our anachronistic laws

Cartoonist Aseem Trivedi has been arrested and remanded to judicial custody for the alleged offence of sedition. His cartoons are being variously described in the media as "insulting" , "obscene", "ugly', "objectionable" etc.  The aam aadmi is puzzled, because Aseem Trivedi's cartoons reflect the popular sentiment. If he is guilty of sedition, so are lakhs of other Indians.

Is it seditious, then, to express dis satisfaction with the corruption rampant in our democratic institutions? Is it seditious to be incensed by the conduct of our elected representatives who have reduced Parliament to an institution better known for adjournments than discussions and legislative business? Is it seditious to bemoan the erosion of that supreme value "Satyameva Jayate" ? Such would appear to be the case if one is guided by the conduct of the police authorities who have, on the basis of an FIR, arrested Aseem Trivedi although the Code of Criminal Procedure allows them under Section 157 to simply not investigate an alleged offence if it appears to them that sufficient ground for making an investigation does not exist. 

What is sedition? As per the India Penal Code (section 124A), a person is guilty of sedition if by words or by signs or by visible representation, he brings or attempts to bring into hatred or contempt, or excites or attempts to excite disaffection towards the Government established by law in India. 

The Indian Penal Code clarifies that if one's comments merely express disapprobation of the admin­istrative or other action of the Government without exciting or attempting to excite hatred, contempt or disaffection, or if one's comments express disapprobation of the meas­ures of the Government with a view to obtain their alteration by lawful means, without exciting or attempting to excite hatred, contempt or disaffection, then one is not guilty of sedition. The dictionary defines "disapprobation " as "strong disapproval". 

So, we have a situation where the law permits me to disapprove of government measures, either because I wish to simply express my disapproval or because I wish the government to pay heed and alter the measures I disapprove of. However, when I express my disapproval of government measures/action, I must be careful not to sound critical of the government, because I'd then be guilty of  hatred or contempt or disaffection towards the government and hence guilty of sedition. 

To give an example ---- I can say that I do not approve of coal blocks being allotted for a pittance, but I cannot say the government which has made such allocation does not deserve to remain in power ! That's a tough balancing act indeed --- to disapprove of government actions yet be respectful of it, and loyal.

Strangely enough, the Indian Penal Code does not require that a citizen be guilty of disaffection or contempt or hatred against the Indian State or the Indian Constitution to be held guilty of sedition. Hypothetically, a citizen who professes utmost respect for the values and ideals of the Constitution can be held guilty of sedition if he says that the government is guilty of violating those very ideals and values and is therefore not fit to remain in power. In fact, this is what is happening in Aseem Trivedi's case.

Probably, the reason for such a dichotomy lies in the fact that the provisions relating to sedition date back to the 1870s when the government in India was a representative of the British monarch. Therefore, an Indian citizen critical of the government was, ipso facto, critical of the Brtish monarch and his sovereign right to rule over India. We have come a long way since then. Our elected government draws its powers from the people and the Constitution that the people have given themselves. If, by its acts, the elected government is seen to violate the ideals and values of the Constitution or not live up to its promises, the citizen must have the right to criticise the government and not be thrown into prison for that. It is time that we amended the IPC and brought its provisions regarding sedition in line with the times, so that these cannot be abused to stifle freedom of expression, especially when such freedom is used to criticise the government.

Sixty days of dignity

Let me state at the outset that I have had to overcome deep rooted inhibitions before writing this blog post, but I strongly believe that the surest way of getting our nation out of the morass it today flounders in is to educate and empower women, and that conviction has given me courage. I can therefore well imagine the cultural taboos that less fortunate, less educated women struggle against. 

Did you know that millions of women in India use sand, ash and rags during menses, and sometimes spend the entire period locked up in cow sheds? Girls drop out of school once they attain menarche because there are no  sanitation facilities and because they fear being teased by boys. This happens because women are the most marginalized  among India's poorest millions -----  they cannot afford to spend money on sanitary napkins, even if such saving means that they make themselves vulnerable to  disease, apart from suffering the hardship and indignity involved.

For several years now, GOONJ ( http://goonj.org/ ) has been pioneering the effort to make and distribute reusable cloth sanitary napkins to these women. What GOONJ does is to use waste cloth to make sanitary napkins of its own design, and pack them into a drawstring pouch for a women to receive without embarrassment. Used cloth is measured, cut, washed, ironed and sterilised; the packages are then sent to far flung areas of Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Bihar, UP and other States. This becomes an entry point for generating greater awareness on the related health and hygiene issues, an area that suffers from neglect because of the taboos involved.

