eGov August 2019: Gurugram

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GURUGRAM

URBAN DEVELOPMENT SAGA OF THE MILLENIUM CITY

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Commissioner, Municipal Corporation of Gurugram

Gurugram’s Urban Development Journey Towards Millennium City

14 RAJIV RANJAN MISHRA Director General, National Mission for Clean Ganga

36 AMIT GUJRAL

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FEATURES

CONTENTS INTERVIEWS

12 AMIT KHATRI

08

NARAYAN PRADHAN

24 Guru Jal: Making Way for Water Management through Holistic Plan and Impact

29 Haryana CSR Advisory Board: Driving towards inclusive growth agenda

46 CONFERENCE REPORT 38 Karan Kumar, Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer, Hogar Controls

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Gurugram – Assaying the Transformation to the Millennium City Over the last couple of decades, Gurugram has undergone exponential transformation towards urban, economic and industrial hub. The city has witnessed massive rise from being a district cum town focused on agriculture to the present Cybercity, providing livelihood to millions across the nation.

Not just that, Gurugram has also served as an international hub of business, and subject of case study for urban planners, researchers, economists, sociologists et al.

To celebrate the rise of the Millennium City, and to also discuss and deliberate on the challenges faced during the urban transformation, as well as to realise the opportunities to march towards a Smart City, Elets Technomedia, in association with the Municipal Corporation of Gurugram is organising the National Urban Development Summit Gurugram – Smart, Livable & Resilient City on August 23, 2019.

This issue of the eGov magazine would portray the transformation of the city towards a Smart and vibrant city, by foraying into various aspects of urban development which has shaped Gurugram to the city that it is today, through the cover story.

The special article on the Haryana CSR Advisory Board focuses on the welfare measures and initiatives by the state for the citizens by reviewing the CSR activities done by the corporate organisations and the Board’s role. Another special article throws light on the initiative of the Government of Haryana, Guru Jal, which aims to not just manage the present water resources in the state, but also to create awareness among citizens.

This issue also brings to you a bouquet of exclusive interviews, which include Amit Khatri, Commissioner, Municipal Corporation of Gurugram; Amrit Abhijat, Joint Secretary and Mission Director, Housing for All, Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, Government of India; Rajiv Ranjan Mishra, Director General, National Mission for Clean Ganga; Satya Narayan Pradhan, Director General, National Disaster Response Force, Dr Shalini Rajneesh, Principal Secretary of Planning, Programme Monitoring & Statistics, Government of Karnataka among the policy makers.

We also bring to you industry perspectives from the IT major International Business Machine (IBM) and ESDS Software, where Prativa Mohapatro, VP Sales, IBM India South Asia and Piyush Somani, CMD & CEO, ESDS Software share their roles and the organisations’ contribution towards a seamless e-governance and Smart City Mission respectively.

Last but not the least, Amit Gujral of LG Electronics and Karan Kumar, Co-founder and CTO of Hogar Controls bring their perspectives towards Smart Housing and how technological innovations are being deployed in their flagship products and services.

The magazine also carries the conference report of Elets Innovation Summit Chandigarh 2019, which was organised to find innovative ways to address various challenges in creating a sustainable city with citizen-centric governance structure.

With such a bouquet of special articles and interviews, we hope to get an invaluable feedback from our readers.

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COVER STORY

For Gurugram, the urban development came along with the rapid industrial growth which gradually made way to infrastructure, roadways, transport development to name a few. Today, Gurugram is home to more than 250 Fortune 500 companies and one of the major financial and industrial hubs of India, vis-Ă -vis the world. Sreetama Datta Roy and Ritika Srivastava of Elets News Network (ENN) explore the the urban development transformation of Gurugram.

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GURUGRAM’S URBAN DEVELOPMENT

Journey Towards Millennium City

AUGUST 2019

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G

urugram, formerly and popularly known as Gurgaon, is one of the prime examples of rapid urban development.

From being first mentioned in the epic Mahabharata as the ancestral village of Guru Dronacharya, the mentor of Kauravas and Pandavas, to today’s Millennium City, the transformation of Gurugram has been a subject of numerous case studies.

Urbanisation is such a concept, which cannot take place in silos. It has to have industrial or economic development alongside to reach the stage of urban growth. For Gurugram, the urban development came along with the rapid industrial growth, which gradually made way to infrastructure, roadways, transport development to name a few.

During the early years of liberalisation, the advent of industries in the city located in the Delhi-Haryana border can be considered as the first step towards urban development.

Moreover, the proximity to the national capital and the acres of lands acted as major reasons for marking their presence in Gurugram. Additional factors were the conducive licensing procedure and quick connectivity across the world owing to the fact that Delhi’s Indira Gandhi

International Airport being 15 km away from Gurugram.

The state’s policies also made it convenient for the industries across sectors like Manufacturing, IT and Infrastructure to make their marks in Gurugram and other parts of Haryana.

The Haryana Urban Development Act of 1977 empowered the state agencies to acquire agricultural land for

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Under the Haryana Development and Regulation of Urban Areas (HDRUA) Act of 1975-76, licenses were awarded to private developers to acquire, assemble and develop a minimum hundred acres of contiguous land.

By the mid-1990s, Gurugram developed as a major industrial and IT hub, which further made way to for industrial, residential and urban transformation. Owing to these developments, the district cum city of Gurugram saw the migration of population across India. This factor also led to a rapid surge in the population. As per the Census Report of India, 2011, the population of Gurugram district increased by almost 74 percent between 2010 and 2011.

With the increase in urban population, the formal urban limits expanded by almost six times.

COVER STORY

Despite experiencing the various facets of urbanisation, Gurugram is affected by various challenges, which might affect further growth of the city.

Faulty drainage system causing water logging even at minimal rain, traffic congestion, issues of sewerage or garbage and last but not the least, the poor air quality.

developing residential townships and industrial estates, and to contract out development to the private sector.

Industrial and Real Estate Growth Charter of Gurugram Industrialisation of Gurugram commenced with the establishment of the Maruti-Suzuki automobile plant and its ancillary factories in 1982.

Later, several other factories from various sectors also started emerging across Gurugram.

Real estate majors such as DLF Group, Unitech and Ansal Properties received

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licenses from the Haryana government to build private sector residential townships. This led to a major real estate boom in the city and Gurugram’s land market also benefited.

Boom in the IT sector in Gurugram

COVER STORY

In 1997, General Electronics (GE) started its call centre facility and Genpact India’s headquarter was also built in Gurugram. Several other Indian, as well as international companies followed suit in opening up their offices in this rapidly rising urban space.

This era saw a splurge in the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO) and other Multinational Companies (MNCs).

These IT MNCs include companies like American Express, EXL, IBM, Microsoft, Infosys, Ericsson, Oracle etc.

Apart from IT companies, Gurugram also hosts international industry majors such as Siemens, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, BMW, Hyundai, Honda etc. Today, Gurugram is home to more than 250 Fortune 500 companies and one of the major financial and industrial hubs of India, vis-à-vis the world.

Infrastructure To accommodate the growing population due to the establishment of industries, the city underwent a massive infrastructural transformation as well.

Majority of the developmental works were taken up by the private real estate developers. DLF Cyber City, Cyber Green Building, Essel Towers, etc. are few among the major infrastructure hubs of the Cyber City.

Roadways and Transport There have been several initiatives taken to develop the roadways and transport infrastructure of the Millennium City.

The National Highways Authority

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of India (NHAI) has recently launched a 45-kilometer project, connecting Pataudi and Rewari.

The National Highway 48 links Gurugram with Delhi. The 27.7 kilometer Delhi-Gurgaon border-Kherki Dhaula stretch has been developed as an expressway.

Metro Connectivity Gurugram is connected with Delhi Metro as well as the city’s Rapid Metro networks. The Yellow Line of the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) serves as a convenient route to travel from Delhi and Gurugram.

Built and operated by Rapid Metro Gurgaon Limited (RMGL), the system was the world’s first fully privately financed modern metro system. The Rapid Metro became operational from 2013. The metro line is connected with the DMRC’s Yellow Line. Rapid Metro

has a total length of 11.7-kilometres serving 11 stations.

To sum it up, Amit Khatri, Commissioner, Municipal Corporation of Gurugram said, “Over a couple of decades, a lot of development has gone around in Gurugram. Be it road connectivity, metro rail, industrial infrastructure, power connectivity, transport, and the service delivery through common serviced centres. However, a lot more has to be done and there is a long way ahead.”

Challenges marring the Millennium City’s Urban Development Despite experiencing the various facets of urbanisation, Gurugram is affected by various challenges, which might affect further growth of the city. Faulty drainage system causing water logging

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as 40 micro Sewage Treatment Plants (STPs) have been installed across the city to treat sewage water at the local level which will then be used to irrigate green belts and parks of the city. It also enhances the green cover of the city and moisture content in the air to help reduce air pollution.

According to MCG, water is sprinkled through vehicles on these green belts and parks to keep a check on air pollution.

In the words of Sudhir Singh Chauhan, Senior Town Planner, Municipal Corporation of Gurugram, “Gurugram is a Millennium City, a city of hope. It is the IT city in the whole Delhi-NCR region.

Gurugram is not a city of Haryana only, it is a global city. Being an international city, Gurugram is expanding fast due to which some key aspects are lagging.

We are chasing those aspects and trying to bridge the gap soon. Many agencies including GMD and Municipal Corporation are working to address the problems and soon the city will be worth living as one of the Smart Cities.”

The administration of Gurugram has taken multiple initiatives to deliver services online to the citizens.

Last year onwards, Property tax payment has been made online by MCG. Citizens can also register complaints or grievances.

Innovative Initiatives towards a Smart and Sustainable Millennium City

in each ward, dry and wet wastes are segregated before recycling. To manage hazardous waste, corporation agencies have tied up with all the hospitals in the city. After collecting the hazardous waste, those are sent for treatment to authorised vendors.

Sewage Treatment Plants and other Pollution Control Measures: As many

Water Management: To manage the rising water crisis, the government

Some such initiatives are listed below.

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Smart Lighting System: All the streetlights in the city have been converted to LED lights. Energy Efficiency Services Limited (EESL), which is a Government of India company formed under the aegis of the Ministry of Power, has undertaken the infrastructure development related work for streetlights, which are further connected to the smart grid of Gurugram.

Smart Parking System: The MCG is creating three multilevel parking, especially in congested areas. The parking system will also be enabled with ICT system to create a smart and seamless parking system for the citizens.

Water ATMs: According to the former Commissioner of MCG, Yashpal Yadav, the civic body has installed a large number of water ATMs in the city and plans are underway to install 43 more by end of this year.

COVER STORY

even at minimal rain, traffic congestion, issues of sewerage or garbage and last but not the least, the poor air quality. To curb these challenges, the urban development authorities such as Municipal Corporation of Gurugram (MCG), Gurugram Metropolitan Development Authority (GMDA), etc. are taking measures to not only mitigate these challenges but to also create an innovative yet sustainable and resilient ecosystem.

Waste Management: The civic body does a door-to-door collection of waste and the plan is to compost at least 50 percent of the municipal waste collected in a particular ward.

The city is divided into 35 wards, and

has launched a flagship initiative, GuruJal. It is an Integrated Water Management System to generate innovative methods to mitigate the water crisis and also create awareness among citizens on the looming crisis and ways to conserve water.

Creating ICT systems for ensuring better service delivery to citizens: The administration of Gurugram has taken multiple initiatives to deliver services online to the citizens. Last year onwards, Property tax payment has been made online by MCG. Citizens can also register complaints or grievances. According to the MCG officials, the whole corporation has gone paperless from March 31 this year. “We are using e-office and we have stopped any physical paper movement. This is what we have achieved in the last one-and-a-half year. This will make life easier for officers, who can now work from anywhere,” added Yadav.

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SPOTLIGHT: MUNICIPAL CORPORATION OF GURUGRAM

Rain Water Harvesting and Sewage Treatment Major Focus of MCG

Amit Khatri

Commissioner Municipal Corporation of Gurugram

“Water Management is one of the key indicators of urban development. In a bid to ensure optimum utilisation of the natural resource, we have launched GuruJal.” 12

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As the Commissioner of the civic body, I wish to build quality infrastructure within the Corporation, providing essential basic amenities like clean water, proper sewage, sanitation, health and hygiene, street furniture, public libraries, community centres, adequate street lightings, safety through Digital surveillance, beautified parks, green stretches, smart model of transportation and enhance the overall aesthetics of the city for its residents, says Amit Khatri, Commissioner, Municipal Corporation of Gurugram in an interview with Ritika Srivastava of Elets News Network (ENN).

What are the objectives Municipal Corporation of Gurugram (MCG) is planning for the city’s overall urban development?

