Foundation for Responsive Governance

The Foundation for Responsive Governance (ResGov) is working to strengthen the capabilities of government and communities to ensure public initiatives reach the most vulnerable.

Understanding governance can be tricky for those accessing it

Meet Sarita, a 40 year old NGO staff living in a kutcha house who was happy to hear about a new housing scheme. But...

How will she access the scheme?

What all documents does she need?

Who will help her get the benefits of the scheme?

How much time will this process take?

Can she file a grievance if she faces a challenge?

Sarita approaches 55 year old Panchayat Functionary Ram Lal

Ram Lal received orders about the new scheme. The scheme required eligible recipients to complete a digital registration. Ram Lal was not well-versed with using the computer.

Who will train him using the computer?

How will he ensure eligible citizens receive the benefits?

Who will he go to for support within his Panchayat Office?

What if he gets transferred mid-process?

Schemes remain out of reach of citizens, as questions of governance go unanswered

  • With over 20k functional government schemes, an average family accesses only 55 of them.
    as per research by Haqdarshak 2022
  • Overburdened functionaries such as District Magistrates perform 130+ functions and as a result responsive governance takes the back seat.

How can we bridge this gap?

Our Approach

We believe that the 21st century welfare and development issues need a citizen-centric approach. We centre citizens' socio-economic, climate, and geographical vulnerabilities. Our approach considers these vulnerabilities as inter-related and overlapping.

Insights

We aim to generate insights through rigorous evidence-based research for nation-building. Our research rests on three pillars: 'People', 'Process', and 'Public Finance'.

Our 'People' pillar involves working with different levels of government, including the Union government, State governments, District Administration, and Local Bodies, to dismantle the everyday challenges in navigating bureaucracy and governance.

Our second pillar invests in dissecting the 'Processes' in which welfare services are delivered. It focuses on understanding how decisions are made, how data is collected and captured, and how planning is done to empower vulnerable citizens.

Our third pillar of 'Public Finance' locates how funds flow to reach the last mile. We investigate how welfare spending is decided, its quality, and whether it is based on people's needs.

Action

We believe in sharing our learnings and experiences for strengthening institutions. Through our capacity building initiatives, we aim to share our learnings for enabling an informed leadership across wide-ranging institutional stakeholders who are working to empower the vulnerable. We run courses on governance for elected representatives and bureaucrats, who are at the front-line of welfare service delivery.

We also develop courses for CSOs who directly work with communities. Our courses are also delivered through collaborations.

Dialogue

We believe in the power of dialogue for diversifying perspectives to reach common goals. By building a common platform engaging multiple stakeholders, we aim to facilitate better citizen-state and CSO-state engagements and relationships through cross-sharing of information and problem solving journeys.

PULSE 2.0 will partner with a select group of bureaucrats and CSOs to understand their need for such a platform.

Union Budget 2024-25

Union Budget 2024-25: Key Insights
Union Budget 2024-25: Key Insights

The Government of India announced its full Budget for this year on 23 July 2024. This brief looks at some of the trends in finances of critical social sector ministries and departments in the Union Budget from 2014 to 2024.

Budget Insights 2024-25: Department of Drinking Water and Sanitation
Budget Insights 2024-25: Department of Drinking Water and Sanitation

This brief analysis trends in finances for the Department of Drinking Water and Sanitation.

Budget Insights 2024-25: Ministry of Women and Child Development
Budget Insights 2024-25: Ministry of Women and Child Development

This brief analysis trends in finances for the Ministry of Women and Child Development.

Budget Insights 2024-25: Department of Health and Family Welfare
Budget Insights 2024-25: Department of Health and Family Welfare

This brief analysis trends in finances for the Department of Health and Family Welfare.

Recent Engagements

In Poll Season, Why Women's Care Labour Needs To Be Debated Dialogue
  • Gender
  • Work

Tanya Rana

In Poll Season, Why Women's Care Labour Needs To Be Debated

This article discusses the status of women's care labour in India and how assumptions regarding 'women's work' play out in measuring unpaid domestic and care work.

