Workshop on 23 August, 2009
Date: 23, August 2009
Time: 10.00 am to 2.00 pm
Place: Zakir Hussain College (Delhi), Room #1, Jawaharlal Nehru Marg, New Delhi
Contact number: 9718255455
Anyone interested can attend.
Join The Swaraj Campaign
A silent revolution has just begun in Delhi. In some areas, people are now directly involved in deciding how government funds must be used in their area. Local officials attend these public meetings and they are publicly questioned by the citizens. Payments are made to contractors only if the Mohalla Sabhas are satisfied with contractor’s work.
Sounds incredible? It all started in Sonia Vihar and Trilokpuri, a few months back and is now fast spreading to other parts of Delhi. People are gathering in large numbers and demanding Swaraj.
In the past few meetings, funds have been approved on the spot for public works, pensions sanctioned, and most satisfyingly, works lying pending for years completed within days. Street-lights were repaired within four hours of a mohalla sabha meeting, drains clogged for two years were cleaned within three days!
This is Swaraj in action – direct participation of people in governance.
Swaraj Abhiyaan has teamed with progressive councilors and bureaucrats to implement this. Area residents hold monthly public meetings, “Mohalla Sabha” in concert with the councilor and MCD officers to decide the development and maintenance priorities. The ward councilor and MCD officers implement these decisions and provide status updates to the residents in Mohalla Sabha next month.
Ultimately, we want enactment of appropriate laws, which would ensure direct citizens’ control over government funds and functionaries. Mohalla sabhas are a beginning of that process. We hope that with the passage of time, people across India would organize themselves in mohalla sabhas and Gram sabhas and would be able to constructively, and in a structured manner, engage in state level and national level policies. We hope that the momentum and pressure created by these people’s sabhas would finally force the governments to enact appropriate legislations to ensure direct people’s participation. And finally we hope, that there would be a time when no laws would be passed by the state and central legislatures without effective consultations with mohalla and gram sabhas.
The LG, Mr. Tejinder Khanna has congratulated these efforts. MCD Commissioner, Mr K S Mehra has pledged support. A number of eminent people have joined the campaign.
We are holding a half day workshop on 23rd August (Sunday) at Zakir Hussain College from 10.00 am to 1.00 pm where we would discuss this in great detail.
If you wish to join the campaign, please attend this workshop. Call us at 9718255455 for any queries. If you wish to participate, please intimate in advance as there is limited capacity for the workshop.
About 700 people from different parts of Delhi went to the national headquarters of Congress, BJP and CPM today to ask– “If you came to power, will you pass the law to give us Swaraj?” Swaraj Abhiyan is a campaign being run by several NGOs, organizations, groups and individuals across the country who are demanding power to the people these elections. The parties assured that they would consider the matter and revert.
The Swaraj Abhiyan group reached the Congress office at 10 am, when immediately about 11 people of the campaign, including Arvind Kejriwal, were detained and taken to police station for almost two hours by Tughlak Road police. They were later released.
The party representatives, who met us today, did not give any commitment but assured that the letters would be placed before party high command and would respond soonest.