Ravichandar will identify the key challenges that make it difficult to fix our cities. This involves areas of third tier disempowerment, governance structure, parastatals, agency silos, lack of outcome focus/​competence/​citizen participation, corruption and more.

He will then list a few out-of-the-box ideas as potential solution building blocks to make our cities more liveable for all sections of society. 

About the Speaker

Ravichandar is a self-described Civic Evangelist and Patron Saint of Lost Causes. He has over two decades of pro bono involvement in the civic space. He was a member of the Bangalore Agenda Task Force from 2000 – 2004 when he authored the self-assessment scheme of Property tax. 

He was one of the four Bangaloreans who helped catalyse the JN-NURM in 2005. Ravichandar conceived and set up the City Connect platform for business to engage with local government — this was operational in 5 cities. In Bangalore, it led to the Tender SURE roads. 

From 2016 to 2019, Ravichandar was a member of the 3‑member expert committee on restructuring Bangalore’s governance and administration.

Ravichandar is currently Honorary Director of Bangalore International Centre (BIC), an example of a privately enabled space being a public one for the city. He is a Mechanical Engineer from BITS, Pilani and has an MBA from IIM Ahmedabad.