The First Week

It is the end of my first week and I feel that my decision to work at OneWorld was the right one. The week began slowly but by the end I was attending a notable conference. I will be writing an article summarizing and commenting on the conference that I hope to be published on the United Nations Millennium Campaign website for Asia-Pacific.

The conference was entitled “The People’s Mid-Term Appraisal of the 11^th Five-Year Plan”. Shortly after independence from the British, India setup a Planning Commission whose mission it was to design five-year plans that not only set targets for developmental progress, but also committed to program implementation that would work towards achieving these goals. It is half way through the 11^th five-year plan and it is the first time that the people, grassroots organizations, citizens and other interested individuals, have demanded to conduct their own mid-term appraisal of the plan.

The conference was great exposure for me as it covered various topics, brought in numerous grassroots organizations, planning commission members including the head of the planning commission, Dr. Montek Singh Ahluwalia, and interested citizens from 28 states in India. The topics covered varied from governance to minorities to health and education.