Keynote Speaker

Gayathri Vasudevan
Chief Impact Officer
Sambhav Foundation

Gayathri Vasudevan has a doctorate in Development Studies with more than 23 years of consistent work for the underprivileged in India.  A research scholar on gender issues, she has spent the initial years of her career in rural India, working at the grass root levels, during which time she consulted with international developmental organisations such as UNDP, UNICEF, NORAD, and the World Bank, among others, working on development initiatives.

In 1999, Gayathri joined the ILO, a UN agency dealing with labour issues, with the mission to make a difference in poverty-stricken nations of the world.  Later, she co-founded Sambhav Foundation in 2006, with a vision to enable livelihoods of people working in the informal sector through Education, Employability and Entrepreneurship programs.  So far, her work has impacted the lives of more than half a million in India.

Panel 1: Policy capacity and incorporating behavioural insights

The use of behavioural insights to effect desired changes has gained popularity in public policy in recent years, and it is now a major subject that informs government interventions. Among other things, they can assist in the diagnosis of citizens’ psychological barriers and examine how they interact with conventional practices, the provision of government services, and the social environment in which individuals make decisions. What kind of policy capacity needs to be developed in order to incorporate behavioural insights into public policy?

Policy capacity includes skills and competencies that address operational, analytical and political dimensions. Policymakers use data and evidence to make programmes and policies more effective. A substantial level of policy capacity is required of government organisations tasked with creating and carrying out public policy in order to guarantee its success. However, policy capacity is not uniform across all sectors / departments of the government. This primary shortfall of capacity is exacerbated by the fact that not every stakeholder involved in the design and implementation of policy is equally motivated, skilled or enabled to use data and evidence for policy making. In such a situation, the use of behavioural insights to inform policy becomes an additional challenge.

This panel will aim to address the importance of policy capacity and its role in promoting policy actors’ abilities and motivation for effective policy implementation; the role of behaviour science in the process of creating, implementing, and assessing effective policies and other key questions.

Apoorve Khandelwal
Senior Programme Lead
Council on Energy, Environment and Water

Apoorve leads the Sustainable Food Systems program at the Council on Energy, Environment and Water. He has invested almost a decade working on different sustainability challenges in the arena of bioeconomy (food, feed, fibre, and fuel), approaching them from different angles. While Apoorve has developed advanced biofuel and biomaterial technologies for a Fortune 500 and developed policy recommendations as part of satellite policy-research teams set up by Govt. of India, he has also led strategy consulting projects to advise agro-food organisations in Europe, North America, Africa, and Asia on a variety of sustainability issues. However, the consistent theme throughout this journey has been systems thinking, interdisciplinarity, and collaborative action.

Nila Mohanan, IAS
Joint Secretary
Department of Personnel & Training

Nila is a civil servant in the Indian Administrative Services (IAS) with over 16 years of experience as a public policy practitioner in governance and strategic management. Her core competencies are in public advocacy, public policy formulation and implementation, budget planning, innovative public service delivery, multi-stakeholder policy modelling, and building cross-sectoral partnerships. Nila’s areas of specific expertise in public policy formulation and implementation include human resource management, healthcare, education, industry and commerce, citizen service delivery and change management. Nila holds an MPhil in International Politics (CIPOD, SIS, JNU). 

Shagata Mukherjee
Deputy Director, Centre for Social and Behavioral Change (CSBC), Ashoka University
Academic Lead of Behavioural Insights Unit (BIU) of India, NITI Aayog

Prior to this position, Shagata was an Associate Professor of Economics and Public Policy at the Meghnad Desai Academy of Economics. He was also a Visiting Fellow at the Mumbai School of Economics and Public Policy at the University of Mumbai and an Affiliated Faculty at the Centre for Experimental Social Sciences (CESS) Nuffield -FLAME. He received the Vernon L. Smith Young Talent Award in Experimental Finance for his research on gender and microfinance. He is a co-founder of the Mumbai Behavioural Network.

Shagata holds a PhD in Behavioural and Experimental Economics from the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia State University, a master’s degree in Economics from Jawaharlal Nehru University and a B.Sc. in Economics from Presidency College.