The Municipal Corporation of Gurugram, or MCG, is focusing on a holistic development across sectors, be it healthcare, water, infrastructure, roadways, environment or green spaces, sports, etc. Our objective is also to seamlessly deliver citizen services, be it in a physical mode or online.

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SPOTLIGHT: MUNICIPAL CORPORATION OF GURUGRAM

What are the initiatives taken by MCG to ensure better services for citizens?

Among the several initiatives taken by the MCG, the major initiatives include online easy service delivery to citizens, improvement in civic infrastructure across the city, including the unauthorised colonies and sectors and an overall development to further enhance the urban development model that Gurugram has. Further, to create a better communication system with the citizens, MCG had launched call centre and online SPOTLIGHT: NDRF grievance redressal cells.

There is also a provision of social media tracking of the delivery of e-services.

What ICT initiatives have been taken for citizens’ security?

What is your vision as the Commissioner of Municipal Corporation of Gurugram?

As the Commissioner of the civic body, I wish to build quality infrastructure within the Corporation, provide essential basic amenities like clean water, proper sewage, sanitation, health and hygiene, street furniture, public libraries, community centres, adequate street lightings, safety through Digital surveillance, beautified parks, green stretches, smart model of transportation and enhance the overall aesthetics of the city for its residents.

Water scarcity is one of the biggest challenges faced by the environment today. How is MCG planning to focus on Water Management?

Water Management is one of the key

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indicators of urban development. In a bid to ensure optimum utilisation of the natural resource, we are working closely on the Guru Jal initiative. The flagship initiative works on an integrated water management, which focuses solely on safeguarding water and preventing it from getting exhausted. Through various citizen engaging activities and initiatives, such as Paanch Litre Chllenge, Water Treatment Expo, Jal Sansad etc., GuruJal is not only creating awareness among the citizens, but also moving towards fulfilling the objectives. MCG is also taking several steps towards water conservation and management such as rain water harvesting.

Among our various steps towards providing safety and security to the citizens, the major ones include installation of CCTV across the city, across major locations as well as other corners. We have also had a tie-up with the Haryana and Gurugram Police for Command and Control Centre.

What are the methods through which citizens can address their grievances?

The citizens can address their grievances either by calling at the Call Centre, or by visiting the official website of MCG. On visiting the website, they have to click on the Grievance section and click on ‘Submit New Request’ and enter the details in the fields provided in the page.

The major areas from which we receive citizen grievances include sewerage,

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sanitation, water supply and street light among others. We have recently launched a mobile application, functional on both Android and Apple systems, called Swachhta. Through this app, citizens can directly register complaint about a dirty place.

According to you, how has been the urban development of Gurugram and what are the areas of improvement?

Over a couple of decades, a lot of development has gone around in Gurugram. Be it road connectivity, metro rail, industrial infrastructure, power connectivity, transport and the service delivery through common serviced centres. However, a lot more has to be done and there is a long way ahead. The focus areas for the upcoming areas would be to improve the drainage system and rain water harvesting.

What is your message for the citizens?

The citizens indeed have a crucial role to play in the overall urban development of the city. I feel one of the pre-requisites for any city to evolve a Model of Development suited best for the city is Active Citizen Participation. I firmly believe that active citizen participation not only builds a spirit of cooperation and trust between the agency and the public but the reservoir of goodwill it generates can carry over to future decisions. Thus, I urge active participation from the Civil Society and to ensure that, we are soon opening more channels for active engagement.

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SPOTLIGHT: NAMAMI GANGE

Namami Gange Focuses on Augmenting River Water Quantity and Quality The Namami Gange Programme of NMCG is an integrated umbrella initiative of River Ganga Conservation & Rejuvenation along with maintaining biodiversity, green cover & Larger ecosystem of not only the Ganga main stem but also its tributaries, says Rajiv Ranjan Mishra, Director General, National Mission for Clean Ganga in an interview with Ritika Srivastava, Elets News Network (ENN).

Rajiv Ranjan Mishra

Director General, National Mission for Clean Ganga

“By planting sapling near the banks of the river can generate better rain, more water. The focus should be on improving the water quantity in the river which is popularised by the name of Aviral Ganga.”

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Shed some light on the Namami Gange project.

Namami Gange is an integrated Ganga Conservation Programme that comprehensively addresses pollution issues in Ganga main stem as well as its tributaries. Taking an ecosystem approach, the programme also approaches biodiversity and flora conservation and augmentation, ensuring sustainable wateruses and finally overall protection of the Ganga basin and its constituents. This is not a mission limited to Ganga but extends to its tributaries as well. So it may be Yamuna, Gomti or river Damodar, etc.

Ganga cleaning has been a long-drawn

process. It all started off with Action Plans and plans for other tributaries like Gomti Action Plan, Yamuna Action plan and for each river there is a plan.

For each plan, there are phases like Ganga Action Plan-1, Ganga Action Plan-2 and for Yamuna River there used to be Yamuna Action Plan-1, Plan-2.

We brought all of them together under one umbrella mission because earlier we used to have fragmented thinking.

Therefore, to grapple with all these problems collectively, the ‘Namami Gange’ programme integrating all the constituents was launched with systemic approach.

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SPOTLIGHT: NAMAMI GANGE

completed. The major projects are located in Haridwar and Rishikesh.

We look at industrial pollution, sewage pollution and also pollution from chemical fertilizers through agricultural run-off in to the river. Sustainable agriculture has also, therefore, been incorporated in the ‘Namami Gange’ mission.

The two STPs, which are under construction, will also be completed by this year. One is located at Jagjeetpur with 68 MLD capacity and the other one is at Sarai of 14 MLD capacity. The STP at Sarai is complete and is under trial runs. The Jagjeetpur STP would be completed by August 2019.

Afforestation, which has a huge potential in augmenting rainfall and can lead to a cleaner and greener environment, is the call of the day. The focus should be on augmenting the water quantity in the river, which is popularised by the name of ‘Aviral Dhara’.

In the states of Uttrakhand and Jharkhand, complete infrastructure is ready. These projects are going to be maintained for 15 years. Same situation is in Kanpur, Patna, Prayagraj and many other cities.

The next target is improving the mass connectivity and ownership of the rivers through river-front development, modernising of the ghats with better amenities and thus making rivers a public space for city use. There is a plenty of aquatic life within the river, which needs to be conserved to maintain quality of water. Science-based and event-based methods, as developed by a consortium of seven IITs, are being employed which are intended to reverse the loss of aquatic life in the river.

“We have started focusing more on the tributaries of the river. Now we have got around 37 projects on tributaries, Kaali and Gomti projects are also there.

Kaali is one of the dirtiest rivers and we have commenced work on it.”

What are some of the recent initiatives taken by NMCG in cleaning the river Ganga and how are those being executed?

The overall approach of this mission lies in cleaning all the tributaries of Ganga.

We have taken a slew of initiatives to curb pollution in Ganga. The primary source of pollution being sewage, we evaluated our shortfalls in the earlier approaches. The major reason why previous mission remained incomplete was due to the lack of finances and continuity in funding.

But as of now, we have got funding of Rs 20,000 crore for the mission for five years. The funding structure is such that it is non-lapsable; it stays with the NMCG, which helps in prospective planning.

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We looked at all the towns surrounding Ganga and looked at the sewage profile and scrutinised the quantity of sewage generation and how much is uncovered for the treatment. Almost all the projects in Uttarakhand are at an advanced stage of progress and are likely to be completed by the end of this year. 19 out of 30 projects have already been

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The take-over operation of all the STPs includes maintaining and operating them for 15 years to ensure that untreated sewage from treatment plans does not flow in to the river Ganga. That has been completely diverted. We have started improving the capacity utilisation of STPs because many of them were functioning at low capacity of onethird of the installed capacity. These are some of the initiatives which are even implemented in Prayagraj.

These are some of the initiatives which led to the completion of projects on time and also by maintaining the quality of projects for 15 years. In Patna also, a similar strategy was adopted. The state does not have much sewerage capacity along with Ganga stem. We have got projects for all 18 towns in Bihar. With our projects, we are already increasing it by almost 10 times from 64 MLD to 620 MLD. So complete sewerage and STP infrastructure being created in Namami Gange, and three STPs will be created in Patna.

Our other initiative is on bio-diversity sector, wherein we are focusing on bio-diversity colonisation, along with the wildlife rejuvenation.

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SPOTLIGHT: NAMAMI GANGE

able to complete all the sets of requirements needed for initiating this mission.

The other big challenge that lies in front of us is in making people realise that their contribution can lead to the withdrawal of pollutants and make it a pollutant-free river.

In order to treat the industrial pollution in Kanpur, we are starting the construction of common effluent treatment plant. Another initiative has been monitoring and enforcement on the industries. We are involving third party agencies and institutes like IITs, NITs, etc.

How is NMCG working towards making the areas, through which river Ganga flows, attractive for tourists?

Ganga, the holy river, changes its shape and beauty whenever it passes through different cities. Even the name by which river Ganga is known among the people changes across the states like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar or West Bengal. We are working on reviving the fresh water quality because it works as an attractive constituent for mesmerising tourists.

Facilitating better amenities like clean ghats and pure drinking water have led to increase inflow tourists summing up a pleasant experience. We have launched a floating museum on the Ganga in Varanasi. The two advantages of creating this museum, apart from attracting tourists, lie in educating them about the holy river of India and on generating a sense of responsibility among them to keep it clean.

A similar strategy was planned while organising the Kumbh Mela and one can

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observe it did wonders in attracting tourists and was celebrated with much enthusiasm and joy. For creative promotions of Kumbh Mela we partnered with different agencies for painting the ghats and cities and this creativity fascinated a quite large proportion of tourists as compared to the previous years. This thinking of ours also struck a spark in Patna and one can see it how beautifully the painters crafted their art on the antiquated buildings and now they look like renovated forts and has enhanced the national glory.

In Patna, people can walk around the river-front which has been developed under this project. Our organisation has even done some painting over there and has created audio-visual centres. In addition to all these, we have a beautiful Ganga anthem which is played along with Ganga aarti.

What are the major challenges faced by you while planning and executing these initiatives?

Owing to the magnitude of the project, the gravity of the challenges is also large.

Mapping of all the villages and towns around Ganga and in understanding what sort of work is required and expanding the forest area are major challenges for us. Through the help of various reputed institutions we were

Supposedly, if today a sewage treatment plant (STP) is created, then for another 15 years it would be the job of local bodies to ensure that it functions properly. NMCG would be supporting financially O&M also for 15 years. The role of local people living along the banks of Ganga River is greater because they visit the ghats for recreation, cremation, performing other rituals.

They owe a big responsibility on their shoulders to keep it clean during this period of time. Transforming everybody in to a Ganga-lover was one of our major targets. We have achieved a considerable success in this direction.

Another challenge for us was to keep the river healthy in the middle of the urbanisation. Our history tells us that all cities develop on the banks of a river.

But cities turned into megacities which somewhere led the rivers to disappear.

Yamuna River in Delhi is one such example.

Augmentation and conservation of drinking water is another challenge.

When Ganga reaches Haridwar, around 70 to 80 percent of its water is used for the agriculture purposes only.

Since this constitutes a major chunk, we need to convey to the farmers to use water efficiently. Our water-use efficiency is not even 40 percent and if we could increase it by even 10-20 percent, it will lead to lower withdrawal from the river and a large volume of water so saved will help in enhanced flow in the river, realising the objective of ‘Aviral Dhara’ to a large extent - ultimately curbing pollution-load in the river.

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SPOTLIGHT: HOUSING FOR ALL

Housing for All aims to complete construction of houses under Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (Urban) by 2022 A city cannot be treated as smart, unless its citizens are provided with decent pucca housing at affordable cost.

Presence of slums in a city is another area of concern to provide the city a clean image. PMAY (U) is dealing with such issues by providing pucca houses equipped with basic services to every eligible city dweller in both slum and non-slum areas, says Amrit Abhijat, Joint Secretary and Mission Director, Housing for All, Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA), Government of India, in this interview with Elets News Network (ENN).

Amrit Abhijat

Joint Secretary and Mission Director, Housing for All, Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) Government of India

What is the role of Housing for All or Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojna (PMAY U) in order to have a comprehensive development of Cities?

