In a 3-part series, we are publishing the story behind the birth of Janaagraha written by Ramesh Ramanathan, Co-founder of Janaagraha. First in the series is ‘How it all began’. As a part of the Janaagraha family, we find most of our answers in our organisation’s passionate beginnings detailed in these writings. It is a good read to stir up our collective passions and energies, to remain committed in improving quality of life in urban India.

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The Bala Janaagraha Team

As we conclude our B.E.S.T. pilot project in Shanthi Nagar, Bangalore, good news beckons us. The B.E.S.T. MoU will see extension for another 5 years!

The historic outcome is a result of the meeting that took place on Aug 1, 2011, in Delhi between Janaagraha and the Election Commission of India. Janaagraha was represented by Ms. Swati Ramanathan, Co-founder of Janaagraha, Mr. Gen. Prasad (Retd.), Co-ordinator of Jaagte Raho! and Mr. Narayan Murthy, Chief Mentor of Infosys.

The Area Voter Mitras who have made B.E.S.T., a success will be felicitated in a function to be held towards the end of Aug, 2011. The function will be presided over by Dr. S Y Quraishi and other dignitaries from the Election Commission of India.

There are cities within cities, invisible or simply inconvenient to the official gaze. Cities are places of creativity and ferment, where hopes are lit and doused, where new political energies, communities, networks, and identities are born, where livelihoods and careers are built and squandered, and where naked violence intertwines daily with quotidian struggles for survival, and longings for emancipation.

You can read the full editorial here.

Do you have more quotes you would like to add to this category? Write in to us – or comment on this post! We’ll be happy to include them!

To solve this problem Janaagraha proposed the concept of Area Sabha. This formal platform for participation at the neighbourhood level will be part of the government’s decision-making system.

The figure illustrates the solution being suggested and describes the proposed structure in detail. It can be understood in terms of platforms and participants.

Platforms: There are three, at the level of the municipality (A), at the level of the ward (B), and at the level of the polling station, called the area sabha (C). There shall be a ward committee in every ward, irrespective of the size of the ward or the municipality.
While the first two are well known, it is the area sabha that is being newly introduced. The footprint of every polling station could be the smallest unit in such an architecture; this
could be called an area sabha. Each of these is a legitimate, formal space, which will be defined in terms of constitution, composition, functions, duties and responsibilities.

Participants: Every registered voter of a polling booth (boundaries of the polling booth will be defined by the election commission) shall be a member of that area sabha. This creates an urban equivalent of the grama sabha, retains a reasonable level of intimacy, and recognises the unique features of urban dwellings. At the next level of the ward committee, the current practice of nomination to the ward committee can be replaced by a nomination of an area sabha representative from the area sabha. The benefit of this structure is that it automatically adjusts for the size of a municipality or ward, rather than have a prescribed single size being defined for a ward committee. Large municipalities would have wards with greater population, more polling booths, and hence more area sabhas, resulting in larger ward committees. Smaller municipalities would have smaller population in each ward, hence fewer area sabhas and fewer members in each ward committee.

Hyderabad (GHMC) Council meeting for nominating area ‘sabha' representatives in progress

The structure above solves many problems of urban governance:

1. It will give formal voice to every voter to participate in issues of local governance, removing the lopsided treatment of the rural and urban voters that has prevailed since the 73rd and 74th constitutional amendments were passed.
2. This three-tiered municipal governance structure will also create accountability of the municipality directly to the citizen and expose citizens to the need to participate, rather than stand on the side lines and complain. While participation cannot be expected to be widespread, this process of political engagement will bring citizens closer to government, and seek solutions to public issues from our public institutions rather than outside them. In some sense therefore, area sabhas are as much about government accountability to citizens as they are about citizens’ accountability to themselves.

While rural participation is embedded in the Constitution, citizen involvement in urban areas is still very indirect. This needs to be urgently corrected. In the context of urban decentralization and the need for citizen participation, area sabhas offer a solution that can be embedded into law at the state and municipality levels, without having to change the Constitution.

Prachi Sinha works as the RAMP Associate with Janaagraha.