Continue Reading
Network of Women in Media x BehanBox: Workshop on Elections and Gender Action
  • Capacity Building
  • Gender

Tanya Rana

Network of Women in Media x BehanBox: Workshop on Elections and Gender

As a part of this workshop series, we conducted a training session for NWMI's journalists on assessing performance of women-oriented welfare schemes in Lok Sabha Elections 2024.

Continue Reading
Has Beti Bachao Beti Padhao's Media Advocacy Focus Achieved The Desired Outcomes? Dialogue
  • Gender
  • Education
  • Schemes

Tanya Rana

Has Beti Bachao Beti Padhao's Media Advocacy Focus Achieved The Desired Outcomes?

This article locates the performance of one of the key welfare schemes to improve child-sex ratio in India.

Continue Reading
Partnership with the Government of Meghalaya Insight
  • Government Partnership

Partnership with the Government of Meghalaya

We are partnering with the Government of Meghalaya to provide insights on the ‘Village Data Volunteers’ program that stands to revolutionise how the state collects relevant data on vulnerabilities of citizens at the last mile.

Team

Board of Advisors

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Dr. Sekhar Bonu

Past with NITI Aayog, Asian Development Bank and Indian Administrative Services

Dr Sekhar Bonu worked as the Director General, Development Monitoring and Evaluation Office (DMEO), NITI Aayog from April 2019 to June 2022. Before joining NITI Aayog, Dr Bonu worked at the Asian Development Bank (ADB), Manila, Philippines from 2004 to 2019. At ADB, he worked on health, urban infrastructure development and regional cooperation, mainly in the South Asia region. Dr Bonu worked in the Indian Administrative Services and served as a civil servant in Rajasthan between 1987-2003, among others, as district magistrate, director of primary and secondary education, and chief executive officer of state-owned enterprises.

Dr Bonu has a PhD from Johns Hopkins University and is a Chartered Financial Analyst charter holder. He has a research interest in state capacity building, service delivery, outcomes measurements, etc. and has published in peer-review journals.

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Dipa Sinha

Associate Professor at the School of Liberal Studies, Ambedkar University Advocate of movements such as Right to Food

Dipa Sinha teaches Economics at the School of Liberal Studies, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar University Delhi (AUD). Her areas of research include public policy, food and nutrition rights, public health, and gender. She has been involved in academic as well as policy research on these topics for the last twenty years, in different capacities.

She has worked as an independent researcher and has led a number of primary studies evaluating programs such as the Public Distribution System, child-related nutrition programs, and maternity entitlement schemes. She worked with the Office of Commissioners to the Supreme Court (on the Right to Food). She also has been part of large multi-country research teams including the study on Food Riots and Food Rights (hosted at the Institute for Development Studies, Sussex). She was a member of the project team of the High-Level Panel of Experts (HLPE) of the Committee on World Food Security (CFS), FAO for the report on Nutrition and Food Systems. Dipa also contributes regularly to academic as well as popular publications.

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Uthara Narayanan

Founder, Buzz Women Revolutionising women leadership at grassroots

Uthara Narayan is the co-founder and chief change-maker at Buzz Women India and Gambia. Uthara's hopes to lead people to find their own voice and achieve their dreams by unleashing their potential. At Buzz Women, she builds leadership capabilities (financial, business, personal development skills) in low-income women to take charge of their problems and combat poverty. Apart from discovering social change she is a planned traveler, pretend optimist, determined organizer, trained singer, crafts hog, enthusiastic polyglot and amateur interior designer.

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Sunil Kumar

Retired Indian Administrative Services officer who most recently served as Secretary, Ministry of Panchayat Raj

Sunil Kumar is an IAS officer of batch 1987 from the Uttar Pradesh cadre and most recently served as Secretary, Ministry of Panchayati Raj before retiring in 2023. He has been instrumental in strengthening the democratic governance processes by empowering institutions, enabling better participation, transparency and accountability in the Panchayati Raj Institution system. He has contributed to improving the use of technology in governance by improving planning for localised SDGs through Gram Panchayat Development Plans and integration of Public Finance Management Systems in Panchayats. Sunil Kumar belives in values of respect, collaboration, empathy and honesty which is reflected in the work he does. He teaches public policy at Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics and supports a range of non-governmental organisations.

