|
>View discussions about this entry País: India
Organization: Parivartan
Focus of activity - Community Involvement
Year the initative began (yyyy) - 1999
Positioning in the Mosaic of solutions
Description of initiative - What is the main focus (products, services, etc.) of your initiative and how does it contribute to ending corruption? What avenues of corruption are you primarily addressing? What activities does it involve for your organization? Who are your primary beneficiaries and target groups? In India The 73rd Constitutional Amendment decentralizing powers to Local Self Governing Institutions & the Right to Information Act have created avenues for more transparent village governance. It consists two main pillars; Gram Panchayat (GP; body of elected representatives) & battery of officers appointed at village level. But, the Indian rural society being largely feudal in nature ‘Class’, ‘caste’ & ‘patriarchy’ structures authorize governance Systems. Hence the systems function in an opaque & unaccountable manner. Such an approach has led to rampant industrialization in Lote Industrial Area, an ecologically fragile zone of Ratnagiri, the western coast of India. It has damaged the local eco system eroded traditional livelihoods & quadrupled diseases. To tackle this Parivartan developed concept of village level citizen organizations to demand accountability from & audit functioning of the governance mechanisms. Parivartan introduced Vigilance Committees of Citizens called Dakshata Samitis (DS). The DS operates as structures of ‘countervailing power’ to balance the ‘official power’ with governance that is often prone to corruption. DS exemplifies mechanisms for establishing the delicate balance & partnership between civil society & state.
Organizing DS: 1)The concept of DS is discussed & decision to form DS is made in Gramsabha 2)Each hamlet/wadi sabha nominates two persons, a male & a female to the DS, through consensus instead of secret ballot, preventing factionalism 3)With the candidates from each hamlet, DS with minimum 11 members is formed at the village level. They are not formally registered albeit they function on the basis of written code of conduct. Through creative tools like Multi stakeholder dialogue & Community Livelihood manifesto, DS have been successful in making the industrialization pro-people with greater liability in environmental planning & also in governance systems thus assuring efficient flow of public services & goods to villages. Innovation - How does your approach differ from existing programs in the field? Which components of your initiative are particularly novel or unique (e.g. the products and services, the technology used, the delivery or financing mechanism)? Since, DS has members from all caste & class groups, it represents interests of all the sub-groups in a village. The DS members can be recalled by a hamlet/village meeting for non-performance. The DS meets at least once in a month & presents activity report thrice a year to village. Parivartan gives training to DS members, but the real capability building has been achieved through actual work experience & handholding by the activists of Parivartan.
DS engages with the local governance machinery as a ‘partner’ in developing processes & programs that are pro-poor and pro-community. This approach was clearly demonstrated with DS’s intervention on Industrialization; while most environmental people’s movement have been confrontational & opposed to industries & businesses, Parivartan with DS has operated from the position of collaboration and dialogue. Typically, a DS is formed on the foundation of trust & consensus. Village communities nominate citizens with high ethical fiber, integrity & a track record of leading public action & gives them moral legitimacy to operate as watch dogs of governance. Hence DS acts as the most powerful check on GP members to not engage in corrupt practices. This increases the confidence of the poor & ‘lower’ castes in the DS. This, in turn deepens the accountability of the DS to serve as clean conduits of dialogue & action between the state & the community. Slowly, the DS becomes a strong countervailing power center to the village council. DS functions effectively in small rural communities due to ‘the proximity effect’; they are more accessible, enabling direct flow of information & monitoring of each others actions. The ‘power’ to the DS is not its ‘official’ status flowing from the power of the state, but power of ‘morality’. The members claim this morality by simply behaving the notions of right & wrong embedded in collective consciousness of the community. The members of the DS try to manifest this morality in their public affairs. Delivery Model - How does your initiative reach its target populations? What communications mechanism(s) do you have in place? How do you measure their impact? At times the GP & bureaucracy do try to disrupt the DS. In such instances, the DS has always gone back to the people where issues are resolved only based on the principle of ‘upholding the common good’. On this forum resorting to corrupt practices to promote parochial class & caste interest is very difficult as it stands exposed in the people’s assembly. This is how corruption is controlled by the mechanism of the DS promoting a culture of good governance.
