Indian School of Democracy, New Delhi launched its flagship, 9 month executive program, The Good Politician (TGP) on India’s 75th Independence Day. TGP is a one-of-a-kind leadership program for aspiring grassroots political leaders who aim to contest elections as sarpanch or councillor. After a rigorous selection process, a total of 50 participants from 14 states have been selected into the cohort for TGP 2021. SY Qureshi, Former Chief Election Commissioner of India spoke as the Chief Guest of the inaugural session of this program.
Indian School of Democracy (ISD) started off it’s journey in 2018 as a non-partisan organization with a dream to strengthen India’s democracy by nurturing principled leaders with moral courage and imagination.
During the course of the program, the cohort will interact with prominent politicians like Atishi Marlena (AAP), Ram Madhav (RSS), Yogendra Yadav (Swaraj India), Sanjay Paswan (BJP), Sachin Rao (INC) etc. Over the nine months other guest faculty who will engage with cohort are Prof. Rajeev Gowda (INC), Pratap Bhanu Mehta, Charu Pragya (BJP), Yamini Iyer (CPR), S Y Quraishi (Former, CEC), Rajni Bakshi (Journalist), Amitabh Beher (CEO, Oxfam), Dr. Jaya Prakash Narayan (Lok Satta) etc.
ISD’s work to nurture principled grassroots politicians, with the moral courage and imagination, is focused towards achieving sarvodaya. The cohort of The Good Politician will be contesting local elections in the coming 2-3 years and ISD aims to have a strong support system for them and not just end the program in nine months. We understand that the gestation period is long in politics and it will take a long term support system to enable our alumni in the current political system.
By 2047, we aim to have 25% principled politicians across all elected positions in India and this will happen through collaboration and the ISD being one of the enablers among many others.
