This Talk in the Town features Mr. Mital Khetani, who has been working for animals for the past 18 years with the help of his NGO Shree Karuna Foundation Trust (Animal Helpline) in Rajkot- largest organization in India providing free on-site veterinary treatment. During this conversation, Mr. Khetani shares why he believes in encouraging people to work for animals by 'showing them how to' rather than 'just saying how to'. He also talks about some of the initiatives by the NGO that inspired the state government to launch similar initiatives for the entire state.

This Talk in the Town features the founder of ‘The Urban Lab’- Mr. Abhijit Lokre. With an experience of over twenty years, Abhijit mentors and leads teams to provide practical solutions for creating liveable cities. During this conversation, Abhijit speaks about how the people of Bhuj are being actively engaged to shape the future of transportation and mobility in the city. He also talks about some of the eye opening instances that made him realize the importance of engaging with the citizens and what the small cities actually need for successful transportation interventions.

This conversation of Talk in the town features Ms. Shefali Dudhbade, a freelance architect and founding member of Swachh Association Nagpur- an NGO that works in the field of waste management in and around the city. Environmentalist at heart, Shefali has been successfully treating 90% of her household waste for the past 10 years and credits her upbringing for this. During this conversation, Shefali speaks about how coming together of like minded people led to the formation of Swachh Association as well as Anviti, an environmental pressure group and  the importance of sensitizing people about waste management at household level. She talks about different initiatives and pilot projects undertaken at area and city level, role of local authorities and the stories that made an impact. She also shares some simple waste management tips that can be practiced in our day to day life.

This Talk in the Town features Mr. Lokesh Ohri founder of the citizen group Been there, Doon That (BTDT). Over the years BTDT has been organizing mostly free heritage walks for citizens around the Doon valley. The conversation left the Nagrika team very hopeful about the potential of citizens' voices to be heard. During the conversation, Mr. Ohri speaks about the genesis of the idea for BTDT, stories about how the community has been able to initiate changes in the valley and also make the voices of citizens heard by various decision makers. He talks about how to find opportunities to get citizens engaged with the city and its future. Do give the stories a listen.

The inaugural conversation of the Talk in the Town. It was held in September 2021.

This talk with Mr. Debasish Sen, MD, HIDCO, is in context of our study 'Small City Mobility', on the state of mobility in small cities, the future aspirations, and opportunities & challenges in creating sustainable green transport and mobility solutions for smaller cities and identifying the role of citizens in shaping mobility solutions for their cities.

Nagrika uses knowledge to enable citizen-led transformation in small cities.  We aim to bring small cities to the mainstream of the urban development discourse, contextualise the problems that small cities face and develop context specific solutions for them. Through Talk in The Town, we gather perspectives of small city actors on the relationship between citizens and policies, how this relationship can be made stronger, and how citizens can inform policy making.

Speaker: Tarun Sharma, Co-founder, Nagrika