The Hindu : 500 college students are on a unique mission

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Jul 16, 2003

Southern States

Southern States - Karnataka-Bangalore

500 college students are on a unique mission

By Rasheed Kappan

BANGALORE July 15. Over 500 students from seven colleges here are on a unique exercise. Armed with surveying tools, they are busy collecting data from various Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BMP) wards about residential and commercial properties, new buildings, and so on. Guided by citizens' groups, the students are counting the number of houses, commercial establishments, and other buildings, all for a bigger cause.

The exercise is part of the groundwork for the second phase of the 18-month-old participative governance campaign of the citizens' platform, Janaagraha.

This phase is scheduled for a formal launch in August.

Students from the M.S. Ramaiah Institute of Management, and Mahaveer Jain, Jyoti Nivas, Christ, Mount Carmel, Garden City, and New Horizon colleges are now part of the campaign, collecting data to ascertain the property base. The idea is to look at each ward's potential for tax generation.

First phase: Janaagraha's first campaign was on the ward works launched in December 2001.

The premise behind this initiative was that citizens should have a voice in deciding how the annual budgetary allocation by the BMP is spent on their respective localities or wards.

The effort focuses on just one item in the budget (accounting for about six per cent of the outlay) and on an issue that citizens have a direct and immediate stake. This ongoing campaign centres around the goal of establishing a process for engagement of citizens in the assessment, prioritisation, and quality of implementation of the works in their respective wards.

Janaagraha developed documents and training programmes to help residents survey the roads, pavements, and drains, and estimate the cost of the overall work requirements in the neighbourhood.

"Once the requirements are known, Janaagraha volunteers assist in pulling citizen groups together to prioritise works in the various wards,'' a Janaagraha resource person said.

In the first year, citizens from over 20 of the 100 wards were successful in negotiating with their corporators to get their priorities included in the budget.

The ward works campaign has now progressed to monthly review meetings. Every month, the people of the respective wards meet in the presence of their ward engineers.

"Fifteen wards are currently using the meeting as the platform for participation in issues concerning their wards.''

Janaagraha, along with its partners, VOICES, the Centre for Budget and Policy Studies, and the Public Affairs Committee, came out with the PROOF (Public Record of Operations and Finance) campaign to boost transparency in BMP's financial practices and budgeting decisions.

PROOF succeeded in getting BMP publish four quarterly reports and initiate public discussions on them.

The PROOF campaign came out with performance indicators to compile data and characterise various municipal undertakings throughout the City.

For instance, by collecting data about public schools and hospitals or sanitation, areas for improvement are identified.

Resuscitating the Swarna Jayanthi Shahari Rozgar Yojana of the Union Government is another Janaagraha project.

The project is intended to make banks provide micro-credit to the poor.

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500 college students are on a unique mission