the preparedness of India’s cities to govern. It is now going into its 6th edition. ASICS strongly inspired the Municipal Performance Index of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA), Government of India which led to several Parliament questions. A private member bill came about to amend 74th Constitution Amendment Act to give more powers to councils and Mayors, leading to first ever chapter on cities in the Economic Survey of India
Enabling civic participation through civic technology
Strong foray into civic technology with I Change My City "(www.ichangemycity.com)”, a platform for citizens to engage with city governments at the neighborhood level on civic matters. I Change My City today powers the Swachhata Technology platform of the Swachh Bharath Mission (Urban) 2.0. With over 20million citizen users, over 54million citizen engagements on the platform, and achieving over 93% resolution rate on complaints, it is one of the largest civic tech platforms in the country.
Launch of the Public Eye app
I Change My City also powers the Public Eye app of the Bengaluru Traffic Police used to report traffic violations. It has thus far crowdsourced over 1.3million complaints, and in 2020 averaged 2800 complaints a day.
Working for slum Development
We have developed the Biju Adarsh Colony portal for the Slum Dweller Associations across all 114 cities in the state of Odisha to track and manage the slum infrastructure improvement projects.
Crowdsourcing Corruption Reports
I Paid A Bribe has been successfully running for a decade, and in that time has expanded to 30 countries on a software partnership model.
Catalysing Urban Reforms at scale
We conceived and catalyzed the 1st major urban scheme Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JnNURM) with outlay of c. USD 20 bn; through this we pioneered the urban projects + reforms approach. This continues in current national urban missions.
Murugan Vasudevan at Bengaluru Civic Fest
Head - South Asia, Social Innovation Group, Cisco
“Our partnership with Janaagraha is part of our mission to create the next generation of problem solvers. An active citizenry is a first step towards effective problem-solving.
By bringing in the power of digital platforms to Janaagraha’s work, we hope to be able to accelerate the reach of this program and move us closer to our goal of positively impacting 50M people in India by 2025.”
N Manjunatha Prasad (IAS)
Former Commissioner, BBMP
“We are very happy with the high levels of citizen participation in the MyCityMyBudget campaign for 2021. Citizens have contributed budget inputs from from all 198 wards. This is extremely important as we prepare the budget for the coming year. It is our commitment to ensure that citizen inputs will be analysed, costed and funds allocated to end public urination and ensure footpaths are made safe and walkable for all our citizens. All these inputs will be placed before the Honourable Administrator of BBMP for inclusion in the forthcoming Budget of BBMP”
Abdul Aleem
President, ChangeMakers of Kanakapura Road During 2021, MCMB campaign
“We are thankful to BBMP and Janagraha for collecting citizen inputs for the BBMP budget. Many of our residents participated in large number in this program. We hope BBMP would soon make these inputs a reality. We would continue to work along with BBMP until the implementation!”
Rajesh Kumar Singh
Additional Chief Secretary, Kerala Fourth State Finance Commission
“The Government of Kerala is delighted that the Janaagraha City Governance Award, 2021 has been given to Kerala’s Fourth State Finance Commission for its work on the devolution of funds to the local governments of Kerala. We are particularly delighted to receive this Janaagraha City Governance Award which is in honour and memory of Mr. V.Ramachandran, who is also former Chief Secretary of Kerala and inspiration to all of us and who worked in the field of democratic decentralisation,”
Subscribe To Our Newsletter
Sign up for our newsletter to stay up to date with the latest in active citizenship and urban governance reforms in India’s cities and towns.