“By the time the Nation completes 75 years of its independence in 2022, there should not be any family without owning a house for his living” is the vision of Hon’ble Prime Minister Sh. Narendra Modi. A city, free from kutcha, semi pucca and temporary dwelling units with provision of adequate housing, is integral part of holistic development of city, as it depicts the façade of the city. A city cannot be treated as smart, unless its citizens are provided with decent pucca housing at affordable cost. Presence of slums in a

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city is another area of concern to provide the city a clean image. PMAY (U) is dealing with such issues by providing pucca houses equipped with basic services to every eligible city dweller in both slum and non-slum areas. Sh. Hardeep S Puri, Hon’ble Minister of State (I/C), Housing and Urban Affairs, has been guiding and supporting us in our pursuit of integrated Urban Transformation. Comprehensive

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development of cities requires multifocal approach consisting of housing as well as basic infrastructures. A number of flagship schemes have been launched

by Government of India such as Smart Cities Mission, AMRUT, SBM, HRIDAY for integrated development of cities, recognising the contribution of cities in the GDP of the country. These schemes are mandated to provide basic infrastructures such as water supply,

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SPOTLIGHT: HOUSING FOR ALL

drainage, SWM, roads, public transport, electricity and application of technology in management of these infrastructures smartly. Under the leadership of Sh. Durga Shanker Mishra, Secretary, Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, PMAY (U), while contributing towards betterment of the cities, is marching towards achieving the goal of “Housing for All” by 2022.

Give us an overview of the present status of the scheme, especially with respect to Haryana in general and Gurugram in specific.

PMAY (U) has witnessed remarkable achievement over last four years since its launch on June 25, 2015. A total of 85.17 lakh houses have been sanctioned by Government of India till now under all 4 verticals of the scheme, where 51 lakh have been grounded and 26.5 lakh houses are completed. As far as Haryana is concerned, a total of 2.64 lakh houses has been approved where share of AHP projects is highest with 1.8 lakh houses. A total of 38,346 houses are grounded and about 16,000 houses are already completed. A total of 23,715 houses have been approved for Gurugram and approximately 3,700 are completed.

What is the role of Public-Private Partnership in the scheme?

PMAY(U) House in Odisha

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PMAY(U) House in Uttar Pradesh

“A number of flagship schemes have been launched by Government of India such as Smart Cities Mission, AMRUT, SBM, HRIDAY for integrated development of cities, recognising the contribution of cities in the GDP of the country. These schemes are mandated to provide basic infrastructures.”

Availability of land is essential for the success of affordable housing sector in the country. In order to promote the affordable housing and unleash the potential of land available with the private sector, MoHUA has circulated eight PPP models. Under which, the private developer is allowed to construct houses on his own land and seek benefit of PMAY (U) under the banner ofaffordable housing and avail various exemptions and concessions.

Presently, a total of 257 projects have been approved under PPP model with 4.39 lakh houses in various States.

What are the latest technology deployments in your department? How are these contributing towards the execution of the project?

A technology Sub-Mission under PMAY (U) has been set up to facilitate adoption of modern, innovative and green technologies and building materials for faster and quality construction of houses. Building Material and Technology Promotion Council (BMTPC), an autonomous body under MoHUA is responsible for certifying and promotion of new construction technologies in the country. As of now, 16 new construction technologies have been certified by the agency and SoR has been released by CPWD. A Global Housing Technology Challenge- India (GHTC-India) was launched to identify and mainstream the best alternate construction technologies from across the globe for a paradigm

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SPOTLIGHT: HOUSING FOR ALL

shift and an enabling eco-system in the construction sector. The year 2019-20 was declared as “Construction Technology Year” by the Hon’ble Prime Minister. Subsequently, six Light House Projects at six locations in the country will be executed for demonstrating and delivering ready to live houses in a shorter time, with lower cost and with better quality in a sustainable manner.

These projects will act as a live laboratory for learning and replicating the best construction technology. These disruptive technologies will transform the housing construction practices by impacting the speed, scale and quality of houses. The Potential Future Technologies will be provided with Incubation and Acceleration support through Product Development, Networking Opportunities and Marketing Support following the principle of ‘Lab to Land’.

What are the challenges of the scheme?

1. Land: Availability of encumbrance free land for affordable housing projects in the cities is one of the major challenges under the scheme. There is scarcity of Government land within the city limits.

MoHUA has developed eight PPP models to unleash the potential of land available with private sector. Further, coverage of the scheme has also been extended to include planning/ Development areas to make more land available for affordable housing.

2. Slum Redevelopment: In-Situ Slum Redevelopment (ISSR) component of the Mission envisages redevelopment of slums using land as a resource. Such strategy could not get momentum due to issues regarding land. A multi-layered strategy is being developed by the Ministry to deal with slum redevelopment issue as per the size of the town.

3. Unforeseen Challenges- Natural calamities such as earthquakes, floods and cyclones have devastating impact not only on communities by destruction of infrastructure, displacements and homelessness, but also affects the pace

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PMAY(U) Project in Gujarat of the implementation of the mission.

As Ministry is committed to construct more than 1 crore houses under the Mission, what is the financing arrangement?

The current validated demand is 1.12 crore as per the demand assessment carried out by the States/UTs. Apart from the budgetary allocations, a National Urban Housing Fund (NUHF) has been created to mobilise Rs 60,000 crore as Extra-Budgetary Resources (EBR) to ensure smooth flow of resources to the projects where Rs 28,000 crore has already been drawn.

Is there any provision for recognising best performance of the State/UT in the Mission?

The role of States/UTs and other stakeholders needs appreciation and it’s all happening with their support and coordinated effort. The Mission has instituted PMAY (U) awards to recognise the best performance of the State/UTs and cities in implementation of the scheme in addition to the CLSS Award for recognising the contribution and performance of Banks/ PLIs. Six categories of award will be given which includes State, Municipal Corporation, Municipal Council, Nagar Panchayat, special awards and beneficiaries level awards. A separate mobile app has been

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developed where beneficiary can upload selfie and testimonial from his/her smart phone. The best houses constructed by the beneficiaries in each State will be awarded.

What is the way forward with respect to the HFA mission in the coming years?

The focus of HFA mission in coming years is to ensure completion and delivery of all the houses as per the validated demand in States/UTs by the year 2022. Any additional demand based on eligibility in forthcoming years will also be considered in the scheme.

Secondly, there will be focused intervention in slums towards deslumming India. A detailed strategy is being worked out by the Mission to redevelop the slums in partnership with State governments, community and private developers.

With respect to promotion of construction technology, the Light House Projects will be executed and upscaling will be done. In order to mainstream these technologies, few courses on new technology are being launched in association of School of Planning and Architecture (SPA). The potential technologies will be given incubation and accelerator support through IITs to further develop these technologies and make them market ready.

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SPOTLIGHT: NDRF

NDRF – Assimilating Technology to Create Better Response Mechanism To manage disasters and their aftermath, institutions like National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) must leverage best in class technologies for advance prediction,response and restoration says Satya Narayan Pradhan, Director General, National Disaster Response Force. In an interview with Souvik Goswami of Elets New Network (ENN), Pradhan shares his vision and plans to create a community of civil society and administration in each state and mark NDRF’s footprint across the country.

Satya Narayan Pradhan

Director General National Disaster Response Force (NDRF)

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How has been the journey of NDRF over the years?

The major part of NDRF’s journey has happened over a decade. The context of setting up NDRF is linked to an interesting span of roughly five years in the history of major disasters in independent India. In 1999, we had the first of a three successive major disasters - the Odisha Super Cyclone.

Bhuj earthquake followed in 2001 and the Tsunami in South India in 2004.

These three disasters coming one after another woke up India and we learnt the hard way disaster management is serious business and a critical often image changing governance intervention. It requires decisive policy interventions, institutional structures and response mechanisms. The aim is not only to handle disaster once it happens but also to prevent it and to minimise the effect afterwards. The world has moved towards disaster risk management so that reduction and mitigation of the risks both before and

in the aftermath of disasters can be taken care of. The Disaster Management Act was enacted in 2005, which gave us the governance ecosystem and response mechanism.

National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) and National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) were the two byproducts of this act. Initially there were teething problems which is understandable. We get deputationist personnel from the various paramilitary forces. Initially NDRF was collocated within the paramilitary forces and two battalions of each paramilitary force CRPF, BSF, ITBP and CISF were notified as the disaster response battalions.

Subsequently in 2006 it was decided that NDRF should be created as a standalone and that is how NDRF came into being. In 2009, it started functioning as an exclusive force. That created a paradigm change for disaster response in India and today we can proudly say that NDRF is one of its kind

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SPOTLIGHT: NDRF

in the world. It is the world’s largest humanitarian response force in terms of being a dedicated disaster response force 24/7 and 365 days a year.

Our battalion has around 1150 personnel, which are divided into 18 teams of 47 members each. All the personnel are equipped with multiple skills such as providing medical assistance, collapse structure rescue , flood or aquatic rescue , nuclear/ chemical/biological emergency expertise to name a few.

learning and sharpen our response mechanism.

How is technology leveraged in disaster management?

Technology is an efficiency and force multiplier. The first port of call to multiply efficiency is to have measurability, data and institutional memory. When I took over NDRF, the only thing that struck me as an area where improvement is required is institutional memory and data about disasters and relevant data points for understanding, predicting and analysing disasters and their aftermath. We also

NDRF has executed rescue operations not only in India, but in Japan during the triple disasters in 2011 (Tsunami, earthquake and nuclear reactor explosion) and Nepal during the 2015 earthquake. The governments of Japan and Nepal have gone on record to recognise NDRF’s contribution in the rescue operations.

efficiently. Similarly, if we had disaster simulation maps about the floods to predict the floods and the levels likely to be touched with simulation on a 3D map, our preparation level would have been better. All these technologies should be used in a default mode.

As DG NDRF I want to catalyse such essential cutting edge technologies across the board. This includes the map intelligence and data-base leveraging technologies. I also want to implement operational technology which would enable me to communicate with my functionary or other stake holders under any circumstance. Once you have

SPOTLIGHT: NDRF Last year, during Kerala floods, NDRF executed massive rescue operations where 58 teams from across India were airlifted to help the stranded people in the flood affected areas of Kerala state.

People have reposed immense faith in NDRF and wherever any small or big disasters happen, the state governments approach us for the rescue operations. NDRF had started with eight battalions and now are going to double the strength with 16 battalions. As many as 12 battalions are already in place and four more are likely to be ready by the beginning of next year. Hence, within a decade, the strength of NDRF has doubled. It is also an indication of not only the requirement but also the popularity and usefulness across the country and even internationally.

However a disclaimer is in order here. In front of nature’s fury, there is a risk of failure as well. We are a young force and we still have a lot to learn. We are using latest technology to renew our

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do a lot of capacity building. There are two pillars of NDRF’s actions, real operations when disasters take place and training when there is no disaster.

Both the pillars would be stronger if we had a more efficient and comprehensive database. For example, in Kerala floods, the fishermen of the state played one of the stellar roles. They not only provided the boats but became saviours by rowing the boats as well. If we had readymade data of the fishermen or the number and types of boats owned by the people of the state with the police, it would have been a greater help.

Although we got in touch with the fishermen’s association which was contacted by the local police to provide details, a prior database would have been handy to save time and act more

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assured communication in place, things can be dramatically different. I want to bring in a 360 degree technological synergy including communication, data, map intelligence, analytics and Internet of Things (IoT). These would help us predict and prepare for upcoming disasters. With support from bodies like NDMA, ISRO and others, enabling these technologies would be possible.

Have you already started work towards achieving these goals?

Definitely! From the very first month of my joining, we took this resolution to leverage as much technology as possible. We have converted the conference hall into a conference cum disaster response operations room. We

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SPOTLIGHT: NDRF

are calling it IDOC i.e. Integrated Disaster Operations Centre and expecting the IDOC to be functional by end of this year. We are in parallel collaborating with our Ministry the MHA and ISRO to set up a larger emergency control centre too. We want to progressively integrate every technology I mentioned earlier to create a one stop shop for operation control of all disasters. We are already getting feeds of multiple agencies and with better technology, we can function much better.

What is the significance of data security in this kind of operations?

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the people in the affected area are able to share the real picture and we can realise the gravity of the situation. We can garner the data that in a disaster struck area, who all could still access the internet and who have stopped using data, which would give us an indication. All standard social media applications can be our agents and efficiency multipliers in a manifold ways. This is the benevolent aspect of technology which we must leverage.

What is your vision for NDRF and where do you want to take it few years down the line?

