According to Sushil Modi, Bihar’s deputy chief minister, the biggest problem for all the poorer states is “the crisis of implementation”. “Even if we have the money,” he asks, “how to spend that money?” Mr Kumar cannot solve this from Patna. He must instead breathe life into the panchayats, the elected village councils supposedly accountable for local schemes. But in Bihar, the councils have been through only one electoral cycle. Thepanchayats remain beholden to the old elites.

When I speak of governance failure, I am not thinking of corruption in its usual sense — of the politician who is caught with a bribe. I feel anguish that one in four teachers in a government primary school is absent and one in four is not teaching. Two out of five doctors do not show up at a state primary health centre; a cycle rickshaw driver routinely pays a sixth of his daily earnings as bribe to the police. A farmer in an Indian village cannot hope to get a clear title to his land without bribing the patwari. One out of five members of the Indian Parliament elected in 2004 had criminal charges against him; one in twelve had been accused of murder or rape.

Click here to read entire article in TOI.

Take the case of school dropout Dilip Kataria, 31, from Dhavadia village in Khambha taluka of Amreli district. This spunky villager is doing his bit to ensure that public money is not misused in his village, but utilised for the government schemes it’s meant for.

Click here to read full article in TOI.

INTERNATIONAL RTI FILM FESTIVAL

(IRFF) ‘09, October 7-11

New Delhi

About RTI

Right to Information Act is going to complete two decades of its struggle and is celebrating fourth anniversary of its successful implementation in India. The dream of transparent system in the country has been turned into reality and people have started realizing their rights, feeling empowered and raising their voice against corruption in the system… the credit goes to Right to Information Act.

About Film Festival

The films made on Right to Information has played a major role in disseminating the usage of Act among people and this usage of Right to Information and its effect on the life of common man has been beautifully taken up by various filmmakers. The main motive of this film festival is to bring all such films (dealing with work done in the direction of achieving a transparent system) in front of public and to make them realize that the crying need of the hour is not to complain but to act. Our initiative is also aimed at providing a platform for all kind of films highlighting the struggles of common man and the role of Right to Information in changing their lives for the better.

Screening Committee

The films will be selected by a screening committee with a fine eye for detail. Comprising of experts from various fields:

• Wajahat Habibullah (Central Chief Information Commissioner)
• Jagadananda (State Information Commissioner, Orissa)
• Arvind Kejriwal (Noted RTI Activist & Magasaysay Awardee)
• Medha Patkar (Social Activist)
• Vinay Mahajan (Leading Singer-Poet & Activist, Loknaad)
• Sudhir Tailang (Well Known Cartoonist)
• Kumar Vishwas (Poet)
• Abhinandan Sekhri (Writer-Gustakhi Maaf/Great Indian Tamasha, NDTV)

Partners

• Kabir
• Parivartan
• Public Cause Research Foundation (PCRF)
• Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI)
• National Campaign for Peoples’ Right to Information (NCPRI)
• Society for Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA)
• Manjunath Shanmugam Trust (MST)
• Akhil Bhartiya Samaj Seva Sansthan (ABSSS)
• CYSD, Orissa
• Delhi School of Social Work, Delhi University
• Jawaharlal Nehru University Student Union (JNUSU)
• School of Arts & Aesthetics, JNU, New Delhi
• School of Planning & Architecture, New Delhi
• Loknaad, Gujarat
• DEHAT, UP
• Chetnalaya
• Pratidhi
• Haryana RTI Manch
• Bihar RTI Manch
• West Bengal RTI Manch
• Apna Panna

For Further Details

RTI Film Festival Secretariat

D-59, Third Floor,

Pandav Nagar, Delhi-110092, INDIA

Telephone: +91 (11) 22485139

eMail: rtifilmfestival@gmail.com

www.rtifilmfestival.blogspot.com

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 23^rd 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.

Another recent article in the Economist addresses similar/related issues.

This capital of the northern state of Uttar Pradesh was once an orderly place known for its baroque monuments and lush gardens. Today, Lucknow has more than 780 slums, overflowing sewage pipes and streets choked by gridlock. Its population of 2.7 million, nearly triple the number in the 1980s, is adding as many as 150,000 new residents a year.

Here are some fundamental issues related to governance as outlined in the article.

Part of the problem: Lucknow, like many Indian cities, is managed by a bewildering array of government bodies that don’t always coordinate activities. In theory, Lucknow is led by an elected mayor and 110-member Municipal Corporation, similar to a U.S. city council. Together, they share oversight of basic services such as water, housing and roads. But in practice, the elected officials’ authority is sharply limited by the half-dozen or more other government bodies that wield power in town.

Chief among them is the Lucknow Development Authority, a group of unelected bureaucrats who have the authority to develop new housing projects and roads within them. But after a few years, when the developments are completed, the LDA hands over management of the projects to the Municipal Corporation, which doesn’t always have enough money to maintain basic services such as water, sewage and street lights.

The result is dysfunctional government, says U.B. Singh, an urban-studies professor at the University of Lucknow. The mayor has the power to authorize the building of new roads, but not new bridges — a big problem in a city that flanks a river and is crisscrossed by canals. Despite rapidly falling water tables, there is no single authority empowered to determine when and where residents can drill wells. Private citizens regularly take matters into their own hands and drill for water themselves, further depleting the resources.

Clearly another case for a more efficient approach to governance. Similar challenges are bound to be there in other parts of India.

See entire article on IBN Politics site.

People came from Vasant Kunj, R K Puram, Nandnagari, Meerut, Rohtak, Gurgaon, Rithala, Pandav Nagar, Welcome and several individuals from various other areas. All sorts of people were there. From software engineers to film makers to slum dwellers. People had different kinds of problems. that were near and dear to their heart ranging from land to education to health to water to name a few. What was striking was that people were not seeking redress to their problems. They were seeking power be able to solve their problems themselves.

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.

A letter addressed to Mrs Sonia Gandhi was handed over to Mr Vishwajeet Singh, Congress MP. At BJP office, the letter addressed to Sh Rajnath Singh was handed over to Mahesh Chand Sharma former MP and former President of Rajasthan BJP.

Swaraj Abhiyan has drafted a Nagar Raj Bill, which if passed by the Parliament, would bring Swaraj or self rule to Delhi. A copy of this law was handed over to Congress, BJP and CPM and they were asked whether they would pass this law, if voted to power. Letters to party leaders said – “We understand that details of any such bill would need detailed consideration. However, we would be grateful if your party could publicly state before 7^th May, when Delhi goes to polls, whether your party agrees in principle to give complete control over funds, functions, functionaries and land to local people’s assemblies.”

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.

For urban areas, the Central Government last year sent a Nagar Raj Bill to all the state governments, which seeks to create mohalla sabhas in urban areas but does not give any power to them. After extensive considerations with various people and experts on this issue, a redraft of this bill has been created by swaraj abhiyan to give complete control over local affairs of an area to mohalla sabhas. For Delhi this bill needs to be passed by the Parliament. Copy of this Bill was today provided to various parties.

For more details contact- Manish Sisodia: 09868 875 898

–
SWARAJ ABHIYAN
D-59 (IIIrd Floor)
Pandav Nagar
Delhi-92
Ph:011-22485139
www.lokrajandolan.org
Helpline : 09718 255 455