The Department of Land Resources, Ministry of Rural Development, Government of India has initiated a discussion forum on “Improving community participation in Watershed Management” for which there has been an overwhelming response from the citizens of the country. We have received many useful suggestions and views on the subject. The enthusiastic participation in the discussion has shown that people are concerned about the issue of water availability in the country. Very interesting views and ideas have been thrown in the discussion by some of which are being mentioned here. Watershed management today is synonymous with poverty alleviation. A number of people have suggested the need for involving the community in watershed management. They have also said that all sections of the society should be involved in this work. There are also suggestions to provide incentives to people to implement water harvesting works on the principles of watershed management. There is almost unanimous view on implementing drip irrigation for efficient use of water in agriculture and horticulture. Some have reflected that aging water infrastructure, increasing demand, continued land use change, and increasingly extreme weather events are driving the costs of water management higher. Investing in integrated water management strategies that combine engineered solutions with "natural infrastructure" can reduce costs, enhance services, and provide a suite of co-benefits for communities and the environment. More emphasis has to be given to in-situ soil moisture conservation practices and irrespective of the ownership of the land, contour bunds, gully plugging, stabilization of sloping land etc should be given more importance than mere check dam construction. There are also suggestions about recharging aquifers, storage of rain water in farm lands, building low cost structures for water harvesting and removing encroachments from kunds, talavs and other traditional water harvesting structures. There are also suggestions that good work done in watershed management must be shared. A number of posts are also about other related issues of water management though not a part of watershed management, like the issue of rain water harvesting in the urban areas, collection and use of discharge water from cities and river linking in the country, We have taken note of the posts and are working on bringing out a document on the key suggestions that have been made by the citizens. With time, these suggestions will definitely influence the program being implemented by the Department in a positive way. The discussion forum has been active since September 2014 and has received more than two thousand posts and has served a very useful purpose. Therefore we will be closing this Discussion group shortly. We will subsequently come out with a Discussion group on another relevant aspect of water management in the country. We hope that you shall keep up the participation and continue enriching us with your views and suggestions. We would also expect the participants to keep focused on the topic of the discussion so that the ideas, experiences and knowledge are shared in a useful manner. Thanks to all who participated in a very meaningful way.

Pradhan Mantri Jan-Dhan Yojana (PMJDY) is National Mission for Financial Inclusion to ensure access to financial services, namely, Banking/ Savings & Deposit Accounts, Remittance, Credit, Insurance, Pension in an affordable manner.The Yojana gets its name and identity from the citizens, who participated in the MyGov platform’s competition. The success of the scheme so far is a result of citizens’ sustained engagement and willingness to be a part of the change. MyGov continues to count on citizens’ actionable ideas and suggestions for covering all households under the scheme till 26th January 2015. We share and recount some of the noteworthy suggestions received to the Open Forum:

As a part of the Featured Volunteers series, MyGov shares with you the experiences of five more volunteers who have contributed extensively to MyGov over the past few weeks. Take a look at what they have to say on volunteering for MyGov:

India has been making steady progress in the field of sports, but it has potential to do much more. If right steps are taken towards development of sports culture, integration of sports and education, early spotting of talent, strong support to sportspersons through top-class coaching, competition exposures, sports science and sports medicine support, etc., India can emerge as a sports super power. Share your views on making India a sports Superpower to the Open Forum

The Ministry of Labour and Employment hosted 3 contests on MyGov to suggest a name, tagline and logo for the National Career Service Project. The winning entries of the contests are as follows:

In the Mann Ki Baat episode broadcast on 2nd November, 2014, Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi had highlighted the issue of drug menace and said that he would talk about the subject in a subsequent radio programme. Citizens from across the country have posted their ideas on how the issue can be handled, the steps that can be taken to curb its widespread impact and have shared personal anecdotes as well. Some of the ideas posted are as following:

Taking crowdsourcing from campaigning to governance, the Narendra Modi Government‘s latest initiative, the MyGov site calls for suggestions on cleaning the Ganga. Seeking to bring about a radical change in the condition of the river, the Modi government is seeking to accumulate ideas and responses from the biggest stakeholders – the people of India through the ‘Clean Ganga’ initiative on MyGov. Since the launch, the group has already garnered 18,000 plus members going about on 9 tasks listed- from preparing roadmaps for the Government to conducting fieldwork.

Pradhan Mantri Ji in his Independence Day Speech from the historic Red Fort announced a major initiative for Financial Inclusion named “Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojna”. A competition was held through the MyGov Platform (http://mygov.nic.in) for suggesting the name, logo and tagline. More than 6000 entries were received. Jury selected and shortlisted names from which “Jan Dhan” was picked up for the name of the scheme. We congratulate the following participants who had suggested the names which are exact or partial match. Final logo and tagline will be announced shortly.

“MyGov Samvaad”, a first of its kind event was organized on 29th November 2014, with the Hon’ble Minister for Communications & IT Shri Ravi Shankar Prasad presiding over an interaction with selected contributors to the Digital India Group on MyGov. The Minister also felicitated 20 chosen contributors for their ideas / suggestions / task responses from amongst over 40,000 responses. The contributors came from different walks of life - an engineering student from the National Institute of Technology, a computer operator from the Gram Panchayat of a small village in West Bengal, software engineers, social entrepreneurs and also a few government employees.

A contest to design e-greeting templates for Guru Nanak’s Birthday (Gurpurab) was held on the MyGov platform. Exuberant participation was shown by citizens. As many as 547 attractive creations were received. Out of those creative entries, 17 creations have been shortlisted and 3 winners have been declared. Heartiest congratulation to the winners! Following are the names and creations of the winners: