Meeting with Loksatta Party

Hi ppl,

Had been to the meeting today to the Loksatta Party office. Unfortunately hardly anyone was around & nobody from our side showed up as well!!! Trupti, you certainly should have met these guys.. they were a lot on your wavelength.

Anyways the meeting was ok but honestly I had mixed feelings about them.
I met three of the people from their Mumbai core group. A Mr. Surendra (ex-president GE Shipping) gave me the basic input abt the party, along with Mr. Anant Shinde (Lawyer by profession).

Essentially they are a Hyderabad based NGO started in 1996. You can get the exact figures/details and history & the details of their leader jayprakash Narayan from their website : www.loksatta.org. They are politically active there (since 2006) and claim to have some major support there. (My wife is in Hyderabad right now and I have asked her to check up with the people she encounters if this is true, pls do your credibility checks by all means possible). They started here some 4 years ago and their intention was to build a grass roots movement, since that is how the organisation started. They take credit for the Jago-Re campaign. They were also apparently the major force behind Adolf D'souza being elected from the Juhu Municipal constituency etc.. (I think I did read his name on one of their comitees as well.)

Coming to the point they seemed quiet well organised & have a fairly decent idea of where and how they are going to go about it. Considering that they decided on the idea of going to the polls only post 26/11, they did seem to have done a considerable bit from then. They were observers at the recent US elections & they will be having some 20 election campaign managers from Obama's campaign (promised by some NGO).

The have a basic four pronged agenda to change the present political system, they have several projects campainging against various small and big causes as well. The crux of their ideology is democracy & decentralization of power. eg: candidates are elected & not selected, inidvidual made responsible for city, city wards having own self goverenece system/allocations etc... Anant was pretty open and has invited all of us who are interested to come to their office next Saturday between 3-5pm, so we can discuss and share our views.

Now for the negative part. Their decesion making process seems to be a bit leaning towards Hyderabad. Although they advocate a democratic system of decesion making, honestly I could see a heiarchy in decesion making coming down from Hyderabad. Maybe this is becoz they still dont have numbers here, but this is the feeling I got.
Also Surendra was a lil inflexible in his views & he seems to have walled himself to what is being preached by the party founder..JP Narayan. I maybe wrong at this, but this is the gist I got.Also as is typical in any group situation, the most voiciferous person around is the person voicing opinions and this was very true in this case. Often Surendra ended up overirding points & conversations that were being made between the others. Later Anant explained that this was becoz he was passionate abt the cause & had quit his job to persue it, etc..Lastly they dont seem to be prepared to approach other groups/partys to join them or to join other groups/partys. This was made very clear when I asked them why they could not approach the PPI to join them or vice versa.. infact I think that one word "PPI" managed to rouse a lot of emotion in Surendra in particular.

I think we need to check out what the other party's are doing as well & how they plan to go about it. It would be unwise to draw a decesion at this stage as to where we can align ourselves. I would suggest some of us go visit the other partys during the next few days. Also lets try and meet the Loksatta party nxt saturday and then decide.

Honestly though, now that so many educated people are coming out, it seems to be such a waste that our vote is again going to be split between all these new parties. I honestly hope for once we can give up on our egos and self motives and join together to fight the present political system as a single entity.

Akshay.

26th Dec 2008

Share your experiences about 26-12 meeting at gateway today.
Please share your experiences and how we can move forward.

Self-Study

On doing a little introspection we found that it was very much necessary to educate ourselves first before taking on any major tasks. Since none of us (I am only assuming), are completely aware of the bureaucracy, the procedures, the rules & laws, the operational methods of the government, it was thought that to take on or even question any such system we firstly need to get our act together.

It was thus decided that we take up various tasks of understanding in detail various things from our basic FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS as guaranteed by the constitution or various policies and prodecure's of the government etc. We all will first equip ourselves step by step and then take on a path of educating others. I guess if we even speak to a circle of our friends/relatives etc it will make a huge difference.

How do we go about this:
- Someone will be putting up on the blog, the list of study items we take for the week. 
- From then on any person can take any one task  (or more if you have the time) and study it in detail. 
- Please mention on the blog, the task that you propose to take up, so that others can take alternate ones. (If in case there are no tasks left, do take on repeats or work in groups, as points covered by one person may not be covered by the other). 
- Try and look up its history or related case studies as well, as this will give us a practical idea about how the judicial system perceives them let it be a out fundamental right's or it could be domething to do with rules/policies etc.
- For the next meeting each one of us will brief the rest about the task which they have taken up, so that we are all well educated/empowered first.

The Topic for this week is Fundamental Rights :

Rights literally mean those freedoms which are essential for personal good as well as the good of the community. The rights guaranteed under the Constitution of India are fundamental as they have been incorporated into the Fundamental Law of the Land and are enforceable in a court of law. However, this does not mean that they are absolute or that they are immune from Constitutional amendment.

