Mayank Gandhi

Mayank Gandhi was born on 7 November 1958 in a middle-class family in Mumbai. He completed his science graduation (B.Sc) and Diploma in Business Management in 1981. Along with his education, he used to give tuitions in order to support his educational expenditures.

Mayank was earlier an urban planner and interacted with some of the finest people, companies, and local governments in the world as part of the advisory body of the world's largest body of Architects and Planners – Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH), as a speaker and a consultant on master planning in 23 developed countries.

Having worked in various countries across the world, Gandhi realized that key interventions needed to be thought out and put into action to start India's transformation. As in any democracy, politics had to be the fountainhead of such change.

He worked with Anna Hazare in 2003 to draft key policies including the Maharashtra Right to Information (RTI), transfer laws, recall of Sarpanch by Gram Sabha, and transparency and accountability in government functioning. Later, he was part of teams that drafted landmark laws and policies in urban governance including the Nagar Raj Bill, an urban parallel of the rural “Panchayati Raj Bill.”

In 2011, along with Arvind Kejriwal, Anna Hazare, and others, he launched the India against Corruption (IAC) Movement as part of the core committee. This later morphed into a political party, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), and Mayank was part of its highest body- the National Executive.

By 2015, after the unprecedented victory of the party in Delhi Elections, he felt that the party was going in a different direction from the original purpose of creating “Alternative Politics.” Having been involved in fighting the emergency in 1975, he felt that this model was also going on the path of the 1977 Janata Party imbroglio.

Personally too, he came to the realization that he was not suitable for the compromises and the internal fights that are inevitable in electoral politics. Knowing that he would not like to go through life with such strife, he quit politics.

It was the summer of 2016.

Mayank Gandhi had quit confrontational politics. However, the fire to change the country continued to burn within. Politics could not be the only way to impact the lives of people for the better.

During this period, reports of a severe drought in Marathwada region of Maharashtra emerged. The situation was desperate, and it was in this crisis that the first seeds of Global Parli were sown. Beed district had among the highest suicide rates in the country and was the worst drought affected district in all of Marathwada. Within Beed, Parli taluka (106 villages) had just 1.72% irrigated area as opposed to a 40% Indian average.

A deliberately and intelligently crafted rural development model had to be created - one that could understand the various nuances and layers of rural India, identify the gaps and shortcomings, and implement small interventions that would overcome the gaps.

It was decided to create this model called Global Parli with 15 villages in Parli.

In Feb 2018, Gandhi and Shrey Shah authored the book "AAP and Down", which is an in-depth account of the emergence and sudden unspooling of one of India's most closely watched parties- the Aam Aadmi Party [2][3]