Democracy Connect

Why Democracy Connect? Guiding Principles Our History

Why Democracy Connect?

Public leaders can be powerful agents of social change in a democracy. And yet, despite their focus on development issues, they are often handicapped by a lack of professional expertise, management support and even relevant information. Democracy Connect recognizes this gap and wants to better equip these public leaders to deliver on their core development objectives. We take a hands-on approach and work closely with them – from providing targeted information on upcoming legislation to providing international execution expertise for specific development projects.

Central to our ability to deliver on this promise are some major emerging trends. Development experts increasingly recognize the importance of political will and have a new-found willingness to work directly with public leaders. Private sector professionals in the country and the diaspora have begun to express a strong desire to contribute their skills towards development projects that can impact millions. And finally, there’s been a rapid emergence of new technology to tap into these resources across the world.

Democracy Connect is a non-profit development consultancy that brings all of these pieces together.

We believe the scale of potential impact is immense (a single member of the Indian Parliament represents a population ranging from 1 million to 5 million). Our vision is that through our efforts, over the next five years a critical mass of leaders from across the political spectrum will emerge as champions of change in areas as diverse as education, health, livelihoods, microfinance and governance.

Our goals are to:
• create a learning environment for India's democratically elected leadership and a changed resource-incentive framework which empowers them to perform better on governance/development
• empower public leaders to be champions of development issues and increase their responsiveness to their constituency
• create several platforms using new and traditional communication channels, where elected representatives can interact with, identify issues of concern and seek feedback from citizens
• provide a legitimate non-partisan platform for individuals/experts/organizations to engage in the governance/political/policy formation process

Guiding Principles

• Be non-partisan
• Be fact-driven, not ideology-driven
• Bring the highest quality expertise globally to bear on the issues that the political leaders wish to understand and pursue
• Produce knowledge products that are personalized, relevant and timely for the needs of the political leaders we work with
• Provide a service that remains free or highly affordable for political leaders

Our History

This initiative started in May 2004 in Delhi when Sandeep Dikshit (Member of Parliament, East Delhi) conceptualized a professional knowledge support team when he was elected to the parliament for the first time.

Nidhi Tewari joined him in this experiment and with the support of the UNDP, set up Resource Center for Legislators (RCL) in Jan 2005. RCL began providing research and information inputs to Indian parliamentarians across the political spectrum on issues focused on human development. In Jan 2007, RCL joined hands with Democracy Connect, an effort initiated by Anshuman Bapna to formalize the approach to involving volunteers across the world in governance-related development work.

We have now been operational for over two years. Over these years, we’ve worked with over 50 Indian parliamentarians across the political spectrum on important legislation (including such landmark legislation as the Right to Information Act and the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act) as well as issues like education, employment, health and microfinance, offering the expertise of numerous mass organisations, academicians, industry associations and civil society groups.

Our work is currently supported by Sir Dorabji Tata Trust, UNDP and miscellaneous individual donations - notably Mr. Arijit Dutta and Ms. Urvi Piramal. In the past, our work has also been supported by fellowships from The Livelihood School, Hyderabad. Our team consists of individuals with significant experience in both the government, non government and the private sector.