 

As per our discussion on Friday, Dhaval has sent me some Consitutional Fundamental Rights, which we need to research and learn.

 The six fundamental rights are,

1. Right to equality
2. Right to freedom
3. Right against exploitation
4. Right to freedom of religion
5. Cultural and educational rights
6. Right to constitutional remedies

Here are some of the fundamental duties we must perform as citizens, if we can have some research work on this i.e. cases and more elaboration on these, it will just add on to our basic knowledge and we should make people aware of this.

These are considered as the duties that must be and should be performed by every citizen of India. These fundamental duties are defined as:

It shall be the duty of every citizens of India: -

• To abide by the Constitution and respect its ideals and institutions, the National Flag and the National Anthem;
• To cherish and follow the noble ideals which inspired our national struggle for freedom;
• To uphold and protect the sovereignty, unity and integrity of India;
• To defend the country and render national service when called upon to do so;
• To promote harmony and the spirit of common brotherhood amongst all the people of India transcending religious, linguistic and regional or sectional diversities; to renounce practices derogatory to the dignity of women;
• To value and preserve the rich heritage of our composite culture;
• To protect and improve the natural environment including forests, lakes, rivers and wild life, and to have compassion for living creatures;
• To develop the scientific temper, humanism and the spirit of inquiry and reform;
• To safeguard public property and to abjure violence;
• To strive towards excellence in all spheres of individual and collective activity so that the nation constantly rises to higher levels of endeavour and achievement.

I hope all of us are well equipeed to have a stroming session on saturday on these.Please post the ones which you are going to takeup for you self.

Thanks,

Stop Talking Start Doing.

Kick Off Meeting

Hello Guys,

As you all know we are planning to meet this friday(i.e.tomorrow).I have got the details of few of us but we really dont want to miss anyone out for this meeting.

The basic agenda for this meeting is to know each other in person and share  our thoughs and ideas.

Also, to inform you guys about the way forward.

Once again thanks for you support and request those of you who have not sent the details, please send it to me on jatin.addictive@gmail.com or call me on +919820610701.

Thanks.

 

Action Plan-2

Action Plan-2

And now we have Action Plan 2, and this has come from Trupti: The idea is that to change the system we have to be a part of it. And although right now we are all a part of it as voters, the choice between parties and politicians is very limited, so we catch the bull by its horns and get into politics.

Also to bring about all the major changes that we want, viz: transperancy, accountability or even de-coupling the forces from political control,.. we know for a fact that nothing of this sort is going to be done by the present spectrum of people who are present in the political system. If we want results we have to kick them out.

The objective: Create a political platform for people to come into politics.

The suggestions: We start local from the elections at the BMC. We get a map of the constituencies of Mumbai and do a detailed SWOT on the constituencies, their electoral profile, problems, issues, dynamics, our opposition, strengths, weaknesses etc... Then we go and start getting as many people/ friends / families / societies / groups etc.., we know, to join us on this. Use mass communication media/ radio to get the numbers per say.

The Action Plan:

To make things a bit more managable, we need to take break this action part into two parts for now:

Part 1: Trupti has said she will be actively looking out for more data on party formation, general politics, laws, procedures etc.. and will be keeping us posted.

Herein the most important thing would be knowledge & experience. To make this part of the action plan take shape we will need inputs on these fronts, so if any one of us is the field, has studies it or perhaps knows somebody who can give us info, pls look it up and put it up so that everyone is clear on these aspects. It is mundane but very important.

Part 2: This part (for now), deals with understanding our audience for whom we propose to work for ie: The people of Mumbai. We would need a lot of data to be put in place so that we understand what we are up against. If anyone can get us Mumbai's constituencies breakup (a map) & their dynamics (as mentioned above) it would be great. This will be the base from which we can build on our ideas for every specific constituency.

Action Plan-1

Action Plan-1
The first suggestion to make a difference, has come in from Jatin & Apurv:
The objective:
Create an appraisal system for the performance of Politicians & Government officials.
The suggestions:
An appraisal system controlled by the people.
6 monthly reporting system.
Make public the duties/promises made by the Politicians & the Govt. Officials to the public.
Systematic chaseup on non-compliance.
In case of non-compliance in given time frame, the public must be given the power to boot officials & politicians out of office (whether they have finished their term or not).
The Action Plan:
We are all educated and responsible citizens of this country & we are here because we care. However we are sure that not all of us can come up with the best answers to our questions. We therefore need all of us to come together with our suggestions, comments, ideas and experiences, to create an action plan, which works within the system and can still get results.
Remember if we can come together today, we can make tommorow a better place.

India United as ONE