HISTORY

The project emerged from our engagement with a participatory planning process in the city of Chennai. Researchers from the Centre for Development Finance helped to organize a public consultation in February of 2009 to enable workers from the informal sector to contribute to the City Development Plan, a new plan that was being created for the city under a central government urban renewal scheme called the JNNURM. As we were interacting with informal sector workers and workers’ groups, we realized that there was not enough publicly available information about the projects of the NURM to enable residents to understand its implications on their day-to-day lives and on the city as a whole.

As a result, we decided to create a project to collect data and information on city issues, as well as a tool to share that data. After our first phase of data collection, Transparent Chennai was launched in October of 2010. Although the project began with a focus on the JNNURM, it soon shifted to an issue-based approach. Depending on the interests and capacities of our researchers and interns and requests from citizens’ groups, we have collected and mapped data on various civic issues, including slums, toilets and sanitation, solid waste management, transport, and others. Through our experiences working with citizens and citizens groups to create and disseminate data, we have also developed expertise in participatory planning and data collection processes.

Our current challenge is in ensuring that our research and data contributes to change in the city – this means making sure that it reaches those people who can use it, including citizens advocating for change, policymakers and elected legislators at all levels of government, the general public, and the media. We welcome your input on how we can make our work more effective.