Panel 2: International perspectives : Role of CB agencies in developing BeSci capacities of public officials

Nations around the world have set up Nudge Units and Behavioural Insights Units to identify the barriers and enablers to policy interventions through BeSci approaches and facilitate implementation. Alongside these, there are training institutes that focus on the implementation of existing and new policies and run training programmes for public administrators and policy makers. Both borrow insights from disciplines such as psychology, economics, anthropology, sociology, neuroscience and cognitive science as well as the professional disciplines of public administration and planning (collectively referred to as BeSci). The CB agencies play an  important role in developing policy capacity as well as the capacity to deal with challenges during the implementation of BI+EI informed policies and programmes including their assessment.

This panel will aim to address if these agencies design their course offerings and curricula, and if  there are state policies in place to direct the capacity building of public administrators as well as the courses they offer. Many organisations like the UN agencies, various NGOs and civil society organisations around the globe are putting out free asynchronous course content. In this situation, what value do these institutions bring to the capacity building ecosystem?

Christopher Ng
Managing Director
Civil Service College (CSC), United Kingdom

At CSC, Chris has overall responsibility for training operations, partnerships, finance and communications. He works closely with the Chief Executive in the strategic development of the college to ensure CSC’s learning solutions reflect the changing demands of the public sector in the UK and abroad. With experience in collaborating with both UK and international public bodies, Chris specialises in designing and managing the delivery of capacity- and capability- building programmes.  Since joining CSC in 2013, Chris has partnered with over 15 governments across the Commonwealth and several non-Commonwealth countries. He has established a strong working relationship with Asian governments, particularly with India and Taiwan’s government training institutions, maintaining these partnerships since 2016 and 2018 respectively. Chris has organised training programmes for delegations from Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mauritius, Pakistan, Singapore, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, UAE and Vietnam. Leading the International team, he has successfully delivered training to groups exceeding 100 delegates in a single cohort. Chris holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Warwick and a master’s degree from the London School of Economics.

Dominic Byarugaba
CEO and Executive Director
African Institute for Capacity Development (AICAD), Kenya

Dominic has been with the African Institute for Capacity Development (AICAD) since 2014. The AICAD brings together Public and Private Universities in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda that subscribe to AICAD’s mandate on top notch Research, Training, Extension and Information Repository Platforms.

Dominic holds a PhD in Pharmacognosy (MUST/UCT), a Master’s in Ethnobotany, and a Bachelor’s in Botany and Chemistry from Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda. He has vast experience in research with a focus on indigenous knowledge and citizen science innovations with respect to pharmacognosy and shared standards in orthodox or conventional structures of therapy.

He  is published widely and is an Editor with the Blackwell and Cambridge Publishing Houses. He is passionate about mentorship in emerging issues through the vast network of global, continental, regional and national organisations.

Voravate Chonlasin
Executive Director, AIT Extension, Asian Institute of Technology
Director, United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR), International Training Centre for Authorities and Leaders (CIFAL) Bangkok

Voravate leads the AIT Extension of the Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand, to provide academic service on executive education, organisation development and capacity enhancement in the recent development areas, such as climate change, SDGs, financial risk management, green and circular economy, municipality development, etc. He also serves as Senior Program Specialist in which he takes a leading role in the design and development of capacity building programmes to enhance the capacity of public sector organisations in developing countries. 

Voravate manages and directs programmatic teams to implement capacity development and training activities in the areas of performance-based management, public policy and administration, monitoring and evaluation and human resources development (HRD). 

Voravate earned his B.Sc. in Soil Science from King’s Mongkut Institute of Technology Lad Krabang (KMITL) in 1989 and M.Sc. in Regional and Rural Development Planning of AIT School of Environment, Resources and Development (SERD) in 1994.

Panel 3: Role of leadership in driving behaviour change

Leaders succeed by influencing others – their team members, organisational colleagues, other internal and external stakeholders, and the community at large – to do better and do differently. In other words, the primary role of a leader is to change the behaviour of the people in their ecosystem. On the one hand, leaders will have to drive behaviour change within their own teams, getting them to challenge their existing norms, attitudes, and ways of working, and respond to the ever-evolving needs of the constituencies they serve. On the other hand, leaders in the public sphere will also have to influence external stakeholders and the community at large, and in areas like sustainability and climate action, urban transformation, inequality, and others, topics that are fraught with multiple ideologies and conflicting perspectives.

This panel will aim to address imperative questions like what characteristics / attributes do leaders need to possess to drive behaviour change and how can these characteristics / attributes be built in potential leaders? How to measure behaviour change and what are some in-process measures we can use to measure behaviour change?

Amit Narayan
Partner
Control Risks

At Control Risks, Amit has led the firm’s engagements with clients, partners and associates in India and across South Asia since January 2018. He holds a seat on the Asia Pacific Regional Executive Committee.