We have taken measures like root encryption where the security threat is

My vision starts with the community. In the hours of disaster, community is and should be the empowered first responder. After that, the local

higher. Otherwise I do not see much of the data under the classified information domain. On the contrary, we need more sharing of data in the public domain as far as disaster response is concerned. Take for instance, in the Kerala floods, along with the Defence and Disaster Management personnel, the civil society also played a stellar role. NGOs, temple bodies, and all kind of social organisations pitched in. The youth also played an important role. This was possible due to the utilisation of social media. Although this was a spontaneous reaction, we would like to channelise it in an organised way to open multiple avenues. We can integrate all social media and give it convergence so that all the social media posts coming from

government, district, state should be the backup. The third and final backup should be the federal force like the NDRF or the policy body like NDMA. If the state’s disaster ecosystem is strong, then it becomes a national asset in handling a disaster. NDRF would like to empower and build capacity of communities across India to handle the disasters initially. Secondly, we would like to empower and build capacity of the state disaster response machinery, the State Disaster Response Forces, which in any case we train. Some of the states have performed exceptionally well, for example Odisha’s ODRAF, which is an able foil equivalent to NDRF. This gives us a leeway to align with the state forces, which we did during the Odisha cyclones. We want to

AUGUST 2019

create this kind of synergy for every state. Our vision also includes strengthening each local level community in such a way that they are empowered, prepared and can meaningfully support in handling disaster situations. These are the three concentric circle of disaster mechanism where the outer circle is the community and the middle circle is the state units like SDRFs or other state disaster management bodies like SDMAs and the third and core federal circle is the NDRF. Once these three are aligned, India will always be one of the better prepared countries for handling disasters of any kind.

We are in the process to identify the gaps where NDRF battalions are not placed adequately, especially in the

disaster prone areas. We are there in 40 places in India of which 12 are battalions and the rest are Regional Response Centres (RRCs). We aim to ensure complete NDRF footprint in the all States and Union Territories to have a pan-India presence.

An encouraging and happy development is the upcoming NDRF Academy that is being built in Nagpur where civil defence and disaster response training will be synergised in the best interest of the country and states.

This is my vision in nutshell and NDRF aims at in the centre of these and other developments in the disaster management ecosystem of India and beyond.

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Host Partner

Organiser

Knowledge Partner

SMART AND DIGITAL CITY SUMMIT

PROGRAMME CHAIR Dr Rajendra Jagtap

PUNE

Chief Executive Officer Pune Smart City Development Corporation Limited (PSCDCL)

20 September, 2019

PROGRAMME CO-CHAIR

Manojit Bose

Chief Knowledge Officer Pune Smart City Development Corporation Limited (PSCDCL)

KEY THEMES IT, eGovernance and Citizen Services

Green Environment, Resilience and Livability

EV Charging Stations & Infrastructure

Smart Grid and Smart Energy

Public Engagement and Social Inclusion

Public Private Partnership and Collaborations

Digital Banking & Payments

Sustainable Housing and Green Building

Safety and Surveillance

Town Planning and Urban Mobility Solution

Creation & Beautification of Open Space

Water, Sewage Management and Solid Waste Management

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Cloud Computing

Integrated Traffic Management Systems(ITMS)

Enforcement and Traffic Telematic Solution

Smart Parking

ESTEEMED DIGNITARIES & POLICY MAKERS • Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, Government of India • Smart Cities and Special Purpose Vehicles • Municipal Corporations • Directorates of Municipal Administration

• Urban Development Departments • ‘Swachha Bharat’ Mission • ‘Housing for All’ Mission • Ministry of Electronics, Telecommunications, Energy, Transport, Road & Highways, and others

For more details, Contact:

Harshal Y Desai | +91-9930903115 | harshal@elets.in

SPOTLIGHT: WATER MANAGEMENT

W

ater, which is the most precious resource for mankind, is under threat. As per the reports of Central Ground Water Board (CGWB), published in 2010, out of 108 development blocks in Haryana, 55 blocks were overexploited in terms of water usage, 11 are critical and five are semi-critical. This acts as enough indication that Haryana, vis-Ă -vis the entire country is experiencing alarming levels of groundwater over-utilisation.

Guru Jal: Making Way for

Water Management through Holistic Plan and Impact Gurugram, the Millennium city has been struggling with the water crisis. Hence, the initiative of GuruJal was taken by the District Administration of Gurugram, Government of Haryana.

Ritika Srivastava of Elets News Network (ENN) writes on the water management initiatives by Guru Jal to curb the rising challenge of water scarcity through its innovative initiatives.

Situations have been worsening with an average fall in groundwater levels by two to five meters below the surface levels annually despite the fact that more than 15 government departments have ongoing interventions in different capacities which affect water management directly and indirectly.

To chalk out an effective plan of action to curb the growing challenge of water crisis, the Government of India has lunched Ministry of Jal Shakti. The facet of the ministry is that not only does it work at the policy level, but is also taking initiatives of citizen engagement, which can create awareness among citizens, as well as work towards the common goal of water conservation. One such initiative is the launch of Jal Shakti Abhiyan.

How Jal Shakti Abhiyan would Contribute towards Curbing the Rising Water Crisis Jal Shakti Abhiyan is a time-bound campaign focused on water conservation.

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SPOTLIGHT: WATER MANAGEMENT

During the campaign, officers, groundwater experts and scientists from the Government of India will work together with state and district officials in India’s most water-stressed districts for water conservation and water resource management by focusing on accelerated implementation of five target intervention.

Major Initiatives by Guru Jal Support a Pond – Pond Rejuvenation: Guru Jal focuses to on reviving around 250 ponds in Panchayat land and 18 in the urban areas, by facilitating the government departments and the local community.

Challenge of Water Scarcity in Gurugram and how it is being worked upon Gurugram, the Millennium city has been struggling with the water crisis. Hence, the initiative of GuruJal was taken by the District Administration of Gurugram, Government of Haryana, in collaboration with RKMF (CSR initiative of Hero MotoCorp). It is an integrated water management initiative, which aims to address the issues of water scarcity, ground-water depletion, flooding and stagnation in the Gurugram District of SPOTLIGHT: NDRF Haryana.

“We aim to collaborate with the different stakeholders of the district like corporates, civil society and research organisations to address the issue using systems thinking approach,” says a GuruJal official.

Focus Areas of Guru Jal l Research and analysis of the

existing water initiatives by various government, corporate sponsors and non-government organizations, for their impact and success along with failures, to avoid duplicity of efforts, centralize efforts and incorporate learnings from past projects l In-depth analysis to find accurate data points and the precise root cause of water mismanagement and devise solutions Including every possible aspect and every possible stakeholder that affects water and accordingly design solutions l Holistic, collaborative and

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focussed approach to enable inter and intra-department support for the implementation of proposed solutions to improve water management scenario in the district l Strict and time-bound monitoring of water conservation scheme compliance l Making Gurugram “Water Conscious District”, first in India to do so

Constituent Members of Guru Jal The Chief members of Guru Jal consist of Municipal Corporation of Gurugram, Gurugram Metropolitan Development Authority and Haryana Space Applications Centre. The Divisional Commissioner is the Chairman of the Chief members. The other members constitute of the departments of Revenue and Disaster Management, Hydrology Department, Fisheries Department, Pond Authority, Irrigation, Horticulture among others.

The Executing Members of the Programme Management Unit include the Programme Manager, Assistant Manager and Associate. The funding would be done by the CSR initiatives of the corporate organisations.

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Water Proofing – Preventing Water Wastage: The idea of the initiative is leak proofing campuses, public spaces and institutions. Guru Jal team identifies all possible sources of water leakages and fixing them to eliminate water wastage. The team also aims to provide the institutions water budgeting and cost-effective design solution to create awareness about water conservation.

Connect The Drops – Water Workshops: Through this initiative, Guru Jal conducts workshops for schools, corporate organisations, government offices, Panchayats, Resident Welfare Associations (RWAs) and builders to provide relevant information about Rights, Duties, Process and Compliances related to minimising water wastage and creating awareness on water conservation.

I Am Water Conscious: This initiative focusses around developing implementable parameters for Panchayats, households, organisations and offices to motivate them to adopt measures and conserve water.

Jal Sanrakshan – Water Conservation: Within this segment, the focus is to ensure execution of the existing schemes, policy and programmes by following up with the Government stakeholders.

Immediate Monsoon Preparations – Utilising Rain Water: This initiative aims to avoiding inconvenience from rainwater stagnation and utilising the rainwater by the construction of check-dams and increasing natural pond area by excavation and installing recharge-pits to redirect excess storm water and using it for recharging groundwater.

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HEART TO HEART WITH IAS OFFICER

Dr Shalini Rajneesh and her team taking oath for making Karnataka TB free

Interaction with patients at Aam Aadmi Clinics in New Delhi

I try contributing to society through my services and make a difference 26

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Dr Shalini Rajneesh and team distribute Dot 99 Tablets

Dr Shalini Rajneesh, Principal Secretary of Planning, Programme Monitoring & Statistics, Government of Karnataka shares her life’s journey and philosophy in this candid chat with Sudheer Goutham of Elets News Network (ENN).

The Service I am in allows me to do so much for others. My mantra is to lead every day of my life as if it is the last one and make the most out of it, she says.

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HEART TO HEART WITH IAS OFFICER

You are a senior bureaucrat working on various development projects which touch multiple lives in a positive way. What inspired you to pursue Civil Services as profession?

Service I am in allows me to do so much for others. My mantra is to lead every day of my life as if it is the last one and make the most out of it. All forces of the Universe help me to achieve my motto for life. That’s what keeps me going!

The inspiration was right at my home, my father, who was an IAS officer. I grew up watching him provide relief to all the people who visited him with so much pain. I realised that you can be a contributor in any aspect and capacity in your life by joining this Service. Hence, there was no second option for me.

How do you balance your personal and professional lives?

That’s really inspiring. Please share some insights about your father and some of his contributions towards the society.

My idea to balance personal and professional life is to forget about work once I am at home. My husband is also an IAS officer; hence both of us lead a busy lifestyle. We have a daughter who is in 9th Standard. I try to spend as much quality time with my family as possible.

Sometimes I cook for them, help my daughter with her studies, go out with her among other activities. I accept I

My father was one of the refugees from Pakistan during the partition. He used to study in a tent in one of the refugee NDRF He was campsSPOTLIGHT: under the streetlight. passionate towards his studies and also focused and motivated about his goal of becoming a professional and contributed towards the society. In 1962, he joined the Provincial Services of Punjab. In 1978, he got promoted to the IAS.

My day starts as early as 4 AM. After waking up, I meditate and exercise or practice yoga for three hours. That is the most peaceful time of the day as there is nobody to disturb you. I also read and brush up my knowledge during those early hours. After that, we leave for our respective offices and come back by 6.30-7 PM. That is the time reserved for our daughter. We do not have TV so that we can spend quality time with each other. We generally discuss on various topics, share ideas etc. I retire for the day by 9 PM, before that, I do some meditation.

I had initiated the project of online registration for organ donations. That has been a first of its kind initiative in India. The project is linked with Aadhaar, which ensures the credibility. The student community was extremely motivated with the project. We organised various campaigns and awareness programmes, which made people believe that there is indeed life

Dr Shalini Rajneesh

Principal Secretary of Planning, Programme Monitoring & Statistics, Government of Karnataka

Spending quality time with family, which includes husband Dr Rajneesh Goel and daughter Muskaan

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Tell us about a typical day in your life.

Please mention some of your achievements within your service which gives you immense satisfaction and pride.

That is indeed motivational! What are the driving factors which keep you going?

I think it’s my gratitude to God almighty for bestowing me with everything that I could have asked for. The best way to repay is to do something for others. The

cannot spend much time with my family members but I try to compensate as much as possible. At the end of the day, what satisfies me the most is the fact that my family members don’t have any complaints against me and are supportive about me and my profession.

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Dr Shalini Rajneesh and Dr Rajneesh Goel present their book ‘A Tale of 2 IAS’ to US Consul General Robert G Burgess egov_elets

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HEART TO HEART WITH IAS OFFICER

after death, where one can live through the donated organs and save up to eight lives. My father had donated his body and organs when he left for the heavenly abode. I and my family members have also pledged to donate organs. I am glad that people are rising above the existing notions and superstitions and coming forward.

Apart from that, I would like to mention about the e-Hospital programme initiated in Karnataka. Along with that, we have the Health Assurance programme. We were the first state to provide universal health coverage, even before the Ayushman Bharat scheme.

I must also thank my entire team who also works with same passion and zeal

and solutions to problems which lacks the right way out.

Apart from your wonderful work that you are doing, you have also authored several books in English and Kannada. Tell us more about it.

I wish to document the experiences I go through and preserve it for the future generation. I have not just written about my work, but also about subjects like personality development. I am a Masters in Psychology and I find that the youngsters often lack confidence and develop maturity. My book talks about developing soft skills and personality.

Similarly, I wrote a book on marital harmony. This book talks about how

Starting the day with exercise and family bonding before going ahead with a busy schedule

which makes such successful initiatives possible.

What is your perspective or definition of the term ‘innovation’?

