Alisha Ali

Seva Mandir

Seva Mandir, founded in 1968 by Dr. Mohan Singh Mehta, is an Indian non-profit organisation based in Udaipur, South Rajasthan. Seva Mandir's mission is to make real the idea of society consisting of free and equal citizens who are able to come together and solve the problems that affect them in their particular contexts. The commitment is to work for a paradigm of development and governance that is democratic and polyarchic. Seva Mandir seeks to institutionalise the idea that development and governance should not just be left to the state and its formal bodies, such as the legislature and the bureaucracy, but that citizens and their associations should engage separately and jointly with the state. The mission, briefly, is to construct the conditions in which citizens of plural backgrounds and perspectives can come together to benefit and empower the least advantaged in society.