Jagadananda

Centre for Youth and Social Development

Shri Jagadananda is a Social Activist and Civil Society Leader. He demitted the office as the State Information Commissioner, Odisha to advance the Right to Information (RTI) agenda in the State in August 2013 and was a member of the State Planning Board of Odisha, following his active campaigning for people-centric decentralized planning. He is the President of the National Social Watch (NSW), a broad-based coalition of civil society organizations; He was a Member of the Committee on State Agrarian Relations and the Unfinished Task in Land Reforms formed by the Union Ministry for Rural Development, Government of India. He has held offices as Chairperson, Voluntary Action Network India (VANI), the largest national network of social development agencies in India, Chair of Credibility Alliance, a national forum for promotion of accountability norms for Civil Society Organizations and currently the Chair of Sa-Dhan, a national network of Community Development Micro Finance Institutions with wide membership spread across the country. In 2005, he was offered a senior visiting fellowship at CIVICUS-World Alliance for Citizen Participation, and worked on the issues of legitimacy, transparency and accountability within civil society at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, Cambridge, USA. His publication ‘Civil Society Legitimacy and Accountability’ is widely available in French, Spanish, Arabic and English languages. His other publications include “Organization Behaviour” a framework for Non-Governmental Development Organisations and an Organisation Self-Assessment tool for NGOs’ (OSANGO).