This year, GOONJ is trying to make this initiative more broad based; they want to reach the Dignity Pack (affordable, easy to use, and clean cloth napkins, made out of waste cloth) to 50,000 women and girls in villages & slums. In this endeavour, they are looking for support from the urban masses ------ that's you and me. Each contribution of Rs 250 that we make will reach 12 packs of environment friendly GOONJ "Easy" cloth pads and 3 sets of undergarments to a woman, giving her SIXTY DAYS OF DIGNITY. Included in this amount is the cost of  information material, discussions and exhibitions to build awareness on this taboo but critical health issue. Will you please step forward to help GOONJ help at least one woman?

This is how you can contribute towards GOONJ's campaign SIXTY DAYS OF DIGNITY:

1. Direct Transfer

In favor of- GOONJ

Bank Name – HDFC BANK

Account No – 04801450000130

Bank Address – Plot No-9, H & J Block, Local Shopping Complex,

Sarita Vihar, New Delhi-110076

Bank Branch Code – 0480

IFSC Code – HDFC0000480

Bank Swift Code – HDFCINBB

2.  You can also drop a cheque /draft in the name of GOONJ in any  HDFC branch.

3.  Please share your full name, address, tel no. & PAN. For any queries, please call GOONJ at 011- 41401216, 26972351 or write to priyanka@goonj.org

An illuminating chat with Tulsa

Tulsa is the energetic and articulate young woman who enables me to blog at leisure because she sweeps, mops and dusts my home, all the time sharing her joy in her children, the misery and suffering inflicted upon her by her alcoholic husband, and the challenges of living in a tin roofed room that floods when it rains, and is the 4 member family's living-cum-bed room-cum-kitchen. She rarely complains, electing instead to look at life as a journey to be undertaken with as much dignity and integrity as she can command, notwithstanding the huge challenges. A migrant from Madhya Pradesh, she lives in one of the multi storeyed buildings that dot the rural habitations of Gurgaon, and are home to thousands like her who pay handsome amounts to the native inhabitants for the ramshackle  accommodation that they have built expressly for this purpose. She does not have a bank account, no medical insurance or pension account, not even a gas connection despite having lived and worked for many, many years in a city. She is educating her children, but she herself is completely illiterate.  The Parliament, democracy, Municipal Corporation, laws, rights and responsibilities of citizens ----- all these are concepts completely alien to her.

A couple of weeks ago, she did not report for work at her usual hour, nor did she call ---- yes, she has a cell phone! The next day, she was full of the tiring and disappointing journey she had undertaken. At 5 AM, she said, the landlord had asked all the tenants ---men and women living lives just like hers --- to board a bus that took them on a 7 hour journey to an ashram. There, they sat in the sun for the best part of the day, listening to the discourse of a religious leader. Some light snacks were distributed, there weren't adequate arrangements for drinking water, the children got restless and had to be sushed again and again, and then they boarded the bus back home. Where did you go, Tulsa, who was the guru, I asked. She had only some hazy notions. Some place in UP, she said, and the religious leader was a woman, she had something to do with Sikhism. On being prodded, she revealed that the only reason she and her family had joined the massive gathering at the ahsram was that it was an opportunity to do something different, to be some place else, to break out of the deadening routine that is their lot ----and no expenditure was involved.

There are crores of men and women like Tulsa, and crores in circumstances far worse. They live from day to day, are more or less reconciled to merely subsisting since their avenues of advancement are so severely limited, and have no expectation of the government because they have grown up in a state of deprivation ---- physical, social, economic ---- without any State organ stepping forward to help. What is tragic for the nation, and for their own selves, is that they are the ones who vote in large numbers, and bring to power all manner of corrupt, conscience-bereft, power hungry men and women who not only perpetuate the status quo but prevent good people from entering the political process. They vote for pecuniary consideration, they vote for caste/community/religion/language affinities, they vote because the sarpanch directs them to, they vote because the patriarch requires them to ---- but they do not vote with the expectation that the candidate/ party which will come to power will bring permanent, systemic improvements in their lives, and therefore, they do not vote into power men and women who can deliver them and the nation from poverty, oppression, and  injustice. They mostly do not understand how that can happen, they have not seen it happen, and therefore, they have little or no expectation that it will happen. There are honourable exceptions, of course but these are too few in number to have a meaningful impact.

