Research and Data
The Research and Data in Praja contributes towards informing and improving the knowledge of Praja’s stakeholders through its extensive use of data and thematic publications. We work across five verticals of Education, Health, Civic, Crime, Housing and Transport. The sixth vertical is research on the working of elected representatives i.e. Councilors and MLAs of Delhi and Mumbai. Since the financial year 2016 to 2019, eight thematic whitepapers and four report cards were released every year using 4,888 RTIs. We delved deeper to address the staggered quality of governance in the city of Mumbai and Delhi.
Capacity Building
The Capacity Building focuses on equipping its stakeholders to enable accountability, transparency, inclusivity and active civic participation in local governance through targeted capacity building initiatives. It is imperative to address the entire spectrum of key stakeholders who affect and get affected by local governance and policies therefore Praja focuses on building capacities of elected representatives (ER), administrators, college students and CSOs. Since 2016, Praja has organized 49 workshops with elected representatives. Praja team provided 2,094 consultation and research assistance on an individual basis to elected representatives in Mumbai and Delhi in between 2016-19. Additionally, Praja organized first ever ER visiting Program to Kerala and Women ER Workshop in 2018.
Dialogue and Advocacy
Over the last two decades, Praja has been working to enable the creation of better governed cities, in which elected representative’s accountability is beyond the ballot box due to creation of an active citizenry and better informed elected representatives. Praja’s experience showed that there is a lacuna in country wide evidence on structure and execution of city governments in various cities. In order to map the devolution of powers across the country as mandated in the 74th Amendment, with the larger aim of transforming city governance from a ‘smart city’ to a ‘smartly governed city’, Praja launched the Dialogue and Advocacy project in 2017. It aims at influencing policy change at a structural and systemic level in order to democratize city governments and improve delivery of services. As a part of the study, total 1314 interviews were carried out from November 2017 till December 2019 with key stakeholders including elected representatives, government officials, civil society experts from 23 states and have conducted state level consultations in 20 states in India by December 2019.