For me, innovation refers to thinking out of the box, practicing something which has not been done before by anyone else. With such thought you are able to find out solutions to problems that are hampering your way. Take for example, the issue of malnutrition. Despite various programmes and huge investments, 36 percent of the children lack the basic nutritional requirements which hamper their growth. Innovation is to introspect on where we are going wrong and to find out the right answers

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small issues between a couple can be tackled through simple adjustments or understanding. I have been writing columns in newspapers and magazines as well.

Share some unknown aspects about your husband, who is also a senior IAS officer.

He is not only my husband, but my teacher as well. He has taught me the nuances of Kannada language and enriched my vocabulary. Unlike me, he has an introvert personality.

But he has really imbibed the concept of innovation. Even if I share my anxiety or problem, he offers me an instant solution. That indeed is innovation!

You are quite active on social media. What is your thought on the role of social media in our lives?

Generally people have the notion that IAS officers are out of their reach. To break the notion and be more accessible to the people, I make it a point to be an active member of social media. It also acts as a common platform for interaction with the people which adds value to my work and service towards them. I also receive regular feedback and valuable ideas through the social media platforms.

Do you believe in planning in advance or going by the flow?

I believe in dreaming about what I want.

My vision is that, nobody should suffer from the perils of poverty in my country.

What can I do to achieve this goal?

Maybe I can’t do everything, but with my limited resource and power I can plan accordingly and steer the change. I try to ensure more people are involved and able to contribute towards the dream. I make teams, discuss with them and use social media to do so. This is a snowball effect which further contributes towards fulfilling my dreams.

What is your message for our readers and the citizens of India as a whole?

Each one of us should be proud of our country in terms of the rich culture and heritage that India has to offer. At the same time, we must be aware about the challenges such as poverty, illiteracy. All of us have to be instrumental in alleviating and mitigating the challenges.

Your job does not end with voting and bringing the government to power. You have to act as partners to the government, which you have elected.

You have to provide innovative solutions and cooperate in every way to bring the changes you want to see.

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SPOTLIGHT: CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY

SPOTLIGHT: CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY

Haryana CSR Advisory Board: Driving towards inclusive growth agenda

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Launched with an aim of guidance and review of the CSR activities in Haryana and to encourage collaboration between CSR stakeholders in businesses, government and civil society, the Haryana CSR Advisory Board aims to improve the public infrastructure for the welfare of citizens, write Ritika Srivastava & Jyoti Bhagat of Elets News Network (ENN).

n a bid to create an ecosystem of all inclusive citizen welfare, the Haryana Government led by Manohar Lal Khattar has set up Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Advisory board in 2018. Headed by the Chief Minister, the other Board members include Finance Minister, Industries Minister and Chief Secretary of the State.

First Haryana CSR Summit was held in 2018 after the launch of Haryana CSR Advisory Board

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Launched with an aim of guidance and review of the CSR activities in the state and to encourage collaboration between CSR stakeholders in businesses, government and civil society, the Board also aims to improve the public infrastructure for the welfare of citizens.

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SPOTLIGHT: CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY

The Board also endeavours to facilitate and support CSR investments of organisations through indirect and direct interventions by encouraging collaboration between CSR stakeholders in businesses.

Around 80 percent Fortune 500 Companies are located across Haryana. Hence, there is a huge potential of generating CSR fund across the state, which is further channelised by creating collaboration among corporates, government, NGO and local communities.

Why CSR is important for Haryana Government The Haryana Government attaches due importance to the welfare activities in the Social Sectors covered under HDI, for the well-being of people of the State, a need has been felt for optimal utilisation of the CSR Fund, through facilitating both the Public and Private Sector Companies in relation to their CSR spending.

Speaking on the objective of the CSR Advisory Board, Manohar Lal Khattar, Haryana Chief Minister says, “The Government of Haryana is committed to drive an inclusive growth agenda and accomplish continuously better wellbeing of the residents of the State. To promote the culture of volunteering, we are proud to create a dedicated and authentic platform for facilitating collaborations amongst Corporate, Government, NGO and Local Community for optimum utilisation of resources. Towards achieving this objective, we have constituted the CSR Advisory Board and an Executive Commmittee.”

He also adds, “I am confident that corporates will be able to avail maximum benefit of the information available on the website and become an active participant in the economic and social development of the State,

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Sanitation, women and child development are primary areas for CSR activities

by channelising CSR resources utilising the services offered on the CSR portal of Haryana.”

Water Conservation, Education, Healthcare among Areas Catered Among the major areas covered and supported by the Haryana government through the CSR Advisory Board are skill development, disability affairs, education, healthcare, water conservation, sanitation, innovation and entrepreneurship, livelihood support, women and child development, infrastructure, environment, sports, renewable energy, agriculture and rural development, heritage, art and culture and slum area development.

As per officials, full fledged work is taking place in the areas of skill development, disability affairs, education, healthcare, water conservation, sanitation, innovation and entrepreneurship, women and child development, infrastructure, environment, renewable energy and slum area development.

Activities undertaken by the Haryana CSR Advisory Board Among the umbrella of areas or sectors enlisted by the Haryana government, there are several activities, which are considered as CSR projects or activities. l Eradicating hunger, poverty and malnutrition, promoting preventive health care and sanitation and making available safe drinking water l Promoting education, including special education and employment enhancing vocation skills especially among children, women, elderly and the differently abled and livelihood enhancement projects l Promoting gender equality, empowering women, setting up homes and hostels for women and orphans, setting up old age homes, day care centers and such other facilities for senior citizens and measures for reducing inequalities faced by socially and economically backward groups l Reducing child mortality and improving maternal health by providing good hospital facilities and low cost medicines

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SPOTLIGHT: CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY

l Providing with hospital and

l

l l

l

l

l

l

l l

dispensary facilities with more focus on clean and good sanitation so as to combat human immunodeficiency virus, acquired immune deficiency syndrome, malaria and other diseases Ensuring environmental sustainability, ecological balance, protection of flora and fauna, animal welfare, agro forestry, conservation of natural resources and maintaining quality of soil, air and water Employment enhancing vocational skills Protection of national heritage, art and culture including restoration of buildings and sites of historical importance a d works of art; setting up public libraries; promotion & development of traditional arts and handicrafts Measures for the benefit of armed forces veterans, war widows and their dependents Training to promote rural sports, nationally recognised sports, sports and Olympic sports Contribution to the Prime Minister‘s National Relief Fund or any other fund set up by the Central Government for socioeconomic development and relief and welfare of the Scheduled Castes, the Scheduled Tribes, other backward classes, minorities and women Contributions or funds provided to technology incubators located within academic institutions, which are approved by the Central Government Rural development projects Slum area development.

The officials further add, “The Above list is illustrative not exhaustive. All activities under the CSR activities should be environment friendly and socially acceptable to the local people and Society. Contribution towards C.M relief fund shall be a part of CSR

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The corporate organisations interested in taking part in the CSR activities, will have to register on the official website of Haryana CSR Advisory Board.

The next step is to select the shelf of projects available on the website or upload the new proposal. The CSR Board will further provide the facilities and support to implement the project. activities above two percent of Net profit other than the activities mentioned above.”

What makes an organisation eligible to be part of the Haryana CSR Projects?

Any company registered under the Companies Act 2013 or any previous Companies law having net worth of Rs 500 crore or more, turnover of Rs 1,000 crore or more and a net profit of Rs 5 crore or more would be eligible

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for registering with Haryana CSR Advisory board.

How to be a part of the Haryana CSR Project The corporate organisations interested in taking part in the CSR activities, will have to register on the official website of Haryana CSR Advisory Board. The next step is to select the shelf of projects available on the website or upload the new proposal. The CSR Board will further provide the facilities and support to implement the project.

Prior approval is not required for the estimated expenditure or budget, however, the stakeholders can be the collaborator of the activities.

How does the Board function Located in Haryana Enterprise Promotion Centre (HEPC) office at Panchkula, the Haryana CSR Advisory Board would have a CSR Executive Committee which supports the corporate efforts and channelises their resources at the point of highest need and ensure proper utilisation to create sustainable change in line with Government plans and laying down transparent and defined roadmap for Government support for CSR projects.

The committee also works along with various departments to identify projects in focused sectors for allocation of funds from CSR fund and approve any CSR projects beyond investment of Rs 10 crore.

The projects with investment up to Rs 10 crore are approved by the Administrative Secretary, Industries and Commerce department. All the Administrative powers in respect of the staff working in the Haryana CSR Advisory Board are vested in CEO-cumAdministrative Secretary, Industries and Commerce Department.

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SPOTLIGHT: IBM

IBM: Transforming Indian Government to a Cognitive Enterprise

Prativa Mohapatra Vice President Sales IBM India South Asia

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Digital technology has helped India realise the ambition of creating a just and equitable society, propelling us to the forefront among the nations, particularly leveraging the energies from the country’s youthful population, with its propensity for quick adaptation and frugal innovation, says Prativa Mohapatra, Vice President Sales, IBM India South Asia. In this exclusive interview with Sreetama Datta Roy of Elets News Network (ENN), Mohapatra talks about the digital transformation of India’s Government sector and how IBM is playing a significant role in Central as well as State governments to ensure seamless delivery of e-services to the citizens, as well as ensuring the ease of doing business.

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SPOTLIGHT: IBM

Another point that is important when it comes to dealing with data is that 70 to 80 percent of the data is in unstructured form like audio, video, photos, notes etc. So how do we analyse this data?

What is your take on the digital transformation that Indian government is undertaking at present?

In the last couple of years, digital technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Cloud, IoT, automation etc. have become the key factor in accelerating India’s growth while promoting social and economic equity by enhancing access to data.

Lastly, when it comes to government data, with legacy systems operating in silos and lack of system integrators, the data collected and maintained resides in separate databases, reducing operational efficiency of the system at large. How do we bring it together?

A new digital ecosystem that includes close to a billion people is being created at a scale unprecedented anywhere else in the world. Preparing for the next decade, IndiaStack, for example is emerging as a unique digital Infrastructure to solve India’s hard problems towards presence-less, paperless, and cashless service delivery.

Enormous opportunities now exist for organisations and individuals who are looking at leveraging IndiaStack to build SPOTLIGHT: NDRF and platforms, work collaboratively create and ride the wave of digital innovation.

Hence, a data-driven government, where, for all critical decisions, actionable information is available when and where needed, is the need of the hour to enable effective and efficient governance. This would help in: l Reducing wastage around government services to citizens, farmers, businesses l Reducing fraud and corruption across the board – cities, states and central Government

Digital technology has helped India realise the ambition of creating a just and equitable society, propelling us to the forefront among the nations, particularly leveraging the energies from the country’s youthful population, with its propensity for quick adaptation and frugal innovation.

What are some of the relevant areas where government can fast-track adoption of newer technology?

As the governments look at transforming digitally to deliver services that citizens want, at the heart of this transformation is data. While it’s true that huge amount of data is being created every day, as per IDC, it is estimated that by 2020, 5,200 GB data would be created each year for every citizen. Now, the question is, how do we collect data in a country as vast and diverse as India?

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“By providing government departments with access to technical expertise, executive mentoring, software infrastructure credits, co-marketing programmes, IBM is helping Indian governments to overcome the challenges that are associated with digitalisation.”

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l Securing and protecting – leverage

technology and AI to at least be on par with the bad guys and constantly improving.

What are some overseas Government successes that can be replicated into India quickly?

There are a couple of examples that can be replicated in India’s administrative system: Providing a single view of the citizen (San Diego County, United States): Collaborating across programmes using a single view of a citizen to improve services. San Diego County wanted interoperability between multiple digital channels and multiple case management systems, as siloed programme data presented challenges to both caseworkers and citizens. To address these challenges, the County developed an information exchange portal, ConnectWellSD, to provide a single view of the client across healthcare, probation, mental health, and social programs and support caseworker collaboration across programs. This is helping improve data access and availability, providing a holistic view of citizens.

Making citizen-government interactions seamless (Dubai): Dubai wanted to remove friction from citizens’ daily lives by making interactions with the government seamless, efficient and enjoyable. It aims to become the first city fully powered by blockchain by 2021. It is also using AI-powered city concierge to answer all questions for residents, businesses and visitors.

Blockchain will enable Dubai to eliminate paper altogether by December 2021, resulting in significant cost and productivity savings each year. It is also using AI-powered city concierge to answer all questions for residents, businesses and visitors. This will help improve speed and ease of doing business in Dubai.

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SPOTLIGHT: IBM

What are some of the challenges being faced by government entities today in India?

The advent of Digital India initiatives, social media and Internet of Things is resulting in huge amounts of data being created.

The government leaders know their operational capabilities and are aligning themselves to keep up with technology, data explosion, and demographic shifts.