Amitav Ghosh writes in In an Antique Land

“To most Egyptians outside Cairo, their metaphor stands for the entire city: the whole of it is known as Masr — the city’s formal name al-Qahira is infrequently used. But Cairo, like Delhi or Rome, is actually not so much a single city as an archipelago of townships, founded on neighbouring sites, by various different dynasties and rulers.”

Have a look at The Polis Blog for more such quotes on the cities that we live in.

We will be posting more such quotes in the coming weeks to show the rich perspectives on life in the cities. Do keep an eye out!

(Image source: Greater Archeology)

Shreyas Jayasimha

In the recent past, India has seen an increase in sub-national movements for regional autonomy some of which have resulted in the creation of new states. It is therefore apposite to look more closely at the constitutional framework for federalism in India. Janaagraha Lunch and Learn, for the month of July, focused on ‘comparative federalism,’ presented to the team by Shreyas Jayasimha, a legal practitioner and expert in constitutional law. It would briefly outline the unique history of federalism in India as compared with the rest of South Asia, the constitutional mechanism for the creation of new states in India, and the provisions for dispute resolution amongst states with reference to prominent decisions of the Supreme Court. Sudeep S, our Advocacy Associate talks about what he learnt this lunch time.

Across the world, different countries have adopted different systems of Government. Some countries have adopted a centralised form of Governance where the Central Government is all powerful and the states or provinces draw their powers from the orders of the central Government. Others have adopted the federal form of Government wherein the constitution grants powers to the states or provinces and the centre cannot deprive the states provinces from these powers. What makes a country decide to adopt a particular system? At Shreyas’s Janaagraha Lunch n’ Learn for July, we focussed on how historical factors influenced our decision to go with our current constitution, especially the Government of India Act, 1935.

Shreyas spoke of how federal systems are more likely to accommodate the people’s need for identity while still binding them into one constitution, by giving examples of how the States Reorganization Committee went about reorganizing the states in the 1950’s. The States reorganization committee couldn’t have done a better job than what it did. At a time when the country was still taking infant steps in democracy, the committee reorganised the states on linguistic basis and yet retained them in India. In comparison, countries like Srilanka and Afghanistan are still facing challenges. In Srilanka the constitution created a

unitary form of Government which possibly didn’t take into account the felt needs of its people. Similarly in Afghanistan, where despite it being a federal republic, it has not able to get its people into its fold.

Shreyas also discussed the role of Judiciary in maintaining the Federal Structure. Though India has been a fairly successful federal democracy, there have always been threats to federalism, mostly in the form of abuse of Art 356(or Presidents’ Rule) and other Emergency Powers in the Constitution. However, Indian judiciary has been the vanguard of our federal edifice. It has ruled definitively in favour of federalism in two landmark cases. Basic structure theory of Constitution – laid down as a result of Keshavananda B

harti case and the stringent conditions for the valid exercise of Art. 356 – pronounced as a result of S R Bommai case, largely restrict vindictive and malicious use of Art. 356 by the central government.

We also discussed the provisions in the constitution that promote Federalism. The constitution of India lays down explicit provisions that make room for resolution of conflicts between states, which are to be expected in a federal democracy. Articles 262 and 263 make provision for the redressal of disputes over river water and creation of an Inter-state council to resolve any other disputes that may have risen between the states respectively.

The session ended with an intense question and answer session. The discussion revolved around how federalism can be improved and enhanced. Could we, for example, revisit the emergency provisions in the Indian constitution considering that this is perhaps the biggest threat to federalism in the country? What are the steps involved in moving to far more federalised structure?   The main thing this would involve is greater financial autonomy to the states. However, improving federalism through the constitution, said Shreyas, is a task best suited to the judiciary.

Shreyas Jayasimha read law at NLSIU, was a Chevening Scholar at the University of Warwick (UK) and has been a lawyer for over 10 years practicing in areas including constitutional law, civil and commercial law, company law, intellectual property, private international law and technology law. He is an active member of several international professional organizations including ASIL, ISIL, LCIA, IBA and is a frequent speaker on issues pertaining to dispute resolution. He is currently partner at AZB & Partners, Bangalore

Janaagraha Lunch and Learns are conducted monthly on issues of interest to both the organisation and the staff. Contact us at communications@janaagraha.org for more details.

