AN UPDATE FROM FDRI


May 15, 2007

Friends,

This is turning out to be a very interesting and important time in FDRI’s history.

As Dr. Jayaprakash Narayan, who has been associated with FDRI from the beginning, decided to enter electoral politics and launch the Lok Satta party, the Board of Directors of FDRI had to reassess the goals and objectives of the organization.

FDRI's main objective remains to be promoting governance and democratic reforms in India. FDRI will continue to collaborate with all organizations with a similar objective, and review all requests for support on a case-by-case basis. Any support provided to any organization in India would require an assurance that the support provided would not be utilized to support any political parties.

The Board of Directors also decided to revise the strategic plan for FDRI. The Board felt that it should shift its focus from being a grantor organization to India based non-governmental organizations to promoting more awareness activities in US and providing intellectual support for the various governance reforms activities in India.

The Board of Directors has decided to conduct, in collaboration with an academic institution of repute, an annual series of high-profile strategic conclaves on furtherance of governance and electoral reforms in India. We are fortunate that the Center for South Asia Studies (CSAS) at University of California, Berkeley, under the leadership of Dr. Raka Ray, has agreed to partner with us.

We are pleased to organize the first FDRI /Berkeley Seminar on Indian Democracy on May 24 and 25 at the University of Berkeley Campus. This seminar, which we hope to be the first of many to come, will focus on Local Governments and Empowerment. The participants in the Seminar include the Union Minister for Panchayat Raj, Sri Mani Shankar Aiyar, and the Union Minister for Urban Affairs, Sri Jaipal Reddy along with a host of politicians from various backgrounds like Sri Digvijay Singh, activists like Arvind Kejriwal (Parivartan), Dr. Jayaprakash Narayan (Lok Satta), and Ramesh Ramanathan (Janagraha), media personalities like Kalpana Sharma and Chandan Mitra, and captains of Industry like Kris Gopalakrishnan (Infosys) along with many academics from all over US.

The deliberations of the Seminar would be web cast and the proceedings will be published to continue the discussions well beyond the Seminar and become basis for future policy making in the areas of local governance.

FDRI is blessed with many enthusiastic supporters that unstintingly give their time and money to the cause of governance reforms. We thank our donors that made this seminar possible. The enthusiastic trio of Directors from the Silicon Valley region: Naren Bakshi, Sridar Iyengar, and Venktesh Shukla took the lead in organizing this Seminar with Dr. Raka Ray and the energetic faculty of the CSAS. We tip our hats to them and look forward to this first of many great seminars to come.