At the same time, citizen expectations are rising as they want governments to act like corporates and deliver higher service levels. Government agencies, hence, face the challenge of increasing quality and efficiency of public services cost-effectively.

Clearly, need for skills is getting amplified with the advent of newer technologies.

Public services like disbursing incentives, issuing identification, registering property, administering public elections and enforcing laws require deep trust from citizens. Governments, hence, also need to work on gaining citizen trust and enabling transparency.

on Global C-suite Study, only a third of the surveyed executives have the resources and funding they need.

Similarly, only 33 percent have a strategy and plan in place, and only 30 percent have the technological capabilities required to address the situation effectively.

Lastly, skills are the new currency! As per a World Economic Forum estimate, by 2030, India will add more working age citizens to the world than in any other country. Also, NASSCOM (in joint study with FICCI and EY) has predicted that by 2022, a startling 46 percent of the Indian workforce will be engaged in jobs that do not exist today or that require radically different skill sets.

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As per IBM Institute of Business Value’s (IBV) report titled Agility, skills and cybersecurity, over 120 million workers in the world’s 12 largest economies may need to be retrained/reskilled in the next 3 years because of AI and intelligent automation. Of this 35 million will be from India!

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How can governments address these challenges?

The challenge is that most government agencies aren’t prepared to tackle these issues. Based on the findings from IBM IBV report titled Government Perspective

As AI, Automation, IoT, Blockchain and Security become pervasive, their combined impact will shape the new digital economy. The ‘outside-in’ digital transformation of the past decade is giving way to the ‘inside-out’ potential of data exploited with these exponential technologies.

We, at IBM, call this next-generation

business model the Cognitive Enterprise.

Cognitive Enterprises can create and use ‘platforms’ to gain competitive advantage, rise jointly with ecosystem partners above complexity while leveraging legacy capability – and most importantly, proprietary data.

To transform into a Cognitive Enterprise, government will need the seven Keys: 1 Clarify intent of core platform focus: Platforms that combine enterprisespecific assets with emerging technologies like AI, IoT, Blockchain etc. They will need to be digital and cognitive, connected to both the markets and external environments in which they operate.

2 Re-engineer workflows to use cognitive capabilities: This is a critical first practical step in shaping platform competitiveness. It is important to identify the workflows that are key to supporting your platform expertise and intent.

3 Reinvent workforce proactively: As enterprises adopt business platforms as the core of their operations, the need for new skills and continuous re-skilling is accelerating.

4 Curate proprietary data actively: Among the most common barrier to companies’ digital journeys is access to a ‘fit-for-purpose’ data architecture, required to enable a better organization of and access to competitive internal data as well as to external data sourcing.

5 Secure data, processes and platforms end-to-end: Security will be a pervasive concern throughout the Cognitive Enterprise. Trust in a platform will be fundamental to its durable success, and data security will be the critical underpinning.

6 Get agile, change fast and build things: Agility is required to drive continuous innovation, and can become a foundation for corporate culture transformation, new ways of working and exponential growth in learning.

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SPOTLIGHT: IBM

7 Revisit and adjust technology architecture choices continually: Throughout the journey to become a Cognitive Enterprise, organisations should reassess architecture to enable organisation-wide scaling, economic impact and ongoing adaptability.

How can IBM help?

At IBM we have always emphasised on ‘co-innovation’ in building a Digital India.

Cognitive technologies today are the key differentiator in the global technology landscape, India needs cognitive business models to leapfrog into the lead innovator ranks. There is fundamental shift required from ‘siloed’ innovation to ‘co-innovation’ that can rapidly drive this transformation. We are increasingly focused on nurturing the ecosystem to drive this change.

SPOTLIGHT: NDRF IBM brings a whole gamut of solutions that can help governments: l Digitally transform operations l Secure and protect its citizens l Serve the citizens through personalised government experiences From AI and data analytics to cybersecurity and blockchain, from IoT to cloud, we are transforming the government into a cognitive enterprise.

In fact, we share this expertise by regularly hosting events, like the upcoming Data and AI Forum in September, providing a platform to initiate discussions on Data, AI, Skills etc., with India’s leading minds from the government and the private sector.

Can you share some examples of how IBM is working with the Indian government?

By providing government departments with access to technical expertise, executive mentoring, software infrastructure credits, co-marketing programmes, IBM is helping Indian

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Data and AI Forum by IBM September 11, New Delhi Data and AI Forum aims to bring thought leaders from ministries, government departments, PSUs and Industry together on one platform to discuss how digital revolution is changing governance globally, how can we harness data in a country as diverse as India, and how AI can help gain insights from collected data for efficient, effective, and secure government operations.

To register for the event use the following link or scan the QR code https://www.ibm.com/events/ in-en/dataaisummit/

governments – Central and State, to overcome the challenges that are associated with digitalisation.

Some examples: We are working with Central Board of Indirect Taxes to build a next generation data platform to perform advance analytics for efficient revenue mobilisation and tax policy formation.

ADVAIT, the Advance Analytical in Indirect Taxation aims to enhance indirect tax revenues, increase taxpayer base and support tax data drive tax driven policy formation. Large volumes of structured and unstructured data will be used by data scientists for high performance data mining, predictive analysis, risk scoring, text mining forecasting to predict revenue from indirect taxes.

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With the Rajasthan Government, we are building world class citizen services – empowering every citizen of the state with greater transparency and enhancing their quality of life. The state is using a host of IBM technologies and solutions such as IBM Cloud, Mobile Platform, IBM Weather Company and is also running its critical workloads and applications such as Bhamashah, e-Public Distribution System (ePDS), e-mitra on IBM platforms.

It’s also time to rethink our approach on how we educate our students when it comes to in-demand career skills. IBM has also been investing in creating and scaling new programs from high school to workforce to build the talent pipeline for India. Through various initiatives – along with Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), Directorate General of Training (DGT), Ministry of Skill Development & Entrepreneurship (MSDE), NITI Aayog (Atal Tinkering Labs) – IBM is focusing on computational thinking, STEM Learning, 21st century skills, and life skills. Also, IBM and the Central Board of Secondary Education are working closely to introduce AI in postsecondary classes. Lastly, IBM will train 2,00,000 women in STEM-related careers in partnership with four state governments.

One of the works we are passionate about is led by the IBM Research Lab in India, which is around AgrtiTech. We have designed and built a suite of agribusiness tools and solutions to help the agriculture industry use the power of AI to make more informed decisions about their crops. The Ministry of Agriculture has also signed SoI with IBM to pilot IBM’s Watson Decision Platform and weather technology in three districts of Bhopal, Rajkot and Nanded.

In fact, several large deployments in Government of India, whether it’s with the departments in Ministry of Finance, Railways, Defence or External Relations, they use technologies developed by IBM.

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INDUSTRY PERSPECTIVE

LG Electronics Innovates Products with Latest Technology and Consumer Insights LG Electronics aims to inculcate latest technological innovations in our range of products, driven by consumer insights. We are also innovating in the existing product ranges and planning to come up with new products as well such as personal air purifier meant to be used for personal closed cabins, cars etc., says Amit Gujral from LG Electronics, in an exclusive interview with Jyoti Bhagat of Elets News Network (ENN). Gujral also talks about the company’s USP and how over the two decades, LG Electronics has become a household name in the country.

Amit Gujral LG Electronics

“We aim to inculcate the latest technological innovations in our range of products, driven by consumer insights. We are also innovating in the existing product ranges and planning to come up with new products as well.”

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LG has completed 22 years in India. How would you assess the journey of over two decades?

The understanding of the brand LG comes from two facts. Firstly, brand LG is present in almost every Indian household, which talks volumes about the brand in itself. Secondly, our brand brings an indigenous feel with it and does not exude the vibes of being a foreign brand. We have localised based on the consumers’ demands. It was a

conscious decision by us to take the route of health and hygiene products.

We have implemented engineering and technology which enables hygienic preservation and care in our products, be it a refrigerator or water purifier.

There is a conscious effort in every product range to ensure health and purity factor and not compromise with the hygiene. Over the 22 years, we have moved along with the sentiments of the people and technology innovations to grow as a household brand.

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INDUSTRY PERSPECTIVE

LG has a huge range of products.

Which of the product range is most popular, or if I may say, profitable?

of the most trusted brands when it comes to home appliances. Our strength is that we are the largest after-sales service providing company in the country.

In terms of growth charter, we are experiencing growth in almost every broad segment. However, maximum contribution has been from the Home Appliances sector followed by Home Electronics, such as refrigerator, air conditioners etc. followed by television and other audiovisual products.

What is the distribution model of LG? How many channel partners are operating across the country?

What are the new initiatives taken

by LG? Fundamentally, we have to understand that the belief systems among the consumers have changed as the level of awareness is very high today due to the technology penetration in our day to day lives through access of smart phones and affordable data. With this, our behavioural pattern has changed and we NDRF tend toSPOTLIGHT: believe what we experience more. Hence, the Go to Market (GTM) philosophy is working on three Es. The Experiential Connect, the Engaging Connect and the Emotional Connect.

Today, consumers are well aware of who is the best based on their knowledge.

Hence, our focus is to offer experiential marketing and consumer engagement.

Secondly, we offer a unique engaging opportunity with the consumers when they visit our stores. We offer to install certain appliances such as television, water purifiers etc., at their homes for trial. We are the only organisation which is practicing the try and buy method.

for personal closed cabins, cars etc. We plan to launch this product range soon.

In terms of industry, which sector has the highest traction?

We also plan to contribute more in the Government initiatives wherever there is a need for energy conservation. For example, in the upcoming Government infrastructures, there is a need to install air conditioners or air coolers. In hospitals or hotels, there is a need for hot and cold water. While there is a need to invest separately for these requirements, we are deploying a common technology which enables one- time investment to serve both the requirements. This also contributes towards energy conservation, ultimately serving the larger purpose and vision.

Recently, we have done the air conditioning of a nuclear power plant based in Andhra Pradesh. We are also in talks with various Embassies and Smart City projects to work together.

For us, the impetus is more towards healthcare via daily use consumer durables, as our philosophy runs around the lines of offering health caring and hygiene enhancing energy conservative products.

Geographically, which are the states or cities in India which are the major contributors for LG?

What will be the key focus areas for the next few years?

I would like to say that the entire country belongs to us and we belong to the entire country. From all four zones, East, West, North and South, we are receiving positive response in terms of sales. That is where our strength lies that LG is one

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There are around a hundreds of channel partners across India. We have to operate in three-four channels in this country. We have a combination of distributors and sub-dealers. In the Tier II or Tier III cities, we have a humungous network of sub-dealers. In the larger towns, the classical model of distribution is being followed. Our biggest strength is that we have the largest footprint in this country. Another USP we have is, we understand the consumer psyche and behaviour and offer the services accordingly.

We aim to inculcate the latest technological innovations in our range of products, driven by consumer insights.

We are also innovating in the existing product ranges and planning to come up with new products as well such as, personal air purifier meant to be used

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What is your focus in terms of products for the B2G market?

For B2G market, our focus is on mobile phones as we are aligned with the Government of India’s policies and schemes. Thanks to the Government of India’s Digital India scheme, a lot of focus has come into making governance electronically monitored and systematic.

This is possible through digital innovation. Similarly, in the scheme of National Health Mission, there is a good amount of impetus by the Government of India to have people connected and the best way to do that is through smart phones. In line with that, we have launched two new models, catering to the requirements stated by the Government department.

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INDUSTRY PERSPECTIVE

Hogar Controls: Offering Customised Smart Home Automation Products for Every Household At Hogar we believe in giving our customers qualitatively superior products, at a competitive price, which adds glamour and elegance to the home. Our products are suitable for every budget of homes – from the middle class to the luxury home buyers, writes Karan Kumar, Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer, Hogar Controls.

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F

ounded in 2015, Hogar Controls is a global design-first smart home and building automation company delivering powerful solutions for residential, hospitality and commercial markets.

Hogar’s motto is to give consumers simple, but smart home automation products which are aesthetically designed with the latest cutting-edge technology and easy to use. All Hogar products use Z-Wave, ZigBee, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.

Smart Series Range and Touch Series Range – The Flagship Products of Hogar Controls The first product that we are talking about is the Smart Hub Pro in our Smart Series range. This is the central

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INDUSTRY PERSPECTIVE

US we have different standards and UK we have different. These products are fully customised for Indian market.

piece, or you may call it the ‘brain’ of home automation. The Smart Hub Pro, also called Home Controller Pro, is a smart hub that fits into any power outlet and can control up to 232 smart home devices. With wireless operation and easy setup, it can control devices over a range of up to 200 meters using Z-Wave mesh network with just the push of a button. There are other products as well in the Smart Series range which provides end to end solution for any project or for any customer wanting to automate their home.