Ramesh Ramanathan

Ramesh Ramanathan, co-founder of Janaagraha, writes in response to the bomb blasts in Mumbai on July 13.

I am writing in to request you’ll to read this after stepping away from the breathless pace of your lives!

If terrorism becomes something we get ‘used’ to, like poverty, garbage dumps and traffic jams, it is not an indictment of our citizens – after all, this is a natural coping mechanism when constantly confronted by something over which we have little control.

A country of our size and complexity cannot be governed by government alone.  Such a paradigm is weak not only because it is practically not possible, but also because it lets citizens off the hook, allowing us to demand a free-ride on a system that is somehow magically meant to be built and run on its own.

This isn’t some theoretical hand-wringing from armchair activists.  As you know, we have spent 12 years now on working systematically at fixing urban participatory systems in India, and actually have made much quiet progress, but much more needs to be done.

Some highlights:

• We worked on getting a “COMMUNITY PARTICIPATION LAW” included in JNNURM, which requires AREA SABHAS (one AREA for 1 or more polling parts) to be set up in our cities, just like GRAM SABHAs in panchayats.  Every state government that wanted to access JNNURM funds had to modify their municipal corporation acts to include such formal platforms for participation. This is critical because participation cannot be done with self-selected middle class Resident Welfare Associations; nor can it done with no teeth, or connection to the formal system of decision making in government.

• Over the past 6 years, 8 state governments have actually passed the community participation laws, and one of them – Andhra – has passed rules and actually implemented it.  The others are dithering, for the same reason that no corporator or MLA actually wants to see power being shared with the people.  There is a lot more pressure that can be placed to get these acts passed.

• Starting in 2004, we havebeen tracking urban voter roll issues, with the belief that poor turnout is not about apathy but something deeper – the quality of the voter rolls.  After much advocacy, finally in 2010, we signed an unprecedented MoU with the Election Commission (first time that ECI has signed an MoU with a civil society institution) to clean up the SYSTEM of electoral roll maintenance in urban areas . Over the past year, we are working in 1 assembly constituency in Bangalore asa pilot. Part of the process is that we mobilise Area Voter Mitras (AVMs) to work in their polling parts or AREAS, which is no more than 150 – 200 households, and submit forms for addition/deletion/modification. It is gruelling work, we have mobilised, trained and continuously supported over 800 such AVMs in this constituency, and the results are finally beginning to show – close to 50,000 forms have been submitted from this AC alone, for addition/modification/deletion, and ACCEPTED by the ECI, representing 25% of the electorate.  This is unprecedented.  Most importantly, we can convert this into a replicable and scalable system, so that it can be taken across urban India.

Area Suraksha Mitras learning fire safety

• Since before 26/11, when the Bangalore terrorism encounter happened, we have been working diligently with the Civil Defence department to establish grassroots community volunteers who could become part of a structured Community Policing with their local police.  Very few people know, but India has a Civil Defence Act, passed in Parliament in the 60s, under which all cities are to have a volunteer force.  Until 26/11, the CD force was meant more for floods, natural disasters etc.  We made the argument that this could easily be used as a grassroots, structured community policing force.  Over the past 3 years, we have helped CD in Bangalore mobilise over 3000 citizen volunteers called Area Suraksha Mitras (ASMs), one in each polling part.  They get trained on a variety of skills like first aid, disaster relief etc.  Connecting them to the police is a complex task for a variety of reasons – territoriality, concerns about the local beat constable losing his hafta etc.  But we are on the verge of a breakthrough.  The same structure was suggested to Mumbai as well, and we had several rounds of discussions in 2009/10 with Police, CD, Home Secretary’s office etc.  We even got support from Gopal Pillai at Union Home Ministry, but frankly there was no leadership from the state.  These things can be implemented only if there is political leadership and clear signals to the entire admin and law and order machinery that it must be done.

We need to now go beyond the noise and talk about the details. We need in-depth discussion about this kind of stuff – the ‘HOW” of citizen participation, rather than the “WHY” of citizen participation, and the specific details of making it happen.