Thoughts and Action
Report Expression: Feb 2006
Action Maharashtra:
The February month was very active with lot of meetings held by Dilip Patilin the villages and I facilitated his village visits with inputs and guiding the action. I gave telephonic speeches through Dilipand explained the agenda of RTI & NREGS movement.
Preparatory meetings of volunteers
Hingoli : Khaparkheda, Babhali and Umra were first three villages Dilip visited; he and his team realized that there is absolutely no awareness, we started making job card applications to GramPanchayat office as first action, we did not file RTIs as we thought getting information at village level was easier. We explained India 700k agenda without using the tag; people were not ready for just survey so we did explain the use of information in solving the problems.
Volunteers sticking posters in Hingoli
Parbhani: In Parbhani we encouraged protest as the district was not notified under NREGS and we started filing more application of Maharashtra EGS, we started our presence in 8 villages which come under Manavali panchayat circle.
We started contacting leaders of organizations having interests in NREGS and started explaining the agenda of India 700k & ITforSocialChange.
NREGS Software,Delhi promotion &Design Advocacy:
We realized that India 700k agenda of grass root is never going to be realized in its true essence at large scale if the interfaces and software are not usable by common villagers in their own language.
We were already working on NREGS with NID post grad diploma project, but I wanted to involve senior designers in India to design the software for the movements, I met them in IDC in IIT to discuss the proposition on developing the software on all socially relevant issues– tech enabling social processes and stretch it to the complete micro planning package, with the objective of people to organize around the information and network for action.
We initiated this design exercise for developing software of social processes on another issues as well – 1. Water auditing and Management 2. The child health care and malnutrition, we thought of redesigning existing products that have moved in direction of achieving highest usability by people.
In my opinion, we needed to work six months continuously for achieving this but it was difficult to raise financial support for such effort within a movement, so I started meeting corporate, senior activists, burocrats and politicians to take up the idea. The idea was welcome everywhere, NREGS database everyone could visualise for participatory planning.
Still we could not get started development of software on such all issues and just made a case, our India 700k action was confined to NREGS. Still the general situation of non-standardized e governance package and the packages made without social processes detailing happen to dominate scenario of rural data, getting factual data from the ground is still the major portion of social security activism and area of those services still remains untapped. India 700 k is operating in same space.
Asha Uttar Pradesh action:
On 2nd February Sandeep Pandey started NREGS movement in UP, he started NREGS work on his own in UP villages with people’s planning and asha ashram organizations carried out the works. Their demand of payment of wages was not met by block administration. Sandeep also showed the readiness to experiment India 700k in UP villages, provided I go their and work at the grass roots. The idea clicked to me; if asha ashram villages become part of India 700k effort then the importance of this mission would speak of their own. The larger idea of creating tech center in Uttar Pradesh was also considered.
Harsha