Parliamentarian of the Year

Dr

Amar Patnaik

Member of Parliament - Rajya Sabha

SKOCH Challenger Award for Parliamentarian of the Year – Rajya Sabha

Dr Amar Patnaik

Member of Parliament - Rajya Sabha

New Delhi, 26th March 2022

Amar Patnaik is an astute administrator, a highly skilled researcher and a global-minded India-focused leader in search of practical solutions to grassroots problems. He had a long career in civil services and was associated with UN and the World Bank for global external audit assignments. It is for his love to serve the people at the bottom of the pyramid, he quit and joined the Biju Janata Dal representing the state in the Rajya Sabha. He was member of the Joint Committee of Parliament on the Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019. He ensured that the bill goes through an extensive process of clause-wise consideration during the consultation within the JPC. As Rajya Sabha Member, he is Odisha’s voice in the Parliament. He has been a part of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance and a member of the Parliamentary Consultative Committee on Forest, Environment and Climate Change. As head of the party’s IT wing, Amar guides on improving governance in the state; much of which can be attributed to his efforts.

L to R: Sameer Kochhar, Chairman, SKOCH Group; Dr Amar Patnaik, Member of Parliament – Rajya Sabha

Amar Patnaik conferred SKOCH Challenger Award for Parliamentarian of the Year –
Rajya Sabha

Dr Amar Patnaik is Rajya Sabha Member from Odisha representing the Biju Janata Dal. He is also the party’s national spokesperson and head of the party’s IT wing.

Dr Patnaik completed his PhD, which is published as a scholarly work on public policy titled “Institutional Change and Power Asymmetry in the context of Rural India”

SKOCH Challenger Award

SKOCH Award, independently instituted in 2003, is India’s honest civilian honour conferred by an independent organisation as a third party assessment. It is the only award in the country that is based on felt-needs assessment and outcome evaluation based on evidence. It therefore, recognises people, projects and institutions that go the extra mile to make India a better nation.

SKOCH Challenger Award is non-competitive and conferred for having made a definitive impact on governance improvement and growth of India. These are based on primary research and recommendations by the Collegium of past SKOCH Challenger Awardees and the Distinguished Fellows of SKOCH Development Foundation.

SKOCH Challenger Award comes with a backing of reputation of more than two decades. It is distinctive for its approach of selection of awardees. The SKOCH Challenger Award not only acknowledges exceptional achievers – organisations and individuals – but also spurs institutional guidance and best practices.

SKOCH Literature Award

Dr Amar Patnaik

Member of Parliament - Rajya Sabha

New Delhi, 18th December 2021

The narrative and the case studies in the book bring the need for institutional change and foster new institutional structures – institution building – by resolving power inequities in a rural ecosystem in India, and advocates the identification of an appropriate institutional champion to make this happen. The book develops a power-asymmetry-based framework and argues that a champion with the right attributes and the ‘ability’ to ‘convene’ people over a social issue can only succeed if he/she can resolve or reduce the deep-rooted societal power asymmetries within that community. Amar Patnaik has extensively drawn on the ground level research inputs to examine informal institutions in relation to power relations in a rural ecosystem and uses institutional change theories to change these power equations in the community.

L to R: C P Gurnani, Managing Director & CEO, Tech Mahindra; Sameer Kochhar, Chairman, SKOCH Group & Amar Patnaik, Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha

SKOCH Literature Award: Institutional change and power asymmetry in the context of rural India

Book: Institutional Change and Power Asymmetry in the Context of Rural India

Amar Patnaik

This book explains how to bring about institutional change and foster new institutional structures (institution building) by resolving power inequities in a rural ecosystem in India, and advocates the identification of an appropriate institutional champion to make this happen. The book develops a power-asymmetry-based framework and argues that a champion with the right attributes and the ‘ability’ to ‘convene’ people over a social issue can only succeed if he/she can resolve or reduce the deep-rooted societal power asymmetries within that community. It also presents four case studies that indicate how such social change is typically spread over a long period of time.