About Us
The year 2020 reshaped India. The onslaught of the COVID-19 pandemic also saw multiple development actors working to respond to the biggest crisis situation that the country had confronted in recent memory.
Responding to the moment, the PULSE (Platform to Understand, Learn, Share and Exchange) for Development was launched. It is currently incubated in the Accountability Initiative at the Centre for Policy Research. It brought together practitioners, researchers, and funders in the development sector to understand the situation and through this knowledge mitigate the impact of the crisis on human lives.
In 2022, a conscious decision was made to also include longstanding development challenges facing India and facilitate the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals.
In its present form, the PULSE for Development has emerged as a structured community of practice which, through the cross-pollination of knowledge and community-level insights, seeks to push the needle on some of India’s toughest welfare challenges. It is run by a small group of dedicated professionals. Meet the team.
Establishing a tight-knit, networked community of development practitioners within the government system and outside to enable intuitive, citizen-centric policies and implementation.
As a community of practice, we aim to connect practitioners who are shifting the needle on a systemic scale. We also aim to make available rigorous evidence sources for the decision-making of government actors and to inform programmes of civil society organisations.
The PULSE for Development thus facilitates practitioners and organisations to understand, learn, and deliberate on ground-level realities and best practices. This is to build consensus, co-solutioneer, and reduce their learning curve.
For more on the ‘Connectors’ we offer, see here.
Credible knowledge is power. We are knowledge-driven also because opportunities to exchange such insights are few and far between for practitioners within the government and in the civil society space.
Collaboration is key. A platform such as ours helps both sides develop a shared understanding of developmental concerns, and potential solutions.
Break the silos. We are a digital-first community, which means that you could be anywhere in the country – or the world – to be able to participate, provided that you are working on development issues in India and have access to the internet.
Reimagine solutions. We invite discussions on all things related to the welfare system in India. Collectively, our members have decades worth of experience in action for social good.
No one left behind. We provide membership free-of-cost irrespective of organisation size, seniority of the practitioner or their job role. But we are building an ethos where each member contributes to the learning of others through their work. This is reflected in our Community Charter.
I watched the PULSE videos, and they were actually quite informative. They really help a lot as a young officer. You really don't know who to talk to about it and what to talk about. So just by virtue of visiting these pages, seeing the kinds of discussions that are going on, if something piques your interest, you can go and follow that up.
PULSE for Development continues to be an important part of my journey as an administrator and policy maker. As someone who has been associated with their team from the very beginning, I am a first-hand witness to their evidence based approach and commitment to engagement of stakeholders from multiple fields. Both these values are essential to doing good work on the ground. It is in this solidarity and diversity that we hope to continue effecting incremental change.