The second product is our recently launched Smart Panel called Prima+ in our Touch Series Range. These smart panels are wireless panels with soft touch buttons. The smart panels are available in various formats like two touch buttons, three touch buttons or four, six and 10 touch buttons. The panels also come with an option of smart SPOTLIGHT: sockets. TheseNDRF switches can control electrical appliances like fan, bulbs etc. reflecting Hogar’s SMART LIFE Philosophy.

For instance, the normal mechanical switches can be replaced by the Smart touch switches. Along with that one can also have a wireless button called ‘Pebble’ that extend the functionality wirelessly. It can be used on a tabletop wall mount or a glass surface where the wiring feasibility is not there. One pebble can be used for nine actions.

The control of Hogar’s Home Automation products rests in the hands of the home user through the Hogar Mobile App. All Hogar products are completely retrofitted which means there is no additional wiring is required. Also supports Voice control feature from Alexa and Google assistant.

International Presence of Hogar Controls

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The entire range of products that Hogar makes in India meets the specified electrical standards and other standards. Normally, what other companies do is they make single product for entire world. For instance, we have given fan controller here in India, but USA they don’t have.

Karan Kumar

Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer, Hogar Controls

As regards to our operations, Hogar is headquartered in USA with an R&D and manufacturing facility at Hyderabad, India. The facility, with a production capacity of 6,00,000 units, will make all of Hogar’s home automation products. The facility will be the hub for India and other Asian markets.

Currently Hogar is operational in 12 countries with plans to have a presence in 40+ countries by the end of the year.

Hogar Controls Customises Products Based on Country and Households Globally, Hogar’s home automation products have a large installation base. In India, Hogar has completed installation in about 6,000 homes.

The products are sold exclusively through channel partners. Currently Hogar has over 600 channel partners (aka installers). The products are completely different standards, like in

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At Hogar we believe in giving our customers qualitatively superior products, at a competitive price, which adds glamour and elegance to the home. Our products are suitable for every budget of homes – from the middle class to the luxury home buyers.

Approvals and certifications All Hogar products have the requisite approvals from the respective authorities or government in the countries that it operates in. About quality certification we have CE, FCC, RCM, SAA, UL certifications.

Road Ahead Hogar products not only work with their own systems but are also compatible with 3,000 other smart products. We plan to introduce hybrid model of touch and will also be foraying into other areas of home automation beyond lights, fans and security. Some of these include gas sensor, motion sensor, TV controller and AC controller.

We are currently focussing on B2B and builder market. Going forward, we will be focussing on Interior designers and architects, which will be an additional sales channel. We also plan to foray into the hospitality and commercial segment for automation.

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SPOTLIGHT: ESDS

ESDS:

Piyush Somani

Founder, CMD and CEO ESDS Software Solution

The Smart City mission is a critical project for any government that looks to make the decision process more robust by using actionable insights based on the real-time data feeds gained from millions of sensors. For any Smart City project, its backbone lies on data, and faster data processing is only possible by using a powerful Cloud Technology, says Piyush Somani, Founder, CMD and CEO, ESDS Software Solution, in an exclusive interview with Sreetama Datta Roy of Elets News Network (ENN).

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BOLSTERING SMART CITY MISSION AND E-GOVERNANCE THROUGH CLOUD SOLUTIONS What is the vision and mission of ESDS? Our vision at ESDS is to digitally touch the lives of one billion-plus Indians and transform their lives positively. We have launched a number of Cloudbased solution along with SaaS offerings for Government and the public sector. Through our government and banking initiatives, we have managed to connect 32 percent, that is around 380 million Indians. eNlight cloud technology is the most efficient cloud technology in India saving 70 percent compute consumption, reducing the carbon footprint and proving to be one of the most energyefficient cloud technologies in India. In the coming five years, we will be planting one billion trees under our project Green-Connect due to our commitment to restoring the

environmental balance. We will also be transforming the lives of billion people by connecting them on more than a billion smart devices and make ESDS a billion-dollar enterprise.

Tell us about the flagship products and services of ESDS. We have an array of products and solutions in our portfolio; our eNlight cloud platform is a patented autoscaling technology. It can automatically detect the need for resources without rebooting the machines. It auto-scales horizontally and vertically, thus determining the need to know the resource usage in advance. It is equipped with a pay-per-consume billing model allowing the users to pay only for what they have consumed. eNlight helps in eliminating the cost of the unused

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SPOTLIGHT: ESDS

Government. ESDS is already working with Pune Municipal Corporation and we have successfully deployed a majority of their applications on our Make-A-Cloud-In-India eNlight Cloud technology.

resource, thereby reducing the total costs by a significant amount.

Our SaaS offerings for various state and central governments are eTapal, iPAS, ESDS LOS. Our cloud enables SaaS offerings are making an impact on multiple government initiatives and helping in supporting the digital transformation of India. We also have VTMScan that helps in securing businesses by providing an enterprise web-scanner for web domains. eMagic is a web-based management system for IT asset management, device deployment, and comprehensive server monitoring and network management in data centres spread across different geo-locations. We also offer eNlight 360-cloud solution, which comes with a hybrid cloud orchestration layer along with the complete Datacenter management suite, i.e. eMagic and VTMScan. EnlightBot is our AI-driven virtual specialist chatbot platform, NDRFround the whichSPOTLIGHT: helps the customers clock by assisting them on the products and services. It is committed to high standards, zero-errors, and reducing the inquiries on the phone or email by learning to respond to all common service-related questions.

Who are the major stakeholders of the organisation?

Our major stakeholders include the government and Public Sector Units (PSUs), which comprise 44 percent of our industry distribution followed by the technology industry, which stands at 22 percent. We are closely working with several Smart Cities in India like Pune Smart City, Bhubhneswar Smart City, etc. and Municipal Corporations of Nashik and Mumbai, which are connected to our Cloud through their primary operations across the country.

We provide smart city solutions by hosting their data on our cloud platform.

Over 280 co-operative banks all over India have trusted ESDS for hosting their information on our cloud platform.

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How significant is the role of Cloud technology for changing the dynamics of offering e-services to the citizens?

What are the major e-governance and Smart City projects handled

by ESDS at present?

The Smart City mission is a critical project for any government that looks to make the decision process more robust by using actionable insights based on the real-time data feeds gained from millions of sensors. For any Smart City project, its backbone lies on data, and faster data processing is only possible by using a powerful Cloud Technology. We have worked with EESL for implementing 10 million smart meters around various states in India.

Other e-governance projects by ESDS are for the Ministry of Road Transport and highways, Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority and IGR-Land Registration for Land records and Transactions of Government of Maharashtra. ESDS’s Smart City Cloud is placed across multiple state-of-theart Data Centres, which aims to provide futuristic solutions for Smart Cities. We are one of the first cloud companies that have achieved the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) empanelment for delivering Cloud services to government customers in India. ESDS is authorised to serve the Indian Government with our cloud services, SaaS, PaaS, IaaS, and DRaaS are as per the standards that are required by the Indian

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Prior to the Cloud scenario, the government servers were hosted in multiple locations of these government organisations. These servers were only available for G2G and they were incapable of handling G2C projects due to their vulnerability factors and their non-scalable design.

In the last four to five years, the central government has become aggressive in delivering G2C services, to transform India. They were ready to give all the Digital Services to the citizens and when MeitY empanelment process happened and multiple cloud service providers were empanelled many cloud service providers have now become capable of transforming the country.

They are now helping multiple smart cities and central government, allowing them to serve G2C services for the citizens. The level of transparency has also improved with all these digital initiatives, the benefits are passed on to the end customer, and ESDS has played a very crucial role in making all this possible. Cloud has been a great enabler of all this because of its availability, flexibility, scalability, and security. Cloud computing is responsible for providing a new service consumption and delivery model which is inspired by the consumer Internet services. E-governance, along with cloud computing, offers integration management with an automated problem resolution, managing end-toend security, and helping the

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SPOTLIGHT: ESDS

budget which is based on the actual data usage.

Which are the primary technologies such as AI, ML, blockchain, 3D printing, etc. deployed by ESDS to develop the flagship products and services?

India’s largest IoT project is going live from our cloud. As many as 10 million smart meters are already live now and this number will go up to 50 million in the next three years. ESDS’ Blockchain Solution aids financial institutions to execute and verify transactions discretely without any human intervention. Our EnlightBot is an AI-driven virtual specialist chatbot platform, which helps the customers round the clock by assisting them on the products and services which has been implemented by SIDBI and Udyami Mitra. Blockchain architecture can considerably bring down the expenses and diminish inefficiencies in the financial sector. All the different devices that costumers use for banking services like transactions or inquiries can be connected via the ESDS IoT platform where data is aggregated to be transformed into actionable insights.

With ample data and exposure to technology, there also looms a threat to cybersecurity. How is this challenge tackled?

We being a Cloud service provider are more equipped in handling cybersecurity issues because we deal with inline threats day in and day out due to which we come up with more and more solutions and technologies to deal with the attacks and threats. We have also beefed up our cybersecurity posture through regular vulnerability assessments and penetration testing to keep in check our readiness to tackle cyber threats. Compared to the captive data centres, we evolve multi folds every month. The learnings which we pass and the logs which are generated are all passed on to an intelligent AI

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system which continuously keeps on updating the policies and rules as the decision keeps on evolving, the technology keeps on continuously evolving. Our security solution can see every server, every gateway, every potential access point to the network, and every subtending user device,

“People find it convenient to post on WhatsApp and comment on social media but they find it difficult to use the digital solutions and digital platforms provided by the government to communicate with the government. The slow rate of adoption needs to be improved by creating awareness and effective marketing methods.” leaving no holes open for the hackers to exploit. So as a cloud service provider, we are always equipped to deal with threats and any challenges.

What are the other challenges and how do you plan to mitigate those?

We have a dynamic data centre and without our DCIM tools, it is almost impossible to understand the amount of space, power, and cooling we have or

predict when we will run out, which server is the best for a new service, and just how much power is needed to ensure uptime and availability. Our DCIM tools quickly model and allocate space, manage power and network connectivity.

Our emergency backup generators continue to power our data centers even in the event of a power failure.

What are your major plans in pipeline for the upcoming years?

Outside India, we are already expanding in 16 other countries. We have started playing a crucial role in transforming other countries in the Middle East & Africa. In India from the current 380 million people, we hope to impact lives of One Billion people and transform their lives positively and we will play a crucial role when India becomes a number three developed economy in the world.

According to you, are the Digital India initiatives of the Government implemented and executed well among the citizens?

The government is putting many efforts in the Digital India Initiatives but more than the government, the citizen mind-set needs to change and adapt because the adaption is very slow.

There are a number of smart solutions that are being rolled out with a lot of solutions and applications for citizens.

Many Municipal Corporations have come up with citizen-centric initiatives, but the citizens are not using those.

People find it very convenient to post on WhatsApp and comment on social media but they find it very difficult to use the digital solutions and digital platforms provided by the government to communicate with the government.

The slow rate of adoption needs to be improved by creating awareness and effective marketing methods. The government can design an environment of sticks rules for getting to more people online

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Building Community Focussed Vibrant Infrastructure

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ounded in 1997, ASF GROUP is an established developer, headquartered at New Delhi (India), specialising in delivering build-to-suit and state-of-the-art IT (Information Technology) infrastructure and commercial buildings. ASF Group is managed by a critical mass of highly-skilled and innovative professionals, with support of an internationally acclaimed panel of experts. ASF has already delivered over three million square feet of workspaces and has established a tangible footprint in northern India by

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AUGUST 2019

completing a number of projects, which are all fully leased to top MNCs. It is our endeavor to create benchmarks with projects that are community focussed, vibrant, efficient, self-regulated, fully integrated, and secure and environment friendly developments, having superior living and working lifestyle features. The group is led by Anil Saraf, Chief Managing Director, ASF Infrastructure, under whose leadership, the group has successfully carved the growth journey of ASF since the advent of this millennium.

Riding its growth curve, ASF Group is developing an information technology sector specific Special Economic Zone (IT-SEZ) at Vatsal Valley, Gurugram (India) – ‘ASF INSIGNIA IT/ ITeS SEZ’, which is approximately 50 acres. ASF, in association with leading global Private equity fund, started developing his project which offers high quality infrastructure and a hassle-free work environment. The project is situated close to Delhi and approximately six km from Gurugram Central Business District, on the Gurgaon Faridabad expressway which connects Faridabad and

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Gurugram giving the project the trajectory connect.

The campus is divided into processing zone for export oriented technology companies and a nonprocessing zone for supporting activities for example, commercial, housing and service apartments, club, sports and recreations and medical facilities.

