Government of New Delhi, India

Reena has been working on issues related to Environment and Sustainable Development for more than two decades covering both grass roots work as well as policy/advocacy work, at civil society groups (AMUL milk cooperative) and internationally at Oxfam America as well as Multilateral institutions like World Bank (at their Washington DC office and then later in their India office). Even though her professional work at these organizations has been related to Research, Publications, Fund Raising, Project Design and Implementation etc., the entrepreneur and activist in her has given her the exposure to many other facets like Public interest litigations, building grassroots campaigns, social media campaigns etc. Her journey has taken her from the deserts of Rajasthan (where she organized farmers cooperatives for organic agriculture to the Mekong River basin in Vietnam (where she worked on wetland management), villages of Himalayas in the Gangotri valley (where she filed petitions against destructive development) and farms in Kerela (where she researched and fought for banning of harmful pesticides

After over two decades of such diverse experience, in 2013, Reena decided to take a plunge into active politics. It was a bold decision largely culminating from her desire to start work directly on the legislative side of environment as part of a political party. At the core of this decision, her thinking was rather simple; to create a lasting change, at scale, it has to emerge from citizens and it has to carried all the way from a “protest” to “policy” and it has to be embedded in “politics”.
She had good experience in and exposure to the first two Ps but the last P was missing and this idea that was germinating for a while. It only became practical, when Reena witnessed a mass level civic protest in Delhi turn into political movement that gave birth to India’s newest political party namely AAP. This is when Reena gave up her illustrious career at the World Bank and joined the people’s movement as an activist and then as a volunteer at AAP and she now is an advisor to the Environment Minister of Delhi as well as an advisor to Dialogue and Development Commission of Delhi (DDCD). DDCD is the primary Policy Think tank of the Government of National Capital of Delhi that works on all its policy matters https://ddc.delhi.gov.in/steering-committee/ Apart from these roles, Reena is also the spokesperson for the Delhi Government.
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However, all along her life and career path -one thing has remained a constant- a passion to find solutions for sustainable growth. For her scale and impact has to be real and not just a project report or a thesis. On that basis, her current role at the Delhi Government is a very natural fit for her. But this role has become possible only because of the very diverse experience she has had working with so many different kinds of stakeholders, all of which have to somehow come together for a democratic society to function and keep finding solutions to a sustainable growth of our planet.

The best was to sum up her current, multiple roles at AAP would be to say that she is working on making environment a political agenda for the citizens and hence making sure that it gets into the focus of the various political parties in India. Despite having majority of world’s worst polluted cities in India, the hard fact is that until very recently no political party had even made environment as an agenda in their election manifestos.

When the new government took charge, Reena led the team that has drafted Delhi’s first clean air plan. This document is a first of its kind for any State Government, in India and therefore has become a benchmark for others states to follow. This plan preparation involved dialogue with all the stakeholders like the legislators, civil society, resident associations, private sector and esp. automobile industry and legal fraternity. This plan has now, over time, led to the creation of a decision support system that identifies the major pollution sources and a time bound measurable action plan to tackle each of these.

One of her biggest, recent legislative wins has been the policy around logistics and vehicles aggregators companies like Uber, Ola etc. https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/delhi/delhi-government-notifies-policy-for-aggregators-to-switch-to-evs-7766362/
Vehicular emission being the leading causes of air pollution in Delhi, Reena has legislated a policy that legally mandates vehicle aggregators to convert their fleet to Electric with annual targets in a time bound manner. This is first of its kind initiative in the World. She is now lobbying with the neighboring state and federal government to legislate similar mandates in order to boost adoption of electric vehicles.

To ensure that things happen at scale, Reena has also been able to leverage technology for solving the air pollution crisis in Delhi. She was the brain behind the creation of Green Delhi App and Green War Room. Green Delhi is a mobile-based application tackling air pollution in the city through supporting Delhi’s regulatory capacity, boosting public engagement in monitoring and preventing localised sources of pollution, which the city currently lacks data on. Through the app, residents are able to report instances causing localised pollution by capturing the location alongside with photographic or video evidence, and sending it to the concerned administrative department for a time-bound redressal, thereby improving air quality and reducing harmful emissions. The Green Delhi app has already been downloaded by 10,000+ residents, with 35,000+ complaints generated and monitored to identify air pollution hotspots, leading to the creation of local air action plans through a 24x7 operational Green War Room. The data generated via this app is being used to identify pollution hotspots in Delhi. https://www.newindianexpress.com/cities/delhi/2020/oct/09/green-war-room-set-up-to-monitor-pollution-in-the-capital-2207769.html

Delhi’s claim for a greener environment and cleaner air cannot be the government’s responsibility alone and demands catalytic action from its citizens. Keeping this in mind, the Government launched Yudh Pradhushan Ke Virudh (Delhi’s war on pollution) in October 2021 - a statewide participatory citizen engagement campaign to fight Delhi’s air pollution. Soon, the campaign grew into a mass movement as NGOs, industrial associations, schools, environmental action groups etc came together to organize events while pledging to reduce individual emission levels. The campaign leveraged social/print/radio/television to encouraged citizens for three Call-To-Actions:

Bas Ek Trip Kum: This urged residents of Delhi reduce one trip per week on private vehicles and use either public transport or shared mobility options.
Red Light On Gaadi Off: The citizenry was encouraged to switch off their car engines while idling at a red light to reduce vehicular smoke and save fuel.
Green Delhi App: To promote active citizen participation in environmental management, the GNCTD launched the Green Delhi mobile app - a unique platform for citizens to report environmental violations.

We all understand the importance of involving the youth and students in the climate change especially in a young country like India. Reena regularly organizes government interaction with the school students. Her team in partnership with UNICEF developed, the Paryavaran Saathi (Friend of the Environment) Whatsapp chatbot. This leveraged technology to gamify and democratized Delhi’s fight against air pollution as 10,000 young Delhi citizens completed Green tasks and won points. She is currently working on a Climate Change curriculum for the schools of Delhi.

Being a qualified lawyer and having been part of several key, Public interest litigations with the Supreme court in India in the past, Reena recently filed a petition in Supreme Court of India against the polluting coal power plants around Delhi that are using outdated technology.

Reena supported Delhi in signing onto the U20 initiative that allows Delhi to use a global platform and represent itself in discussions on climate and sustainable development to inform the G20 summit agenda. She has been nominated as the Sherpa for representing Delhi on the U20 forum. https://c40cities.medium.com/a-letter-to-nature-in-delhi-827e08779853

Greening Delhi is another key initiative of Delhi Govt., led by Reena. This two-pronged initiative is converting vacant spaces in Delhi into community parks and forests. COVID has taught us the importance of urban green spaces. Secondly the Delhi Government is organizing free urban farming workshops. In order to encourage and support citizens of Delhi to engage in urban farming as a mechanism to grow vegetables and fruits in sustainable and pesticide free environment, as well as increase in green cover of the city.
Due to her outstanding work and experience, Reena has been nominated as a member of the State Level Environment Impact Assessment Authority, late last year. She is working on making this Authority more transparent and participatory in nature.
https://www.hindustantimes.com/cities/delhi-news/centre-sets-up-panel-to-assess-environmental-impacts-of-projects-in-delhi-101631124762896.html