So, if the nation is to break out of the stranglehold of the parasitical political "leaders" whose burden it now carries, we must either motivate and persuade the educated middle class to participate in the political process in massive numbers, or educate the dis empowered/under privileged millions. Its hard to say which task is more daunting, because the middle class is in a comfort induced torpor that the recent corruption scams have barely managed to dent, and the people/organisations engaged in/willing to raise awareness among the impoverished are too few to adequately meet the challenge.

the future of Marxism/Maoism/Naxalism

These are extracts from a longer blogpost, written by Rahul Banerjee, that I 'd recommend you read ---- http://anar-kali.blogspot.in/2012/08/whither-marxism.html. I think this blogpost offers very useful insights into Maoism/Naxalism in India, which should inform the public debate (however limited it is) on the subject, which is currently dominated by stories of violence.

Recently, I have participated in a few debates on the walls of people on Facebook on the relevance of Marxist programmes of action in the present context, especially those adopted by the armed Maoist movement in India which I categorised as being obsolete and so prompted angry responses. While the Marxist analysis of the problems and contradictions of Capitalism remains relevant, the prescriptions for action to overthrow it may not be so. I have written about this in my book Recovering the Lost Tongue at length. I thought I would lift some of that and rework it for a post in this blog.

-------- Moreover, at the peak of the capitalist economic crisis in the late nineteen twenties John Logie Baird invented the television. This set the ball rolling for carrying advertising into people's homes and bombing them with audio-visual content urging them to spend not only their present income but also their future earnings for buying goods and services. Capitalism has since ridden a continuously rising wave of consumerism to expand existing markets and open new ones by titillating the baser instincts of humans all over the world and so continued to fuel economic growth without the recurrence of similar massive demand slumps. The medium became the message.

At about the same time Antonio Gramsci, while incarcerated in prison by the Italian Fascists, began pondering over the conundrum that the oppressed masses in Germany, Italy and Spain refused to become acolytes of Marxism despite the objective conditions arising from the economic collapse being favourable for such a development and instead preferred to plump either for fascism or a capitalism rejuvenated by state sponsored demand boosting measures. He came to the conclusion that the bourgeoisie exert control over the masses not only overtly through the organs of the state but also covertly through their ideological "hegemony" over "civil society" constituted independently of the state by communitarian, cultural and religious associations. Gramsci stressed the important role of "organic" intellectuals coming up from the oppressed classes who would dispel this mesmerising hegemony of the ruling classes by formulating a liberating ideology of their own that could stand up to the dominant ideology of the latter.

However, the scope for this kind of a liberating ideology emerging has been significantly decreased through the influence of television. Television has ensured that it is the sports and film stars selling everything from soap to sanitary napkins and the evangelical preachers of all religious denominations selling divine salvation who have become the gurus of the masses and not the austere radicals, whether communists, anarchists or libertarians, who are making a pitch for a fight against the machinations of neo-colonial capital. These messages, which have been beamed worldwide through satellites, first ensured the tearing down of the iron and bamboo curtains and the collapse of "actually existing socialism". Today, the ever widening reach of television is ensuring that the masses mostly remain engaged in song and dance or vicarious enjoyment of sports instead of taking up cudgels against the ruling classes worldwide to end their misery.

At present, the colonisation of the minds of the masses all over the world resulting from the television propelled cultural imperialism of the West has pushed the meta-narrative of capitalist industrial development and its triplets of consumerism and militarism onto the centre stage of the post-modern world and with the dawn of the twenty-first century, the repositories of various kinds of post modernist "difference" like the Marxists (they have now become marginal players), Maoists and the anarcho-environmentalists are doomed to acting out peripheral micro-narratives. It is not very difficult to imagine that given the readiness among the masses to suspend their disbelief and immerse themselves in the myths being propagated through television, the chances of the Maoists bringing about a revolution in India are remote indeed. Mao had said that power flows from the barrel of a gun but in today's milieu it flows more readily from the picture tube of a television set! The spring thunder of the Maoists, therefore, holds little promise of an emancipatory drenching for those it is ostensibly fighting for. Instead, through their armed actions the Maoists have succeeded in reducing the space for democratic mass action not only for their own mass organisations but also for anarcho-environmentalist ones, which too are regarded by the police to be hand in glove with the Maoists and so are subjected to extra-legal harassment. 

