mission

CONVERGENCE /scope for intervention!

Project statement
The project addresses the absence of a spatial marker/symbol, at a community level, for
citizen-government interaction.
Although there have been policies in the past to ensure citizen participation in governance, it
has proven to be ineffective in terms of providing a platform for citizen-government
interaction which results in lesser transparency in government policies.(Kochhar, 2009)
I have proposed a center for civic inclusion/ApnaGhar which is a public-private partnered
institution (on the lines of Gender resource center-suvidha Kendraby the Delhi-government)
which serves as a first contact point between the citizen and the government at an urban
level. 1

Significance
The presence of a marker/symbol is significant from the point of view of enhancing a sense
of belonging and identification in a community.
McMillan &Chavis (As cited in Wright, 2004) point out that influence in a community is
bidirectional: members of a group must feel empowered to have an influence over what a
1

Please see:

http://www.missionconvergence.org/about-us.html
http://www.missionconvergence.org/GRC-SK.html

group does (otherwise they would not be motivated to participate), and group cohesiveness
depends upon the group having some influence over its members.
Similarly, a citizen (member) needs to feel empowered enough to form a participative
government (group) while also taking into account that the functioning of the government
(group) needs some degree of influence over the citizens(members).
Therefore, the project seeks to find a common ground between spaces for government and
citizens in terms of form. It identifies the need to have a symbol/marker for a space to be
identified as its own by the people while also understanding that it needs to have a
governmental presence to tie it all together.
Method
The lighthouses of knowledge in Curitiba, Brazil are a similar example of a community
programme at a neighbourhood level, it uses the symbolic structure of the lighthouse for
providing neighbourhood libraries and computer centres with free Internet access for local
residents. Though it is different from Gender resource center in scale yet it manages to create
a neighbourhood level symbol for a community outreach programme.
A similar approach is applied formally which seeks to find a common ground between spaces
for government and citizens in terms of exploring the aspects of monumentality of a symbol
for a public building (govt.) vs. locality of a symbol for the citizens. (A way of empowering
the members while maintaining an influence of the group on the members)
Although a singular symbol is avoided as symbols can denote contradictory meanings and
contradictory symbols can suggest similar meanings in our specific context.(Mehrotra, Shetty
and Gupte, 2010)

References:
1. Kocchar C. (2009), in Assessing the gateways of e-governance in Delhi. Retrieved

February 2011 from, http://www.ccsindia.org/ccsindia/downloads/intern-papers09/citizen-service-centre-212.pdf

2. Mehrotra R., Shetty and Gupte(2009). Architecture and contemporary Indian identity.
In P. Herrle& S. Schmitz (Eds.),Constructing identity in contemporary architecture:
case studies from the South(pp.199-231). Berlin: Lit Verlag
3. Wright S.P. (2004),Exploring psychological sense of community in living-learning
programsand in the university as a whole (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from :
http://www.wright-house.com/psychology/Stephen_Wright_dissertation.pdf
Bibliography:
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