If you were to ask how corruption could be uprooted, it is most unlikely that the answer would point to the common man. But Magsaysay award winner, Arvind Kejriwal, has done just that using commoners to fight corruption. Common people, especially the poor and the illiterate suffer from double dealings, fraud and bribery that are rampant in government departments. The poor continue to fall in the vicious circle of becoming victims of corruption and ultimately end up being economically and emotionally battered.
Parivartan is a grass-root initiative by Kejriwal to create awareness, mobilize and energize people using the Right to Information (RTI) and the Public Interest Litigation (PIL).
It all began in early 2000 in the income tax department of Delhi, where Kejriwal was a Deputy Commissioner. Deeply upset with the all pervasive culture of bribery, young Kejriwal started encouraging people not to pay bribes. Kejriwal got Parivartan to file a PIL, seeking transparency in the functioning of the IT department and held a Satyagraha outside the Chief Commissioner’s office. A movement was born. Kejriwal spearheaded this grass root endeavor of speaking out not only in the scarcity stricken narrow lanes of Delhi’s slum and the resettlement colonies but also in the posh broad lanes.
Kejriwal raised a flock of spirited volunteers mostly from the Sundernagiri resettlement colony, who worked shoulder to shoulder, and contributed time, money and ideas in the initial years. He got them to campaign against ration shops that were refusing foodgrain to the poor. Soon volunteers like Santosh were threatened and then attacked. She escaped a near fatal attack when her throat was slit.
In the last six years, Santosh was attacked nine times. She has survived to tell her tale of how ration dealers wanted to eliminate her. Unable to silence her, they even offered her a bribe of 20 lakh rupees. Her proudest moment was when she refused. Today, she inspires scores of poor youngsters in her Sundernagari resettlement colony that resembles an urban slum. Today, Santosh has become an icon of sorts for the RTI movement.
Parivartan mobilized people against privatization of water supply in Delhi. It helped stop the project that would have almost quadrupled the cost of water. Parivartan, through a series of PILs, also got more than 500 poor kids admitted in private schools, that had received land at concession prices. “I would have never been able to get my son admitted in a private school if Parivartan had not helped”, says Pushpa a 42 year old women whose son Lokesh studies in a private school, Nutan Vidya Mandir, since last three years.
Kejriwal used the $ 50000 sum that he got from the Magsaysay Award to found the Public Cause Research Foundation (PCRF) which functions like the research wing of Parivartan. PCRF studies laws, RTI and PIL documents, looks for loopholes, researches for model solutions and suggests proposals to bring policy level intervention. Sonu Kumar, a software engineer in Washington, who now volunteers with Parivartan says: “In the United States, there is a Freedom of Information Act that works as people are very conscious and use it. In India, that is yet to happen.” Radhika, another volunteer, says: While Parivartan takes care of ground level initiatives, PCRF ensures paperwork is done flawlessly’.
Kejriwal's sensitive, honest and objective leadership has steered Parivartan into being part of a revolution.. Says Ramavatar, another volunteer: “While other NGOs offer to work on behalf of someone, Parivartan does not get anybody’s work done. It only guides and shows the right way, but yes, it accompanies you if you are ready to fight and challenge the system that shelters corruption”. And its time for all oncerned Indians to introspect ,with Parivartan like movements around ,at least after 8 years of his century already gone ,what Kejriwal wrote in an article in Mint on July 6,2007,”Can the Indian democracy claim this century for its own?”
The answer lies in the hands of the common man.
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