Team Members

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Avani Kapur
Founder Director
avani@resgov.org

Avani Kapur is Founder and Director of ResGov and also a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research. She is a public finance expert with nearly 2 decades of experience in studying India's welfare architecture including budget tracking, fund flows, data and governance systems and state capacity constraints as well as state-citizen engagements. Prior to this she was leading the Accountability Initiative at the Centre for Policy Research.

She has authored several articles, reports, and opinion pieces on state finances, India's welfare architecture, governance, and accountability and conducted workshops and trainings with Indian Administrative Service officers, Members of Parliament, Members of Legislative Assemblies, Indian Economic Service Officers and Officers of the National Audit and Accounts Academy. In 2020, during the COVID 19 pandemic, she co-conceptualised the PULSE4Development platform seeking to bring the development community together to learn, share, and communicate better with each other. The platform hosts more than 112 organisations and over 200 individual members.

She is a Tech4Good Fellow, member of the WICCI Council of Ethics and on the editorial board of the Journal of Development Policy and Practice. Avani is an alumnus of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), in the United Kingdom and Smith College Massachusetts, United States of America.

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Mallika Arora
Program Associate
mallika@resgov.org

Mallika is a Program Associate and founding team member at ResGov. She manages capacity building initiatives for civil society organizations and state partners, supports strategy for the Action vertical, and contributes to organizational planning and development. Previously, she worked with the Accountability Initiative at Centre for Policy Research, and Group Ignus. Her interest lies in experimenting with methods to bridge policy research and practical implementation.

She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from Hansraj College, University of Delhi, and a Master’s in Liberal Studies (Political Science) from Ashoka University. She has also pursued the Young India Fellowship and served as a Mother Teresa Fellow at Ashoka University’s Centre for Social Impact and Philanthropy.

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Swapna Ramtake
Senior State Associate
swapna@resgov.org

Swapna Ramteke is our Senior State Associate from Madhya Pradesh and a founding team member at ResGov. She is a skilled master trainer, community outreach expert and field researcher who can manage large field teams. She has over 20 years of experience and has worked in 6 states.

Swapna holds a Masters of Social Work and Bachelor of Social Work from Amravati University, Maharashtra. In the past, she has worked at Accountability Initiative at Centre for Policy Research, ASER and Pratham Education Foundation.

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Sidharth Santhosh
Senior Research Associate
sidharth@resgov.org

Sidharth Santhosh is a Senior Research Associate and a founding team member at ResGov. They investigate how bureaucrats learn welfare governance, navigate working together, and manage citizen-state coalitions in India. Sidharth supports organisational strategy for fundraising and planning. They support capacity building programs for bureaucrats, NGOs and university students. Prior to joining AI, Sidharth worked at Accountability Initiative at Centre for Policy Research and IIEP-UNESCO.

Sidharth holds a Masters in Public Policy and Economics from Sciences Po, Paris, and a Bachelors in Economics from Christ University, Bangalore. They have served on the Youth Board at Reap Benefit and have been a Young Curator and Learners Voice Fellow at the World Innovation Summit for Education (Qatar).

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Tanya Rana
Research Associate
tanya@resgov.org

Tanya is a Research Associate and founding team member at ResGov. She investigates how welfare mechanisms can be strengthened in India using participatory and gender-sensitive approaches. Tanya also supports organisational planning and development. Before ResGov, she worked at the Accountability Initiative, Centre for Policy Research and City Sabha.

Tanya holds a Masters in Public Policy from O.P. Jindal Global University and a Bachelor's in Finance from Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies.

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Shailaja S
Senior State Associate

Shailaja S, our Senior State Associate in Karnataka is an experienced facilitator, content developer and local government leader. She has served as an Upadhyaksha at a Panchayat in Karnataka in the past. She has trained elected women representatives, police officers and students. She has over 24 years of work experience in a range of sectors working with local governments.