Based in Mumbai, Amit has over 25 years of experience working across India as well as across Asia Pacific managing operational risks for multinational firms. He has advised clients on political and regulatory risk, pre-investment risk, public policy, labour disputes and stakeholder mapping across the sub-continent.

Amit has worked with multinational firms such as Edelman, Vodafone, The Walt Disney Company and Cable & Wireless previously. He has conducted over 100 days of crisis management and risk mitigation strategy workshops as well as scenario planning exercises with corporations. He holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from the Shri Ram College of Commerce, Delhi University and a master’s degree in business economics from Delhi University. He is CQI and IRCA Certified Business Continuity Management Systems (ISO 22301:2019) Lead Auditor.

Manish Dubey
Chief – Practice
Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS)

Manish is a governance and institutional development expert with nearly 25 + years of consulting experience with national and state governments, multilateral and bilateral development partners, INGOs, and philanthropies. His experience spans the rural and urban water supply and sanitation (WSS), urban development, natural resource management, and rural livelihood sectors across 20 Indian states. Among his clients have been the World Bank, UNICEF, Asian Development Bank, Australian Agency for International Development, DFID, Global Sanitation Fund, and Swedish International Development Agency.

Key areas of Manish’s work include institutional design and strengthening, programme design and strategy, reform management support, strategic stakeholder communication and sector, portfolio and programme level result

Ramesh Ramaswamy
Vice President, Business Head, APAC
BoschSDS

With a career spanning 25 years, Ramesh has successful experiences delivering results in challenging business situations, complex organisational structures and with extremely diverse cultural landscapes, across various domains like Automotive, Industrial Manufacturing and Aerospace. He has successfully crafted new portfolios in Digital i4.0 solutions & Data Analytics, established successful Enterprise System Services and Automotive Product Engineering businesses in various geographies across India, Germany, Mexico & China. 

Behaviour Change Communication – performance

At the end of the panel discussions on Day 1, Team Green Stage will be performing a street play, “Kasa Nova“, which emphasises the need for behavioural change in waste management practices in cities.

Through “Kasa Nova,” they aim to demonstrate to the attendees how IEC activities can inspire communities to take actionable steps towards better waste management and environmental stewardship. The attendees will have the opportunity to interact with the performers to ask questions about their experiences with community engagement.

Team Green Stage has performed more than 500 street plays since its inception in 2009, significantly impacting various communities and organisations. The team has performed several plays for Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), Karnataka State Pollution Control Board (KSPCB), Kidwai Hospital, and Namma Bangalore Foundation, among others. 

Learning Exchange Hub: Cases from Practice

The ‘Learning Exchange Hub: Cases from Practice’ is an interactive platform, curated to inspire dialogues and action-oriented learning among the community of practice on designing behaviourally-informed interventions in the development sector. In this session, Social and Behaviour Change (SBC) experts, sectoral practitioners, and Capacity Development practitioners are invited to present cases and provide insights into the design and implementation aspects of programmes, policies, and communication campaigns in their respective sectors of work. 

This session also offers an opportunity for all participants to: 

• reflect on their own practice and share their experiences and innovative efforts in this direction with the experts and starters alike
• gain insights from experts within their sector, as well as across disciplines, on how on-ground implementation is influenced by context-specific behavioural insights, like norms, perceptions, and attitudes. 
• engage in creative brainstorming to co-create ideas for more effective programme design, capacity development, and communication campaigns 
• explore avenues for collaboration

Sectoral Experts:

Learning Workshop: Concepts, methods, and tools for designing behavioural interventions

The learning workshop offers a hands-on toolkit-based approach to application of behavioural insights to intervention design in the development sector. The workshop will introduce behavioural biases to the participants through a game-based learning approach, then emphasising on designing nudges with its role in mitigating biases. The participants will be exposed to the four-step process of application of behaviour insights in India – from identifying behaviour barriers, designing behavioural interventions, methods of evaluation, and scaling up strategies. The participants will be provided with worksheets for hands-on activity and essential reference materials to ensure maximum uptake of learning and transferability to their sectors of work.

This workshop is free of cost and is open to all. Workshop attendees will be given a Certificate of participation.

Facilitators:

Shagata Mukherjee
Director, Centre for Social and Behaviour Change, Ashoka University
Academic Lead, Behavioural Insights Unit of India, NITI Aayog

Akarshik Banerjee
Researcher, Centre for Social and Behaviour Change
Ashoka University