Multi-Stake Holder Dialogue (MSD): An effective tool for Improving Governance: In an atmosphere of subjugation and mistrust, instead of turning away from law, MSDs have empowered citizens to change the existing frameworks. Through community mobilization & negotiations with the government, Parivartan has effectively used MSD as a tool to change the existing policies & practices of the government agencies. The agenda of MSDs does not stop at development of plans & obtaining assurances, but also ensures persistent follow-up for establishing objectives. The ‘Community Livelihood Manifesto’ (CLM) is an instrument prepared with objective to strengthen the DS mechanism & build the capabilities of the community to engage in micro-planning. CLM approach ensures that the plans & process do not fall prey to populist interests of certain vested-interest groups. The exclusivity of the CLM approach to micro-planning is that the community develops a manifesto, with it’s own goals & objectives for the planning process & development plans. The CLM ensures the focus on strengthening the local natural resources based livelihoods of deprived sections. The community works with the local government to translate this manifesto into a plan & then monitors its implementation. As the village development issues relate to district and state government DS extends interventions to these levels. If needful the DS mobilizes the community & agitates struggles against to ensure transparent & accountable governance for equitable development. Key Operational Partnerships - What key partnerships have you established to make your model possible or more efficient? Who are your partners (business, social, government, other) and what are their roles? How central are these partnerships for your initiative. COMMUNITY: Numerous citizens from local to national level who relate to the social stigma around have always formed a major source for the financial as well as every kind of needful support. Businessman have been important source for fund raising, Advocates Doctors Engineers & retired govt. officers volunteer their expertise for advocacy & counseling.
MEDIA: Media has always shared a significant role in creating awareness & building mass support. 7 newspapers and 4 TV channels have helped fade away negative mindset & inertness of people, by highlighting issues of concern, struggles & success of DS. LOCAL PEOPLE’S ORGANIZATIONS(POs): The issue based alliance with local Pos like Women collectives & SHGs & Youth groups, Wadi Mandal weaves a close relation with all the sectors in Village, accelerates acceptance, involves support & solidarity to promote issues relating to governance. Mumbai Mandals (migrants in Mumbai) assists in follow up of village level issues at the Ministry. GOVERNMENT: GP & concerned govt. dept. remained to be the core partner in change. May it be in collaboration or in confrontation with GP, the correlation between village development & GP was always worked out. NGOs: 8 NGOs from Konkan 3 international funding agencies extended expertise on aspects like Village Governance, micro-planning, CLM etc. RESEARCH & EXTENSION AGENCIES: Institutes in social, environmental, agriculture & allied fields provide technological support to DS inititiatives. Financial Model - Which mechanisms do you have in place to ensure that your beneficiaries can afford your products or services? Do you have financial schemes or arrangements for low-income and marginalized populations? Not Applicable, However CLM ( an instrument described in Delivery model) brings forward plans for natural resource based livelihood enhancement of marginalized communities.
Effectiveness - What has been the concrete impact of your project to date? How many people have benefited from your program in total? What policies, communities, or institutions have been influenced to make fundamental changes because of your work? Since 8 years DS have acted an effective mechanism to ensure transparency & accountability prevent corruption & force the govt. to adopt the just practices.
Presently a total population of around 10,500 persons is involved in this initiative belonging to 13 villages. In these 13 villages 115 persons are functioning in councils, 145 members are working as DS members. The DS in almost all the 13 villages have ensured that the revenue officers, workers of the electrical utility & other line departments in the village do not engage in corrupt practices & ensure better performance. In one village the DS conducted a public hearing following which all types of corrupt practices in the Primary Health Center was controlled. Also the performance of the teachers improved following strict monitoring by the DS. Various schemes for agriculture development meant for individual beneficiaries & govt. pensions for aged & destitute were awarded in a transparent manner, without restoring mal-practices like bribery in the village. The exemplary outcome of the DS was that they were able to hold the GP members to account & ensure proper conduct of the GramSabha as stipulated by law. The village accounts & budgets were submitted to & ratified by Gramsabha. There are few such villages in the country. To summarize DS was seen to considerably enhance the decision making abilities of villagers using their indigenous intellect, as they now have the mechanism to oppose the ill intended bureaucratic decisions.