Prior to joining us, Shailaja has consulted at Accountability Initiative at Centre for Policy Research, Sampoorna Swaraj Foundation, The Hunger Project and many community organisations.

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Tajuddin Khan
State Associate
tajuddin@resgov.org

Tajuddin Khan is our State Associate from Rajasthan and a founding team member at ResGov. He is skilled at facilitation, networking with different stakeholders and field research. Tajuddin is skilled at planning and executing large surveys that involve household and local government office visits. He has over 12 years of work experience and has worked in 5 states.

Tajuddin holds a Bachelor in Commerce from University of Rajasthan. In the past, he has worked at Accountability Initiative at Centre for Policy Research, SRKPS Jaipur among other NGOs.

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Uday Shankar
State Associate
uday@resgov.org

Uday Shankar is our State Associate from Bihar and a founding team member at ResGov. His expertise lies in facilitating capacity building programs for a wide range of stakeholders. He also supports field research with techniques such as secondary data collection, primary surveys among others.

Uday holds a Masters in Rural Management and Bachelor of Arts in History from Magadh University, Bihar. He began his career 11 years ago as a community trainer at Agragami India. He has also worked as a master trainer at ASER and at Accountability Initiative at Centre for Policy Research.

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Reuben Khonglah
Senior Program Associate
reuben@resgov.org

Reuben is a Senior Program Associate with ResGov. Currently based in Shillong, he manages the projects with the Government of Meghalaya, providing research and operational support as well as fostering strong partnerships and effective project implementation. He also assists with the PULSE4Development programme. Previously, he was a consultant with the Accountability Initiative at the Centre for Policy Reseach.

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Kaushal Pathak
State Associate
kaushal@resgov.org

Kaushal Pathak is our State Associate from Madhya Pradesh and a founding team member at ResGov. His core strengths include survey planning and management, volunteer mobilisation, training and dissemination of research at different levels. He has over 15 years of experience and has worked in 4 states.

Kaushal holds a Masters in Commerce from Dr Hari Singh Gour University and a Masters in Social Work from Maharishi Mahesh Yogi Vedic Vishwavidyalaya, Madhya Pradesh. He has worked at Accountability Initiative at Centre for Policy Research and Pratham Education Foundation.

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Sharad Pandey
Senior Research Associate
sharad@resgov.org

Sharad Pandey is a Senior Research Consultant at the Foundation for Responsive Governance (ResGov). He holds an MA in Public Policy from Jindal Global University. His research focuses on public finance, specializing in union and state budgets, taxation, and climate finance. Sharad also serves as a consultant with the Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability (CBGA) in New Delhi. Previously, he worked with the Accountability Initiative at the Centre for Policy Research and Centre for Budget and Policy Studies (CBPS), contributing to projects in education, health, public finance, and governance. His research interests encompass public finance, education, sustainable development, and the labor market.

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Laavanya Tamang
Senior Research Associate
laavanya@resgov.org

Laavanya is a Senior Research Associate with ResGov. Her interests lie in the space of digital governance, and she has explored questions of accountability and transparency at the intersection of tech and social security. Prior to this, she worked with LibTech India based in Jharkhand. Laavanya is also affiliated with the Right to Food and Work Campaigns in India. She holds a Bachelors in Economics from St.Stephen's College, Delhi University, and a Masters in Sociology from the Delhi School of Economics.

Contact Us

We believe in combining mutual strengths for achieving our vision.

Please reach out to us at hello@resgov.org if you wish to collaborate with us.

Join Our Team

Interested in our work?
Write to us with your idea and CV at hello@resgov.org.

Stay in Touch

Responsive Governance and Transformation Foundation is registered as a Section 8 Not for Profit Company and has all the required compliances including a 12A and 80G certificate. In addition, we have registered in the NITI Aayog’s NGO Darpan portal with unique ID DL/2023/0357913.