Associate Director, Public Finance Management, Delhi, India

Delhi

Team: Public Finance Management (PFM)

Reporting to: Director, Public Finance

Location: Delhi

Experience Range: 10-15 years

Past experience in: Public Finance Management, Municipal Finance, Government Advisory, Impact Consulting, Development Sector

About Janaagraha and the PFM Team

Janaagraha Centre for Citizenship and Democracy is a Bengaluru-based non-profit working to transform the quality of life in India's cities and towns. Since 2001, Janaagraha has partnered with citizens and governments to strengthen the core systems of city governance—municipal finance, urban planning, citizen participation, and institutional reform—so that India's cities become more inclusive, sustainable, and liveable. Janaagraha is recognised for its credibility with government, depth of policy understanding, and rare ability to translate reform ideas into execution at scale.

Public finance management reforms have been a core focus area for Janaagraha since its inception and the PFM Programme is working towards solving one the most important problems being faced by Indian cities: making them financially sustainable, efficient and accountable - by enabling systemic reforms through engagements with the Union, State governments, constitutional bodies, and other ecosytem organisations.

Our past and current portfolio of engagements includes advisory support to the XIII, XIV, XV and XVI Central Finance Commissions, partnership with Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs on PFM reforms, partnership with the Comptroller and Auditor General of India on revamping the National Municipal Accounts Manual (NMAM), advisory support to State Finance Commissions of Karnataka, Odisha and Haryana. The Associate Director, PFM will anchor Janaagraha's partnership with the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) to drive public finance reforms in cities at scale. The role requires building of deep, trusted partnerships with Union and State institutions, engaging on complex reform agenda as well as the operational discipline to deliver high-quality advisory products, manage a team, and track impact rigorously. It sits at the intersection of policy design, government partnership, and reform implementation, making it an exciting opportunity for an impact oriented senior professional.

Why This Role Exists Now

India's urban sector is receiving unprecedented fiscal attention. The XVI Finance Commission has recommended ₹3.56 lakh crore in grants to urban local governments over FY 2026-31 — 1.8 times the XV FC envelope. The Union Budget 2025-26 also introduced the Urban Challenge Fund, a ₹1 lakh crore initiative to catalyse city-level reforms in urban planning, finance, and services.

MoHUA's municipal finance reform agenda has widened considerably. Janaagraha's engagement with MoHUA has deepened to reflect this momentum. Our engagement with MOHUA will be organised along four pillars (but not limited to):

• Strengthening CityFinance as Municipal Finance Digital Public Infrastructure
• Municipal Finance Reforms support, including under the Urban Challenge Fun
• Sixteenth Finance Commission grants administration
• Ecosystem-building and institutional strengthening

• Illustrative Work: Digital Grants Management and CityFinance

  Two active work strands illustrate the nature and ambition of the work the Associate Director will lead:

  • Digital Grants Management (DGM) for XVI FC — Janaagraha is working closely with MoHUA to design and develop a digital grant management system for XVI FC grants hosted on CityFinance, covering ULG compliance, State verification, MoHUA recommendation and project tracking. The DGM system will ensure accelerated grant release, reduced administrative burden, and end-to-end observability of grant compliance, utilisation and physical outputs, including its public disclosure. The Associate Director will drive this agenda - from consensus building to design-thinking, uptake and adoption of the system.
  • • CityFinance.in — Owned by MoHUA and conceived and managed by Janaagraha, CityFinance is India's national urban finance data platform — housing 12,500+ financial statements from 4,300+ ULGs, 12,700+ municipal budgets, and serving over 3 lakh active users annually. The next phase is ambitious - it will involve transforming CityFinance from a compliance & data portal into a Municipal Finance Digital Public Infrastructure. This will include expansion of data coverage, reduction of time-lag in data availability, deployment of OCR/LLM-based standardisation pipelines, API integration with State accounting systems, AI-based analytics, and city dashboards that drive data-based decision making across MoHUA, state governments, and ULGs. The Associate Director will lead Janaagraha's engagement with MoHUA on taking CityFinance to this next level.

    KEY RESPONSIBILITES

    Reform Design & Implementation

    • Proactively engage with Union, State governments' and ULGs senior leadership to drive the various reform agenda (but not limited to) outlined above.

    Stakeholder Engagement

    • Lead Janaagraha's engagement with the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) and other institutions at Union level to enable catalytic PFM reforms under various Union Govt Schemes across states and urban local governments (ULGs) of India
    • Nurture and deepen relationship with senior leadership at MoHUA, Union Ministry of Finance, State Housing and Urban Development Departments and Directorate of Municipal Administration across state governments in India to generate buy-in and facilitate adoption of PFM reforms
    • Raise visibility of Janaagraha among the policy ecosystem by identifying, building and nurturing relationships with policymakers, civil society organizations, think tanks, academic institutions, etc.
    • Provide need-based support to the Development Team for fundraising and donor relationships, bringing in relevant expertise and context

    Program delivery

    • Take full ownership of program delivery, program management and project management
    • Put in place program and project reporting systems and processes, convene periodic review meetings (internally and externally) at pre-agreed intervals and communicate around the same as agreed
    • Proactively anticipate and identify risks, evolve mitigants, and communicate around the same
    • Actively ensure convergence in efforts between Jana's teams so as to accomplish significantly more than just sum of the parts

    Leadership development

    • Assume overall leadership of program team including recruitment, induction, review, learning and development, and motivation, guidance and mentoring
    • Live the Janaagraha culture codes to serve as an example for the team
    • Nurture talent through on and off the job learning and development plans and opportunities
    • Identify and nurture high potential team members for leadership development

    QUALIFICATIONS AND EXPERIENCE

    • Advanced degree (Masters or MBA) in Finance, Economics, Engineering, Public Policy, Chartered Accountancy or a related field
    • 10+ years of experience working in the impact sector, for-profit consulting government advisory, public policy with at least five years in senior management and leadership roles; experience in urban sector will be an advantage
    • Strong systems change knowledge and practice including ability to adapt to differing contexts
    • Demonstrated experience of working closely with state and/or union governments in policy design or implementation projects, involving stakeholder relationship and program management

    KEY COMPETENCIES

    • Long horizon leadership: Staying committed through slow progress and delayed payoffs
    • Execution without authority: Delivering outcomes through influence, credibility, and system design
    • Perseverance & resilience: Navigating resistance, ambiguity, and setbacks
    • Experience in managing relationships with governments at senior levels
    • Experience in managing large teams with diverse professional backgrounds.
    • High personal ownership: no delegation of accountability
    • Thrive on ambiguity: agile and dynamic approach to program design and delivery amidst constant ambiguity and volatility

    ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

    Please write to us with your CV and a cover letter, along with a link to your updated LinkedIn profile at work@janaagraha.org with subject "Associate Director, PFM".