It is a weekday afternoon and around 50 students are gathered after college hours in an office on Church Street, discussing topics varying from whether Bengaluru is losing the race of being the IT capital to the role of gender in budgeting.
This is neither a college activity nor an endeavour for extra credits. It is the result of ‘Dialogue’, an NGO started by a city-based student in 2016 to ‘instil a sense of political awareness in students so that they are equipped to solve hyper-local issues on their own instead of having to run after authorities’.
Sharan K.A., 21, was a final-year journalism student at Christ University when he, along with his debate team, started Dialogue as a platform to introduce good orators, policy makers, and people who could bring about social change.
The group is run by students and guided by an advisory board that consists of top politicians as well as experts from fields, such as journalism. Dialogue has engaged with around 10,000 students in 15 institutions through events, online sessions and seminars, all to encourage them to get involved in politics.
This summer, the NGO started an internship programme called ‘Political Action Internship’ as a platform for people of all age groups to understand politics. There are plans to expand the programme to outside Bengaluru in the near future. All these are offered free of cost.
Being proactive
One of the activities the NGO has come up with is Community Debate, where hyper-local issues are identified, policies formulated, and solutions put across to the local authorities. “This way, we are directly engaging with local representatives we have elected, and they are supposed to be accountable,” Mr. Sharan said.
According to him, there exists a gap between public and private education in India, with private school students appearing to have a monopoly over public debates because they can speak English and articulate their thoughts better. Dialogue wants to bring all of them to the same platform as ‘students’ and give them equal opportunities to speak and contribute towards the betterment of society.
Sachin A. Tantry, a media and communication consultant and trainer who is a mentor for Dialogue, said, “It is a very young team that is making politics accessible and giving it a different flavour. We want to make the political process familiar from the school level.”
Foreign interest
The programme is attracting foreign students studying in India. At a meeting, two students from Afghanistan who are studying medicine and law in Bengaluru said they wanted to take the initiative back to their country. They approached the President of Afghanistan, Ashraf Ghani, and were sanctioned $10,000 with which they could hold their first conference in Kabul.
“This is a platform for those who have zero knowledge about politics. It is an amalgamation of people who may have different beliefs and ideologies. You may be a BJP supporter, a Congress supporter, or you may not have a political opinion at all; but you are getting involved with the system,” Mr. Sharan said.
