Sylvia's Journal

Yesterday morning I had the extraordinary experience of sitting in a meeting in Ghaziabad (in Uttar Pradesh) while also sitting in my hotel room in Niamey. A century ago this would have been considered magic, or at least impossible. But thanks to WhatsApp it was possible.

My Indian colleagues are on an exploratory mission, while visiting their family in Uttar Pradesh for Diwali. The exploration is about better understanding what the municipalities are struggling with so that we can finetune our proposed design to the Department of Urban Development. I am very grateful for my Indian team mates – they find out things I could not possibly have learned from a distance. It’s humbling to realize how little I know about what is going on nearly halfway around the world. 

I learned from our graphic designer member of the team that the Dutch are very involved in waste removal and clean water in Uttar Pradesh – he was scribing a meeting and made a fabulous graphic about it. Of course, the Dutch would be involved in waste and water management, coming from a country that is partially below sea level. It has led to extraordinary creativity and a very specialized expertise.

We still don’t have the contract in India and it may not come anytime soon as our proposal has been winding its way through the bureaucratic maze while we are busy learning directly from stakeholders about the complexity of the urban renewal work – it is not just about aligning the departments within the municipal government, but also aligning and mobilizing the multiple actors outside the municipal confines 

So far, our design is just focusing on the internal alignment, which we assumed is a start (which will be confirmed or disconfirmed by my team mates once the interviews are completed). Our initial design is based on the premise that there is much collective learning that needs to be engineered, between departments in one municipality and between municipalities to learn from each other (among other things on how to deal with all these outside forces, especially the ones that create troubles for them). We’ll see what happens, it has been a wonderful experience so far and the relationship with my Indian team mates is priceless, no matter what the final outcome will be. Win or lose, there will not be failure.