A dome of Denominator Thinking

The Chief Minister’s Good Governance Associate (CMGGA) programme opens many opportunities for an Associate to explore in both the private and public sectors depending on their acquired skills. One can work in the areas of consulting, public policy, governance, or with NGOs, corporates, etc. 

One thing that I have learned after working on a scale and citizen-focused services with the CMGGA programme is that your vision is enlarged to impact at scale and do something sustainable that can bring change in people’s lives. You begin to act as a visionary leader who has a clear idea of how the future should look. You set out concrete steps to bring a vision to life, and then lead a team of people in that direction. So, finding the right opportunity depends upon your vision and skill set.

After my CMGGA tenure, I had multiple choices to work but I chose to solve the most challenging and complex problem of dropouts in India by building an organization named Anubhuti. Anubhuti works for underprivileged children who are out of school and dropouts aiming to ensure that all children have equal opportunities to access quality education in collaboration with the Government of Haryana. 

This will ensure that every student can grow to be an empathetic and action-oriented citizen of society. We want to create this change by bringing the talented youth from the local community to work at the grassroots levels and bridge the existing gap between the community and schools/education system through a fellowship model. 

In the long term, our fellowship model aims to create local changemakers/ reformers as a catalyst to drive systemic level change to bring educational equity.

With the CMGGA programme, I have learned how a system works, accepted the complexity and focused on improving it. It became your style of work. You just don’t focus on the problem, you understand it and then strategize to solve it. During the programme, we as a cohort of 25 professional individuals are provided with a high support system to implement the flagship policies from the State Government but when you transect the role after the program it takes time to understand the ground reality. 

There is a disparity in the role you perform because after the year is over, there is no power and strong support which helps you to work on the ground. You have to create your support system on your own.

We have high potential Associates who are working in diverse domains. We can connect and share opportunities around them. I found that there are talented and skilled people who are looking for the right space and position but aren’t able to do it as they are not aware of the opportunity. So there should be high-level networking, sharing, and awareness of a working entity with a shared purpose. Working with new people from different areas also opens up channels that would otherwise remain closed. Finding new ways to communicate, share information is hugely important to the success of any career, and creating a more cohesive, open workplace benefits everyone.

Also, some of the Associates believed in the vision of Ashoka university through the CMGGA program. After the program, they continue to spread the vision and provide support to the government of Haryana. This is the core responsibility of the organization to support, endorse, promote and encourage such individuals and organizations.