India Civic Summit 2025 — Closing Address

Closing address at the India Civic Summit 2025, hosted by Citizen Matters and Oorvani Foundation.

Gautam John, CEO of Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies, rounded off the India Civic Summit 2025 with this closing address.

Transcript

This transcript was generated with AI-assisted transcription and may contain occasional transcription or speaker-attribution errors.

To conclude this session as well as the India Civic Summit 2025, I will invite Mr. Gautam John to come and talk to all of us and leave us with some of his thoughts on active citizenry in general. Gautam John is the CEO of Rohini Nilkani Philanthropies. Prior to this, he has spent several years with the Akshara Foundation building the Karnataka Learning Partnership and at Pratham Books.

He was also a TED India Fellow in 2009. Gautam, please take the stage.

I apologize for those of you who were expecting Rohini needs me. I am neither as smart nor as wise, but I will try and channel her wisdom. Second, they promised me I would start the session.

Now I have to speak after Dr. Narayanan and after all of this amazing work that happens in these cities, so no pressure. But I do want to say that for a philanthropy whose entire reason for being is based on the idea of Samaj being foundational, to recognize the raw energy, passion, talent and interest and care that this room represents is both humbling but also deeply inspiring. To say that Samaj is foundational and to say that citizens must co-create solutions and to say that citizens must participate in governance is almost glib because this is what it takes to do it.

It takes patience, it takes perseverance. Sorry, I was recording this and then I decided to. It takes patience, perseverance and a whole lot of grit in the face of immense structural challenges to hold fast to this work.

And if you will forgive my language, I just want to say thank you for giving a shit. Because this work isn’t easy like Dr. Narayanan said, like many of you acknowledge, this work isn’t easy. It’s often thankless and it’s almost always, how to say, invisible.

And it’s not always easy trying to be the invisible infrastructure that makes citizens, citizenry and cities work. It’s not often easy to be invisible and not thanked, not recognized. But I do want to say it’s what moves all of us forward.

Like we saw the amazing examples of the organizations from Bangalore, Chennai and Mumbai and across the country, it’s this spirit and this latent interest in what keeps us together as a society that moves us forward. And what I do want to say is really that we as a philanthropy, but also we as citizens recognize that this work matters and your work matters. Every effort, no matter how small, has a way of expanding beyond what we can see.

And while Gandhi may have never said, be the change you want to see, it’s true that change ripples from inside out, not necessarily from outside in. Change doesn’t happen because someone grants it from above. It happens because people like you insist that it happens from the ground up.

Thank you for your commitment, your energy and for proving that the most powerful solutions often start with the samaj. Thank you very much and thank you to the Uruwani Foundation for holding this space for all of us, all of you, and for doing it year on year. I look forward to next year.

Thank you.

Originally published by Citizen Matters on 24 February 2025. View on YouTube →