Praja’s continuous engagement with the local elected representatives and administration through capacity building, research and advocacy has had a positive impact on city governance.
Four women councillors, who were a part of Praja’s first residential women’s councillor workshop in that included building leadership skills were elected as chair and deputy chair persons of various committees: Rajrajeshwari Redkar as Deputy Chairperson of Public Health Committee, Harshala More as Chairperson, Women & Child Welfare, Anjali Sanjay Naik as Chairperson, Education Committee, and Vaishali Shewale as Chairperson of M/E Ward.
Kishori Pednekar, Praja's first ranker in Mumbai Councillor Report Card released in 2018 and second ranker in 2019 was elected Mumbai’s new Mayor on 22nd November, 2019.
Subsequent to the release of our Civic White Paper in April 2019 addressing the disparity in toilets for men and women, the MCGM responded that it will build 22,774 new toilets in the next year and a half and 50 per cent or more than 11k toilets will be for women.
In response to the release of our Civic White Paper in April 2019, that pressed for a citizen feedback mechanism in the MCGM’s complaint Redressal system, it was decided that MCGM would start taking feedback from citizens regarding complaints over multiple issues. Senior civic officials, including heads of departments and assistant municipal commissioners would call the citizen to personally check if their issues have been redressed.
Praja’s Report on the State of Health in Mumbai in September 2019 suggested that for improving the state of public healthcare in the city, MCGM dispensaries need to be more accessible by improving the timings of dispensaries, among other suggestions. In response to that, the MCGM has decided to keep out-patient departments (OPDs) at six civic hospitals open till 10pm every day and the Health Committee Chairperson, Amey Ghole proposed that for dispensaries to be open upto 11pm, a tender be floated for the same to contract 15 dispensaries to run in the evenings as well.