Scaling up Strategy - What is your priority for the next 3 years and please describe why. The mechanism of the DS provides an opportunity to impose various barriers on other members not to manipulate the functioning of the village bodies as well as restrain the manipulation of electoral process. This phenomenon has been successfully demonstrated by the work of Partivartan in all DS intervened villages. The qualitative difference in the process of local elections and in the functioning of the village bodies in villages where the DS mechanism is working and where it is absent is highly visible to the community. This is reflected in the demand made by neighboring villages to Parivartan to initiate the process of forming the DS in the respective villages.
However, no explicit strategy for scaling up has been prepared as yet. Though the initiators are confident that this mechanism can be replicated in many other villages, each village has its own character and social history. Hence, it takes considerable time and effort (two years minimum) to constitute a DS and work for its social acceptance and effective functioning. However, as mentioned the growing demand from neighboring villages will itself slowly lead to the spread of this idea and many more village will accept and implement this in the coming future.
Origin of the Initiative - Tell the personal story that will help people connect to your work. How did the initiative start? Was there a particular individual or event driving the idea? Tell the reader the story behind the innovation. The conceptualization of the DS, & working methodology emerged from Praivartan’s work on the issue of industrial pollution in Khed block of Ratnagiri. DS were formed to ensure industrialization responsible to the local communities and ecosystems. Gradually the DS was mandated by the community to monitor the work the GP. DS was used an effective tool for making the local governance & bureaucracy more transparent & accountable. Such a monitoring of the GP by representatives of the civil society to some extent ensured that that these bodies do not act against the interest of the poor, rather function to protect the interests of the poor & promote their development. The DS draws inspiration from Gandhian approach of ‘Sarvodaya’. Offering it a more sustained institutional form that goes beyond well intent trusteeship of powerful to protect weak emphasizing consensus & empowering approach.
Main Obstacles to Scaling Up - List the two (2) main obstacles to scale up your innovation (policy, legal, organizational, people, financial, etc.)? The main obstacle to scaling up DS initiative is financial one. Though the rural communities and DS memberes contribute for GS it can not be overlooked that the communities are resource scare one.
Main Partnership Challenges - What are your major challenges with partnerships? (E.g., identification of partners, implementation of partnerships, relationship management, etc.) Not applicable.
Contact Information:
Ashok Kadam
Executive Director Parivartan (NGO) parijvp@yahoo.com parivartan, Kherdi, Chiplun,Maharashtra, India. India Tel: +912355-254740 Fax: +912355-256052 Website: -- Discussions about this entry
|
Dakshata Samities : Countervailing Power to Corruption
|
|
Copyright © 2009 Changemakers | Legal & Privacy Policy | Credits
Changemakers is an initiative of Ashoka
|
 A Changemakers Partner
|
A Changemakers Partner
|
|
|
||
If such organised volunteerism like GLOBAL INTEGRITY is at its place, the people who give bribe and get will not indulge.D Sundaram.
I must admit the work that you people ared doing is superb and will keep the government's on the right track.I want also to appreciate the role that Global integrity is doing to ensure administrative justice devoid of corruption.This is the right path to the success stories in governance and administration worlwide.The ENERGY being exerted to achieve this noble and viable concept should be kept high and higher.
Congratulations to the watchdongs doing us proud. Atleast we have competent authporitries to rely on when the government's fails to live up to their honesty. Cheers.
Kepher.
Friends of Justice has been a family faith calling for more than 7 years, and now we are attempting to train others in our unique and successful intervention strategy. Parivartan and Friends of Justice might well benefit from sharing our approaches in a meeting. Nancy Bean
Parivartan has a well-thought out, comprehensive approach to empowerment of citizens. Friends of Justice and Parivartan might both benefit from a meeting together. Nancy Bean
Thanks nandabean, for your comment. I had the same feeling when I learn about Friends of Justice through operation Blind Justice. Your initiative & activity stand a great support to low-status defendant; who need it most. It would be really inspiring to learn more about friends of justice.
Hello,
My name is Rich Gottbreht from Global Insights and I am one of the entrants in the competition. Our work centers on helping anyone concerned about corruption learn about the subject through my book, our board game and its associated seminars, as well as low cost consulting. To find out more about us please visit our website www.globalinsights.biz. From the home page, you can link to information about us, our products and what people say about our products and services. From the details in the initiative we submitted you should also note that some of the proceeds from our sales will eventually go to a high integrity leadership development foundation. Also, if you are interested, down the road we will be looking for alliances and contacts in every country.
Thanks,
Rich Gottbreht