Shillong, Nov 26:The governments of Meghalaya and Telangana have signed a tripartite Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to deepen state-to-state collaboration on human development and government innovation.
The agreement was signed by Meghalaya Principal Secretary Sampath Kumar and Anita Ramachandran, Secretary to Government of Telangana, WCD&SC department and Divya Devarajan, CEO-SERP in the presence of Governor of Telangana Jishnu Dev Varma.
The partnership establishes a Human Development Exchange between the two states to share field-tested innovations, data-driven tools and facilitation processes that strengthen the citizen–state relationship. It will include structured exposure visits for government functionaries and community leaders, joint learning labs on themes such as maternal and child health, social protection, early childhood and adolescent development, women’s collectives and livelihoods, as well as co-created guidelines for frontline teams working with the poorest and most vulnerable households, to address human development challenges.
The collaboration also builds on Meghalaya’s ongoing Human Development Leadership Programme (HDLP), launched in 2024 under the State Human Development Council (HDC) chaired by the Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma.
HDLP brings together multi-disciplinary block teams from Health, Education, Social Welfare and Community & Rural Development departments, where community leaders play a key role, to conduct joint field visits to the most vulnerable households and break barriers that prevent access to public services and awareness. By shifting governance from desk-based reviews to human-first, field-based engagement, HDLP aims to strengthen trust between citizens and the state and foster public service motivation among frontline functionaries at all levels.
Under the MoU, experiences from HDLP’s work in remote villages, where officials and communities jointly identify problems such as under-nutrition, school dropout, early pregnancy and lack of social security, and agree on follow-up actions, will be shared with Telangana, while Meghalaya will learn from Telangana’s decades of work with women’s self-help groups and social mobilisation, as well as its practices in addressing women and child welfare issues.