The fact that industrial production processes have been automated so much that it is now possible to have very few regularised permanent workers in factories and farm out most of the work to smaller factories has robbed the working class of the power of the strike action. There are now millions of casual labourers in small groups whom it is very difficult to organise and then form into a conscious "class for itself" that would be able to fight for a revolutionary overthrow. Similar is the situation with landless peasants and marginal farmers. There is no way in which an armed movement can operate openly among the casual labourers and peasants. The net result is that the Maoists are forced to operate in densely forested remote areas which apart from having some natural resources are not very crucial to the Indian State. For a long time the Maoists treated these remote areas as their liberated zones but with time the Indian State and Capitalists felt the need to exploit the resources there and so began attacking these liberated zones in earnest. This has pushed the Maoists on to the backfoot as their overground organisations have all been banned and many leaders have been either killed or arrested. 

There are three other main problems for Marxists in general and Maoists in particular as far as bringing about revolution is concerned. 

The first is that the Indian State is much more powerful militarily than say the Russian or Chinese States were at the time of the revolutions in those countries. The armed forces and the police forces too are very well cared for by the State and so have no reason to mutiny as they did in those countries. Without the armed forces rank and file mutinying there is no way in which a rag tag band of guerrillas can overthrow the Indian State. Even in Nepal where the State and its armed forces are much weaker than in India the Maoists there after waging a long battle have had to agree to participate in a liberal democracy instead of pushing for a revolutionary overthrow. 

Secondly, armed struggle requires a huge amount of funds. Traditionally, the Marxists have sourced these funds by robbing capitalists. The Bolshevik party in Russia used to be funded by the dacoities and kidnapping carried out by Stalin in the crude oil rich Baku on the Caspian Sea in Azerbaijan. The Maoists have to extort from contractors, businessman and industrialists who have to operate in their remote strongholds. While this does provide them with some funds, they are nowhere like enough to finance a major attack on the Indian security forces and so all that the Maoists have managed is to carry out guerrilla warfare which will not get them far.

Thirdly, the compulsions of operating underground force the Maoists to run their areas through summary justice involving the killing of those they consider to be informers. They are constantly on the move so they cannot keep prisoners. Therefore, they have to execute those they consider to be informers or recalcitrants in some way or other. This alienates them from the people and in general, their so called liberated zones are actually fear filled ones. 

Finally, there is the question of what will happen post revolution even if one takes place. If a strongly centralised party does capture power by overthrowing the capitalist dispensation, then it is not then going to suddenly give up its years of centralised and undemocratic functioning as a guerrilla unit and become a bottom up decentralised democratic system. That is why there is a need to think about new methods to combat centralisation which also build up practical models for the post revolutionary dispensation. The control of resources at the moment is in the hands of the capitalists and they are doing everything possible to prevent decentralisation of this control because they know that that will mean the end of their hegemony. So how are the powerless to become powerful is the question that needs to be answered. Marxism has analysed the sources of bourgeois power and the contradictions that it faces very well but it has no answer to the question of how this power can be smashed in the present context where the bourgeois have some very powerful systems in place to prevent the creation of a revolutionary class for itself. Unless a credible plan of action for overcoming capitalism and establishing a more just dispensation is on offer there is little likelihood of a mass movement emerging from the shenanigans of the Maoists or other Marxists who remain stuck in obsolete moulds.

The American anarchist Thoreau once wrote - " If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away". This was a plaintive cry against the homogenising effects of modern industrialisation, which had begun to make themselves felt in the nineteenth century itself. Things have now become considerably more problematical for maintaining economic, social and cultural diversity in the post-modern era. The possibility of launching a concerted challenge to this all round hegemony of capitalist industrial development has diminished considerably. That is why the widespread limitation of the space for democratic dissent that the peripheral violence of the Maoists is causing is a matter of concern. It brings down the number of drummers beating a different beat from that of the votaries of centralised industrial development. Of even greater concern is the fact that the Maoist cadres are mostly from among the marginalised Dalits and Adivasis and these organic intellectuals who could have made a significant contribution to the fight for a better world are all dying an untimely death in the wild goose chase after the Indian Revolution. Lesser and lesser is the proportion of people that are opting out from the destructive march that is being orchestrated by the followers of the meta-narrative of modern industrial development. Thoreau is as lonely as ever.

