Janaagraha Center for Citizenship and Democracy
Annual Survey of India’s City-Systems (ASICS) Interns
Bangalore, India
http://www.janaagraha.org/
Janaagraha is a non-profit organization based in Bangalore, India. It works with citizens and the government to improve the quality of life in Indian cities and towns. The term ‘quality of life’ as defined by Janaagraha has two distinct and inter-related aspects. The first examines ‘quality of urban infrastructure and services’ – the quality of urban of amenities, i.e., roads, drains, traffic, transport, water supply, etc. The second aspect is the ‘quality of citizenship’ – the role that urban residents play by participating in civic issues.
ASICS is India’s only independent benchmarking of cities through a systemic framework. ASICS evaluates City-Systems- the complex, mostly invisible factors such as laws, policies, institutions, processes and accountability mechanisms that strongly influence Quality of Life in India’s cities and benchmarks them against global counterparts. In its second year in 2014, ASICS has expanded its footprint to 21 cities from the original 11 cities and provides city administrators and policymakers with a diagnosis of systemic reforms needed in their respective cities.
Qualifications
- Volunteers from alternative academic backgrounds and careers such as Engineering, Law or Science with outstanding academic and career accomplishments, a passion for urban transformation and willingness and ability to work hard and learn quickly would also be considered and
- Strong analytical and research skills.
- Highly self-motivated and able to prioritize and manage multiple tasks/projects.
Responsibilities
As a volunteer for ASICS, your role would comprise of the following:
- Researching for unique practices and processes followed by cities across the world with respect to the 4 sections of the City-Systems framework
- Analyzing data from the survey and drawing trends/conclusions from it
- Generating recommendations for City governance based on the analyses
- Assisting team members in writing the ASICS report
- Supporting team members in arranging for the ASICS event
- Work pending is data collection on parameters of transparency, accountability, audits, municipal finances, urban resources etc.
- Municipal finance and audit: Analysis of audit reports on urban local bodies by state auditors and study of state budgets and city budgets to understand the financial sufficiency and reforms being conducted in this sphere by GOI.
- Policy briefs: We will be coming out with policy briefs for external stakeholders every fortnight from now. Intern shall be involved with qualitative and quantitative research. The briefs will be based on issues faced in urban India and tied into the work Janaagraha does.
Stipend
Interns are given assistance with room and board. Weekly Kannada (local language) speaking classes are open to all interns and volunteers.
Apply
Please send your resume/CV and cover letter to Kishor at volunteer@janaagraha.org
Tags: Community Development