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King’s Canyon is an iconic corporate tower, with total lettable space of approximately one million square feet in the Processing Zone of ASF Insignia, King’s Canyon is a LEED certified gold rated green

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Grand Canyon consists of 1.2 million square feet of office space consists of five iconic towers of G + 17 floors each, enabling corporate branding and visibility.

Black Canyon is an upcoming state of the art building which consists of two Iconic Towers of Ground + 16 Floors configuration having approximately 1.8 million square feet of leasable space.

ASF Insignia currently houses renowned IT companies such as TCS, IBM, Ericsson, Global logic, Waste

Management etc. as its clients. The project’s contemporary architecture and design has been developed by a panel of globally renowned architects/ consultants. The overall campus is supported by sufficient Commercial infrastructure and has facilities like - Cafeteria’s, food courts, quick service restaurants, auditorium, crèche, gymnasium, fine dining etc.

The project is also equipped with a 4 tier physical and electronic security system, enabling safe and secured access for occupants & visitors.

Non Processing Zone

Non Processing Zone at ASF Insignia offers commercial, recreational and residential places thereby making ASF Insignia a truly integrated & self-contained township, promoting the ‘walk to work’ concept and optimally blending a workplace and a life style that celebrates the true spirit of leisure & high living.

On-site infrastructure includes: l Well-planned and laid out complex with wide internal road network and street lighting l 100 percent power backup l Advanced telecommunication network and secured data transmission l Centralised and District based HVAC system, l Facilities such as sewage treatment plant, effluent treatment plant, power generation and supply infrastructure, etc. l Administrative block, recreation & fitness club, statutory compliance centre (for customs / excise authorities), etc. l Efficient traffic and transport management infrastructure.

Artistic Impression

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CONFERENCE REPORT

CONFERENCE REPORT

Rajesh Kumar, Head of Technology Strategy (Public Sector) Microsoft India; Dr Poornima Chauhan, Secretary, Department of Administrative Reforms, Languages, Art and Culture , Government of Himachal Pradesh; A Venu Prasad, Principal Secretary, Local Government, Government of Punjab; Ajoy Sharma, Secretary, Local Government, Government of Punjab; Kamal Kishor Yadav, Municipal Commissioner, Chandigarh Municipal Corporation and Sunny Singh, Founder, RoundGlass Wellbeing Pvt Ltd.

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CONFERENCE REPORT

Inaugural Session: Innovation for a Better Future

“Dissemination of technology is very fast in this country. Robust, cost effective and user friendly technology will be adopted by everyone.”

A VENU PRASAD Principal Secretary Local Government Government of Punjab

“We have come out with 24*7 water supplies, projects in health and skill development.

Cities looking at being smart need to have a holistic outlook.”

AJOY SHARMA Secretary Local Government Government of Punjab

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CONFERENCE REPORT

Inaugural Session: Innovation for a Better Future “At Chandigarh Municipal Corporation, we are working on ideas like how to maintain and sustain the usage and availability of water, creating renewable energy, use of mass rapid transport system along with public bike sharing or cycling system, waste management etc.”

KAMAL KISHORE YADAV Municipal Commissioner Chandigarh Municipal Corporation

“Innovation has to be collaborative.

Anyone can come up with an innovative idea, but to execute and implement it, cooperation from all members and departments is necessary.”

TL SATYAPRAKASH Secretary, Department of Home and Director, Skill Development Department Government of Haryana

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CONFERENCE REPORT

Policy Makers & Industry Leaders Speak “Healthcare today is not a caring system, it’s a business. On the other hand, the idea of holistic wellbeing includes physical, mental, social, emotional, spiritual and financial wellbeing. We are planning to provide holistic wellbeing to the people so that their journey of life becomes a journey of wellbeing.”

SUNNY SINGH Founder RoundGlass Wellbeing Pvt Ltd

“There are two technologies that are very prominent these days and are going to change the landscape of our innovative thinking: one is the smartphone that helps me interact efficiently with the IT system and the other is cloud which helps me organise all my data at one place.”

RAJESH KUMAR Head of Technology Strategy (Public Sector) Microsoft India

“India is undergoing transition from being a data poor country to a data rich country. It will take another 5 years to complete this transition. With AI, ML & IOT in place, government functions will be deeply impacted. ” KAMAL JAIN Sr General Manager National E-Governance Division

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CONFERENCE REPORT

Policy Makers & Industry Leaders Speak “IT applications are being exhaustively used in the Uttarakhand healthcare sector. The Health Dashboard Uttarakhand website provides real time information on the manpower and resources available to hospitals in all districts of Uttarakhand.”

DR KULDEEP SINGH MARTOLIA Assistant Director and Officer Incharge IT, National Health Mission Government of Uttarakhand

“A smart city can become smarter only when it has more and more IT embedded into its transport, health, education, etc. systems.

Increased use of IT means more data and the challenge is to manage and secure this data.”

MUNISH CHANDAN SeMT Head Department of IT and Electronics, Government of Haryana

“The manipulation of land and property records hurts the poorest to the richest person across the country. We need to make our property and land records accurate. In this regard we are making use of technology such as drones & UAVs to provide digitised maps of properties to the people and authorities.”

GHANSHYAM BANSAL IT Advisor Government of Haryana

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AUGUST 2019

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CONFERENCE REPORT

“The future of human race would depend on how you well one can update the skills so as to keep up with the demands and not become redundant.”

LT. GEN (RETIRED) BS DHALIWAL Former Advisor Technology to Hon’ble CM Punjab

“Blockchain started with payment transfers but now we see its use in government land registry and records. Efforts are being made to democratise AI and bring it to the common citizens. We have seen numerous examples of both text and conversational bots being introduced to the citizens from an e-governance perspective.”

VIKRAM MALHOTRA Solution Specialist Data and AI, Microsoft India

“14 of the 20 most polluted cities in the world belong to India. We can learn about the ways to mitigate this challenge by the initiatives taken by the government of United Kingdom to cut down pollution in the UK.” JAVAID MALLAH Advisor Energy and Prosperity Deputy British High Commission

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CONFERENCE REPORT

“Naman Goyal talks about implementing smart IT solutions in the transportation sector of Punjab.”

NAMAN GOYAL Systems Analyst cum I.T. Head, Nodal Officer (E-procurement, E-Pass), PEPSU Road Transport Corporation, Patiala

“Smart cities or technology is a doubleedged sword for those working in mental health. There are a plethora of apps available dealing with anxiety and stress but technology has also become a cause of stress. You cannot take away technology from children because that would lead to depression.”

DR PRAKRITI PODDAR Managing Trustee Poddar Foundation & Advisor, RoundGlass Wellbeing Pvt Ltd PROF DALIP SINGH Additional State Project Director Rashtriya Uchchatar Shiksha Abhiyan (RUSA)

Moderating the panel discussion on technological Innovation in Smart Cities, Prof.

Singh raised some pertinent questions to the pannelists regarding dealing with mental health while working under stressful circumstances, technology deployment in transport sector, energy and power generation schemes of the government and overall urban development initiatives taken by them and others.

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AUGUST 2019

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CONFERENCE REPORT

Policy Makers & Industry Leaders Speak “We have all seen tourism advertisements aired by different state governments.

Punjab doesn’t have one. Despite of that we have been doing reasonably well. In 2011 we were ranked 25th and now we are ranked 11th nationally. Both domestic and international footfalls have increased more than the national average.”

BASANTA RAJKUMAR Executive Director Punjab and Heritage Tourism Promotion Board

“The government organisations have embraced technology to provide better services to the citizens. The Department of School Education, Government of Haryana has launched apps to monitor workforce, teacher and student attendance.”

PARMOD KUMAR State Education Officer Haryana

Tata Communications Limited - Session: Building Digital India in Era of Cloud

AMIT A SINGH

Vertical Sales Head Government Business, Tata Communications Limited Speaking at the Roundtable Discussion on ‘Building Digital India in era of Cloud’ being attended by the speakers and dignitaries.

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CONFERENCE REPORT

Industry Presentation Microsoft

Tata Communication

“Cloud is the way to go! You don’t have to spend crores of rupees to buy the equipment. Its all pay as you go, you don’t have to worry about equipment inactivity.

Most cloud vendors provide payment based service level agreements (SLAs) which means that in case cloud is not able to meet your SLAs, they return your money for that period of time. Azure is the Microsoft cloud.”

JATINDER PAL SINGH Director Technical Sales, Intelligent Cloud Microsoft India focused on the progress of technology over the years.

“Tata Communications has 14 data centres in India to support and do the enablement for the cloud based services.

We also have 6 global network security centres and all of our security solutions are cloud based so whenever we require any security solution to be implemented it can be done on the spot.”

SOUBHANICK ROUTH

Regional Head for Business Solutions Tata Communications Limited spoke on Tata Communication’s role in enabling smarter and connected India.

Pannel Discussion: Impact of Emerging Technologies - How Artificial Intelligence, Block Chain is Changing the Landscape Across all Sectors and Transforming Governance

Lt. Gen (retired) BS Dhaliwal, Former Advisor Technology to Punjab CM; Vikram Malhotra, Solution Specialist, Data and AI, Microsoft India; Munish Chandan, SeMT head, Department of IT and Electronics, Government of Haryana; Ghanshyam Bansal, IT Advisor to Government of Haryana; Dr Poornima Chauhan, Secretary, Department of Administrative Reforms, Languages, Art and Culture , Government of Himachal Pradesh; Padma Jaiswal, Secretary, Department of Information Technology, Government of Puducherry; Kamal Jain, Sr. General Manager, National E-Governance Division; Dr Kuldeep Singh Martolia, Assistant Director and Officer Incharge IT, National Health Mission, Government of Uttarakhand and Amit A Singh, Vertical Sales Head, Government Business, Tata Communications Limited spoke at the pannel discussion.

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CONFERENCE REPORT

Pannel Discussion: Impact of Emerging Technologies “We have shifted to cloud system in Puducherry for service delivery in the education sector and health sector. We have implemented concepts of Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Analytical Reasoning etc. to infer data.”

PADMA JAISWAL Secretary Department of Information Technology, Government of Puducherry

“Data plays an important role to measure district performances.

We have created a District Good Governance Dashboard.”

DR POORNIMA CHAUHAN Secretary, Department of Administrative Reforms, Languages, Art and Culture Government of Himachal Pradesh

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CONFERENCE REPORT

Special Presentation VINOD KUMAR Additional Principal Chief Conservator of Forests Haryana

Kumar spoke on how technology has been implemented to create a green city. He also talked about promoting ecotourism in the state.

Pannel Discussion: Smart Cities - The Roadblocks, Solutions and Way Ahead and Innovation in Healthcare - Opportunities and Challenges

Javaid Mallah, Advisor Energy and Prosperity, Deputy British High Commission; Naman Goyal, Systems Analyst cum I.T. head, Nodal Officer (E-procurement, E-Pass), PEPSU Road Transport Corporation, Patiala; Dr Prakriti Poddar, Managing Trustee, Poddar Foundation & Advisor, RoundGlass Wellbeing Pvt Ltd; Rajesh Kumar, Head of Technology Strategy (Public Sector) Microsoft India and Dr Ravi Gupta, CEO, Elets Technomedia Pvt Ltd.

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CONFERENCE REPORT

Industry Session: Microsoft “The connect between leaders and their field employees is very important. Access to realtime information is necessary to monitor a large workforce.

This is where Microsoft Kaizala comes in. It helps empower each organisation and community through purposeful chat.”

BHAVAYA GUPTA Technology Strategist State Government (N), Microsoft

Closing Session: Innovation for Better Governance

Prof Dalip Singh, Additional State Project Director, Rashtriya Uchchatar Shiksha Abhiyan (RUSA); T Bhooblan, Municipal Commissioner, Tumkur City Corporation, Karnataka; Rajesh Kumar, Head of Technology Strategy (Public Sector) Microsoft India; Parmod Kumar, State Education Officer, Haryana; Basanta Rajkumar, Executive Director, Punjab and Heritage Tourism Promotion Board; Amneet P Kumar, Secretary and Mission Director (NHM), Department of Health, Government of Haryana

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CONFERENCE REPORT

Closing Session: Innovation for Better Governance “Haryana has launched ANMOL for the health benefits of women and children. It is a tab based application which tracks the execution of our projects and maps all health indicators.”

AMNEET P KUMAR Secretary and Mission Director (NHM), Department of Health Government of Haryana

“Municipal administration is one of the major stakeholders in urban governance. It is the responsibility of the municipal administrators to create and sustain a conducive environment for business as well as public life.”

T BHOOBLAN Municipal Commissioner Tumkur City Corporation Karnataka

Delegates Attending the Sessions

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