NPO review: why restrict it to a few?

With rather suspect timing, the Ministry of Home Affairs has decided to verify whether the Non Governmental Organisation (NGO) run by Manish Sisodia, member of the now- disbanded Team Anna, is receiving foreign donations, and whether the NGO is using these amounts towards the expenditure incurred by India Against Corruption in the Lokpal agitation. An inspection of the NGO's premises and documents has been carried out to ascertain whether the NGO's claim that it is neither currently receiving foreign contributions nor using these donations for advancing the IAC campaigns is true.

One would, ordinarily, have no quarrel with such a verification exercise because the law (Foreign Contributions Regulation Act) expressly provides that foreign donations shall not be used for any purpose other than the purpose stated at the time of obtaining registration under FCRA.There exists a small set up in the Ministry of Home Affairs which grants such registration, receives and scrutinises all types of statements and returns that FCRA prescribes, and where necessary, carries out verification.

What is objectionable, however, is that the same Government which is expending scarce resources on auditing an NPO with clearly political motives has no documented assessment of how large the NGO (or Non Profit Organisation, NPO, as it is more widely described all over the world) sector in India is or its composition, no clear cut mechanisms laid down in the law for monitoring the activities of this sector except the FCRA and the Income Tax Act which are applicable to only a very small percentage of the sector, and cannot even say which the nodal Ministry/Department for the sector is because there is none.Even worse, it has no assessment of the terrorist financing risk that this sector poses in India.

World wide, the NPO sector is recognised as being vulnerable to abuse for terrorist financing because given the vast range of activities associated with this sector and the huge numbers, it is not possible to scrutinise its millions of transactions despite large amounts of money being involved, including money that flows across borders. Therefore, the Financial Action Task Force, an inter governmental body of which India has recently become a member, has recommended that  countries should ensure that Non Profit Organisations are not misused by terrorist organisations posing as legitimate entities or used to conceal the diversion of funds intended for legitimate purposes to terrorist organisations.

This is what the FATF has to say about the functioning of the NPO sector in India, and its oversight by the government:

By government estimates, there are approximately 2 million foreign and domestic NPOs operating in India. NPOs seeking tax exempt status must register under the Income Tax Act. NPOs which receive funds from outside India must register under the FCRA. The number of NPOs registered with the MHA under the FCRA is 38,591 and the number of NPOs that filed tax returns in the fiscal year 2006-2007 is 71,009. Except for NPOs registered with the Income Tax Department and under the FCRA, India's NPO sector is not well organised, monitored and supervised. India concentrates most of its efforts on tax exempt NPOs as well as those receiving foreign contributions, but these NPOs only account for a small number of entities within the sector. While Indian officials indicated that they believe Financing of Terrorism (FT) risk in the NPO sector is small, it is difficult to understand how they can maintain this confidence in light of the fact that they were unable to state the size, wealth and activities of the majority of NPOs in India.

The FATF has therefore recommended that India should:

 Undertake a comprehensive NPO sector review capturing all relevant data 

 Undertake a detailed risk assessment of the sector for terrorist financing

Has such a review been carried out? Have we made a detailed assessment of the risk that the NPO sector poses or does not pose vis a vis terrorist financing ? If we have, have remedial measures been taken ? Aren't these the more important tasks to be undertaken by a nation battling terrorism, rather than the politically motivated inquiry into whether or not Manish Sisodia's NPO is using its funds for the IAC movement? Why are we allowing State machinery to be used for a political agenda, to the detriment of its use for more pressing purposes ?

para 872 to 891

http://www.fatf-gafi.org/media/fatf/documents/reports/mer/MER%20India%20full.pdf 

Naxalism : "hard" posting vs "sensitive"

