As a citizen, getting local complaints about your neighborhood addressed is a nightmare.
(Public park’s grass, CCTV Camera repairs, potholes and the like)
So in 2019, the Govt of Delhi asked:
how can make it easier for local communities to take actionable decisions about their area?
(Without going through a long, complicated chain of govt approvals)
Legislative context:
How might we get neighborhoods to gather and solve local problems?
A closer Government
Client: Chief Minister’s Office,
Govt. of Delhi, India
Field Research
Civic Service Design
Social Impact
CONTEXT + CLIENT
2016
The government passes a bill to introduce a ‘Citizen Local Area Development (LAD) Fund’ to enable informal neighbourhood assemblies to make decisions on development projects and grievance issues in their locality
2019
The government ran a pilot project lasting 4 months to figure out how these neighborhood assemblies would operate and how arising problems would be redressed, before scaling up the model to 70 constituencies in Delhi.
read more
as a
field researcher and service designer
I conducted field research in the pilot constituency, brainstormed findings with experts, and made proposals to the Chief Minister’s office around redressal.
I was one of the designers in a team of three.
*we picked our own titles
MY ROLE
OBSERVE
IMMERSION
118 Jhuggis (houses)
4-8 members per Jhuggi
4 toilets, 3 urinals
98 people per water tap
FROM INTERVIEWS:
FIRST MILESTONE
Our brief was to figure out locations for construction of new toilets.
But when we decided to interview the locals about the problem,
we discovered that the problem was never the lack of toilets, like reported. It was water.
“There are these (limited) toilets. But there is a shortage of water. There’s only so much for our usage, there is never any left for cleaning the toilets. That’s the problem”
— Devi, Female, Resident
At 98 people per tap in the area, the sanitation problem was actually a symptom of the deeper water problem in the area. Our findings covered the issue, which eventually initiated
OTHER DEEP DIVES
an elaborate water pipeline set-up project in the area, potentially improving water and sanitation access for 110+ families
We also observed and investigated other common problems to get a deeper understanding of daily challenges that these residents faced:
Before figuring out ‘how’ might we setup these local assemblies, we first got a taste of ‘what’ problems these assemblies are going to solve.
Initial Brief:
Survey locations for constructing new toilets in the adjoining slum area
SENSE MAKING
+ IDEATING
Having observed and investigated multiple issues with residents,
we sat down to infer key themes on how people feel about the government on grievances
and translated them into ideas that would
help address these feelings in our design of local townhall meetings
MAPPING THE LARGER SERVICE ECOSYSTEM
Key Features:
Issues are raised using purely democratic vote (51%)
A dedicated nodal officer is accountable to the neighborhood assembly and is the residents’ point of contact with the govt.
Award of work to vendors is executed by the government, to ensure appropriate use
Vendor payments are released only after a public feedback vote, subject to vendor meeting atleast 1/3rd of public satisfaction vote.
Any execution delays by vendors go into a feedback loop for future govt contracts and opportunities
PROTOTYPING,
TESTING, ITERATING
PACKAGING EXECUTION
We also
recorded jingles around the theme to draw people to sessions!
These would be played through auto-rickshaws spreading general awareness about the concept.
a compact, easy to read execution manual for govt volunteers to conduct pilot sessions
in 2 languages on steps to executing a session.
TEST, ITERATE, TEST
Every Sunday, we’d help run Mohalla Sabha meetings in
4 parallel places, learning from feedback as we go
We made pamphlets and a public handout we’d distribute before and at sessions to introduce the concept in concise and simple language
CREATING CURIOSITY
translated heading:
“Now public will decide how public money will be spent”
To generate more hype, we would invite the Chief Minister himself to initiate the concept in some Mohallas, openly hearing people’s problems and encouraging open discussion.
For scale, spreading information about the concept was key
IMPACT
Improved Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) outcomes for 600+ households in Arjun Das slum area, and created a service design model for many others
Improved parking access around Dilli Haat market area (10k+ footfall daily) causing significant reductions in illegal parking and traffic in the area
Delivered assets, brochures, etc marketed across New Delhi. Helped train future volunteers in scaling the program from 2 pilot constituencies to 70+ constituencies.
If found successful across iterations,
the local governance model has the potential to touch 20 Million people in Delhi.
Design is political — and negotiable
Designing for systems inherently implies questioning and changing what’s currently in place. It involves touching politically charged experiences and power structures. It takes more than just design to enact change - persistence, lobbying, political will, etc.
Design needs to respect pragmatic context
You are an intrusive guest. We must navigate lived experiences and local expertise with respect and caution. This means being deeply comfortable with ambiguity, chains of redtape, and making tradeoffs where needed.
Young people in the government
We only ever had so much freedom around trying and pursuing things because the government in power was a huge proponent of young talent participating in politics. It challenged my perspective of the govt sector.