Newsletter – February 2019

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Updates from February 2019

Namaste from Vision India Foundation. February was a busy month – Governance Cafe 2.0 brought out the lessons from the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, conference presentations, alumni reunions, paying homage to our martyrs, and a lot more in the following update. It should be a quick 5 mins read.

Homage to the Martyrs

Following the suicide attack on our CRPF jawans at Pulwama, VIF family across the country paid homage to our martyrs. The VIF executive team, fellows and alumni stand strongly in support of our armed forces and the Government of India to take appropriate action. VIF team contributed to the ‘Bharat ke Veer’ fund and also visited the newly inaugurated National War Memorial.

Policy Watch

There is too much of politics and too little policy in our news feed. To address this imbalance, VIF team sifts through various important news sources to gather the most important policy updates – every week. This is published as ‘Policy Watch’ every Sunday. All the editions of Policy Watch are accessible online. One can signup for these updates on WhatsApp here

Governance Cafe

‘Governance Cafe’, is a series of discussions with people who shape key policy decisions in the Indian government. The second speaker in this series was Shri Parameswaran Iyer. Sh Iyer is Secretary, Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation, Government of India and is leading its flagship Swachh Bharat Mission and the National Rural Drinking Water Program. A 1981 batch IAS officer, he joined the World Bank in 2009 and returned to India from Washington DC to lead the SBM. Sh Iyer elaborated on how SBM has taken sanitation coverage in India from 38% to 99% in the past 4.5 years.

Zonal Alumni Reunions

The alumni reunions for Bengaluru, Chennai and Hyderabad Zones took place last month. Alumni reunions keep everyone connected to the happenings at VIF, allow for networking and career progression. VIF alumni committee will soon be formed to enable deeper engagement with all our alumni. In February we hit the mark of 1000 alumni of VIF. This number is increasing rapidly.

International Young Scholars’ Conference

Arunima Gupta and Paras Ratna from the Centre of Strategic and Foreign Relations at Vision India Foundation presented their research at the International Young Scholars’ Conference on “The Indo-Pacific: Political, Security and Economic Dimensions,” organized by Nehru Memorial Museum & Library, The Japan Foundation, New Delhi and ICRIER.

Arunima spoke on the Indo-US Relations & its implications on the Indo-Pacific, and Paras spoke on the Dynamics of Quad in the Indo-Pacific.

Featured Fellow of the Month

Supriya Patil is a development associate at Vision India Foundation. She is an aspiring social and political leader. Supriya is originally from Sangli, Maharashtra and is passionate about working with people at the grassroots. She intends to dedicate herself to the transformation of Sangli, her home district. Supriya has established an organization “Vardhini”. In the last 3 months, Supriya has reached more than 500 women, 1000 students and 500 farmers of her region. She conducted various awareness programs related to health, hygiene, skill development of women, youth and farmers.

Featured Alumnus of the Month

Mayank Jain is an alumnus of Good Governance Yatra 2015. He is a social entrepreneur in the agriculture domain. He is the co-founder of MicroX Foundation, which works in training and capacity building of farmers through in-house developed critical intervention modules. Till now they have already facilitated 100+ pieces of training to 1000+ farmers in Bihar. They have also directly worked with 750 farmers in 3 years in onion cultivation which resulted in income increment of 150-300% for the season.