CSOs: Mirrors, not just handmaidens

This is an edited version of a panel discussion with Neera Nundy, Rikin Gandhi, Tim Hanstad, and Rohini Nilekani on Social Entrepreneurship: India at the Crosswords, at the 2015 Skoll World Forum. India is clearly at an inflection point. There is global momentum, true economic incentives, and real desire to achieve social and economic progress […]

Can the Dialogic Method be a means of empowerment, dispersed capacity for conflict resolution and problem-solving, and a way of creating community-oriented, win-win-win solutions? These possibilities emerge from a recent (2022) research conducted by VikasAnvesh Foundation for Kshetra / Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies. The study, titled “Dialogic spaces for dispute resolution in the social sphere,” aimed […]

Recently, unseasonal rains flooded the city of Bengalaru. Visuals of privileged citizens living in upscale independent bungalows, riding tractors to get away from their inundated spaces, as their luxury cars lay submerged in the water, flooded our phones. Delhi is choking. As I write this, there are alarming newspaper reports of the rise in pollution […]

“Governments need civil society organisations to serve as mirrors; they need them to reach the first mile… they need all the risk-taking capital. No government can do without that in a developing country like ours which is so highly aspirational,” Nilekani told Milan Vaishnav, host of the Grand Tamasha podcast. Grand Tamasha is a co-production […]