Vision For 2019

After the completion of almost three years of successfully running, the Equi-City Project will be entering the fourth and final year of its implantation. The fourth year of the Project will be a crucial one, as it will primarily be concerned about outreach, sensitization and evaluation of the host of activities.
The basic focus of the Project this year will be on implementation of activities to promote equity in the provision of municipal services throughout the city. The vision for 2019 activities will be formed primarily by implementing citizen’s awareness and education campaigns on municipal services. Part of it will be carried out by directly sensitizing the citizen through various campaigns/efforts and part of it will be done by raising awareness about the municipal services and promoting the Equi-City Mobile based and Web based Apps for analysis and evaluation of various municipal services. This is expected to result in further achieving equity throughout the city by improving the services in the expanses and regions that are lagging behind. Hence the aim for these activities will be to evolve strategies to target citizens, especially poor urban dwellers and therefore will adopt a combination of various channels, mass media, social media, road shows/street plays, inter academic competitions etc. These activities will focus on developing specific strategies and approaches to maximize impact on various target groups (youth, student, women, children) in collaboration with key stakeholders. The sensitized and educated consumers will therefore make a demand side pull and push for quality and reliable municipal services.

PROJECT ACTIVITIES FOR 2019

Promoting participatory governance process

The Project will continue with conducting regular Forum meetings with members of City Development Forum (CDF) and Inter-City Forum (ICF). The citizens, women and under-represented communities, and minority communities wherein they will be made part of the intercity forum and the City Development Forum (CDF) by making them part of the participatory governance process. The three Annual Intercity forums will help stakeholders inform, educate and sensitize wider set of stakeholders on diversity and delivery of municipal services. The key events within the participatory forum help LAs and stakeholders to forge collaborative solutions. Further, the Annual forums help strengthen the initiative through feedbacks received on various issues faced in Nagpur.

Best practices and knowledge sharing forums by cities and national workshop

The Project will also organize several Best Practices and Knowledge sharing Forums for municipal bodies, which will culminate in a National Workshop. A series of Forums will be conducted to support and promote the knowledge sharing and best practices. The intent of the forum will be to enable participant not only share best practices, but also work as a sounding board to issues and concerns faced by the target city in implementation of all its actions.

Urban awards

During the end of the year an Urban Awards Ceremony will be organized for promoting municipalities which have striven to achieve better performance and governance. This action will focus on incentivizing CSO’s, NGO’s, Local Authority Officials and elected representatives who bring some efficiency in the municipal service delivery.
The Award will act as a catalyst to encourage more innovative practices and incentivize greater equality in
the municipal services.

Leadership workshops

To build capacities of elected representatives and municipal officials for playing a leadership role in participatory forums and development of the city. They will be specially educated in leadership and managing the diverse demands of the local offices. The focal point of the workshop will be to hone the skills of municipal officials and elected representatives to act as leaders and to think innovatively and holistically about the challenges they face and who can follow through with real focus and determination to present solutions and public value.
The course of study will be to exercise leadership in the public sector, while developing innovative frameworks for addressing policy issues. The project will also draw upon the private and public sector resource base. Farther, the workshop will brainstorm on how innovative partnerships and new models of collaborative governance can be developed given the setting of the target city.
The activity will train 30 leaders each – municipal officials and elected representative who will play a key role in the various meetings and forums. They will reach out to various sections of the society. Special attention will be made on promoting women and minority communities -both leaders and officials.

Implementation of municipal rating system in Nagpur

As part of the Municipal Rating System, a community scorecard and citizen scorecard will be developed. Some of the questions that it will seek to answer is a) citizens’ views and experiences in service delivery, b) variations in service delivery and provision, c) efficiency in service delivery, d) relationship between service user satisfaction and perceptions of local governance, and e) remedial measures to improve service delivery and local governance. To bring the concept of Performance Measurement alive in Nagpur Equi-City Team started working on developing a Municipal Rating System to measure efficiency in the delivery of municipal services. The purpose of this action is to develop monitoring and evaluation instruments which will allow both stakeholder (citizens, NGOs, etc.) and local offices to guarantee transparent and accountable delivery of municipal services. The monitoring and evaluation tools will be collaboratively produced by all stakeholders – through iteration of the Municipal Rating System.

The primary focus of these tools is to create a demand pull by citizens to insure effective and efficient service delivery by local agencies. For this activity a questionnaire has been designed based on research and analysis to select 4 particular prabhags for further research on monitoring of current level of status of municipal services and coming up with citizen and a community scorecard for an effective Municipal Rating System.
Farther, the Equi – City Team conducted an analytical field survey covering 4 Prabhags and approximately 3000 houses respectively. The main aim of this activity was to gather initial information about the level of services being provided in these areas after which analysis would be done to compare these levels of services with the Service Level Benchmarks. Performance Measurement must necessarily be accompanied with performance benchmarking, otherwise it is hard to evaluate how well or how poorly the agency is doing and what types of disciplinary actions are called for.

Further, a Phone based application is being initiated based on the questionnaire of the Municipal Rating System to evaluate the level of existing services throughout the city. Established along the varied answers from the stakeholders a Municipal Rating System and Community Scorecard will be brought forth and implemented throughout the city.

Information dissemination through IEC activities in Nagpur

The information dissemination effort is anticipated to cover over 200,000 citizens and 50,000 urban poor who are sensitized and trained. Educated consumers are able to create a demand side pull and push for quality and reliable municipal services. The Urban Update newsletter is required to benefit educated citizens who are able to create a demand side pull and push for quality and reliable municipal services. E-newsletter and website encourages healthy debate and encourages accountability in municipal services and diversity of LA organizations. A web based application will also be used to gather and involve citizen feedback on level of municipal services in Nagpur. Also, awareness campaign drives will be organized throughout the city sensitizing citizens on issues related to diversity, water and sanitation, etc.