Close on the heels of the Strategic Planning meeting and Participatory Evaluation meeting, comes the Future Plan meeting of PRIA, organised in the head office from April 16 to April 18. The Future Plan meeting follows up on the recommendations made in the previous two meetings and chalks out strategies for the future through discussion on various projects. On April 16, the first session comprised discussion on projects on urban governance. The projects were: improving citizens access to urban services in select cities; and promoting participatory urban planning in municipalities.

The first project looks at consolidating the work of PRIA in the area of monitoring of delivery of urban services in some small and medium towns, and starting fresh initiatives with the objective of making PRIA visible in the urban domain through citizen participation agenda. The second project studies the participatory approach to urban planning that PRIA has taken, that is a departure from the expert driven, top down approach characterised by near total absence of citizen participation. In light of the support PRIA has provided, it is now receiving requests from various state governments to replicate the participatory urban planning processes in municipalities of states.

Session two focused on the themes women's political empowerment and gender in institutions. Institutional gender mainstreaming aims at establishing PRIA as resource centre for institutional gender mainstreaming with special focus on sexual harassment at the workplace, develop strategies to change the approach of workplace in the development sector by adopting gender policy in the organisation and collaborate with networks of CSOs for the adoption of the gender policy.

On April 17, the projects for discussion were social audit and improving methodologies for Comprehensive District Planning (CDP). Social audit is the process in which, details of the resources, both financial and non financial, used by public agencies for development initiatives are shared with the people, often through a public platform such as the Gram Sabha in rural India. The objective of this process is to carry out field experiments in selected sites. In the project improving methodologies for CDP, PRIA is looking to facilitating the overall CDP process, including to enable Gram Panchayats to plan for economic and social development and energise the functioning of District Planning Committees. Preparation of a manual on CDP and national sharing of CDP experiences are also on the anvil. The second session focused on the project strengthening dalit/tribal/muslim leadership in Panchayats and municipalities, that looks to ensure the inclusion of voices of marginalised communities in the planning process