Hardly ever having stepped out of the comfort of my NCR home and office, except to vacation in cool, verdant, and peaceful climes in India and abroad, I am not really acquainted with the troubles of our adivasi brethren in Central India (or elsewhere). The little I know I have gleaned from newspapers, blogs, books, and TV programs. No account is complete, of course, nor is any account completely balanced. It cannot be, I suppose, given the nature of the complex dynamics at work, the high stakes for all the parties involved, the difficult and remote nature of the terrain etc. Nevertheless, even one accustomed to middle class living in an economy which is hurtling pell mell into liberalisation, privatisation, globalisation and all the other isms of modern economists and our American friends/patrons, cannot help but realise that the adivasis are fighting an unequal battle for resources, livelihood, cultural non contamination, possibly their lives. They are caught in the crossfire of Naxalites/Maoists and the State agencies, the latter determined to wipe out the Naxalites as well as any resistance to the exploitation of the vast natural resources that the adivasi dominant regions of our country abound in. The determination and resolve of our State apparatus is strong indeed, much stronger than its resolve to empower the poor, eradicate hunger and illiteracy, provide access to clean drinking water and sanitation. However, whether the the State is displaying any sensitivity towards the hapless, impoverished adivasis appears a little doubtful, even from media accounts.

Lets take a recent example ----- newspapers reported recently that 2 CISF personnel stationed at Mumbai airport were among the 5 persons arrested by the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence for their alleged involvement in a gold smuggling racket. Over 10 kg of gold worth Rs 3 crore was seized from the 5 men. The Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) Hqrs was said to have taken very stern measures after the incident came to light,  having placed under suspension two Sub-Inspectors (who were arrested by Directorate of Revenue Intelligence) and six other junior rank personnel. They were also reported to have ordered immediate transfer of a senior Commandant from the "highly sensitive" Mumbai airport to a "hard area" posting in Chhattisgarh's Naxal hotbed of Dantewada. 

Much as one would like to believe, no posting in the government is classified 'highly sensitive" because it calls for exceptional knowledge or skills or dedication; the criteria are public interface, discretionary powers and the potential to earn illegal remuneration. In other words, the more likely it is that the authority and functions attached to a post will be abused to enable the incumbent to earn illegal pecuniary and other benefits, the greater the chance of such a post being labelled "sensitive" or "highly sensitive". 

A "hardship" posting, to the contrary, affords no such benefits; also, it is more likely (almost always, in fact) to be in a place which is remote, with inhospitable terrain, little by way of educational, medical and recreational facilities etc. In this particular case, there is obviously a far greater risk to life and limb as well.

So what does the government do with an official who's suspected to be involved in an economic crime at a "sensitive posting" ? It transfers him to a "hardship posting", without a thought to the possibility that such an official may vent his frustration on helpless adivasis, one, because he is frustrated, and two, because it is much harder to have Naxalites/Maoists bear the brunt of his anger and frustration. Will such an official be motivated to perform his duty with sincerity, devotion, and scrupulousness? Will he be a good leader, inspire his team by the example he sets? Does he even possess the technical and human relations skills that he would need, looking at the nature of his job in Dantewada? If the answer to all these questions is 'No", then how just is it that passengers at Mumbai Airport are saved harassment by an official suspected to be corrupt, the revenue leakage on account of smuggling is plugged, and the image of the security agency is sought to be restored by transferring the official to a place where the suffering of the ordinary citizen, powerless, poor, and disenfranchised as he is, is likely to increase manifold by such a posting? 

http://www.business-standard.com/generalnews/news/smuggling-racket-8-cisf-men-suspended-commandant-transferred/45785/

Lets get Gurgaon to clean up its act

Gurgaon has a myriad problems, of which one is the lack of cleanliness. Lets do something about it.

1. The responsibility of getting the roads and streets swept, and garbage collected and disposed of is distributed between the Municipal Corporation of Gurgaon (MCG) and HUDA. While the jurisdiction of MCG mainly includes the rural habitations that dot Gurgaon, the rest of Gurgaon falls within the HUDA jurisdiction. MCG has a website (  http://www.mcg.gov.in/  ) that clearly spells out its jurisdiction, HUDA does not. That is, HUDA makes no attempt to inform the citizens of Gurgaon as to which sectors/neighbourhoods fall within its jurisdiction so far as sanitation is concerned.

2. From what I have been able to gather from the MCG website, newspaper reports and discussions with citizens who have made efforts to improve sanitation levels in Gurgaon, ALL work related to sweeping/cleaning of roads and collection/disposal of garbage has been outsourced by both MCG and HUDA. In the case of MCG, all information regarding the organisations to which such work has been awarded, as well as a copy of the contract, is available on the website. No such information is available for HUDA.

3. If the contactor does not satisfactorily discharge his duties, and a citizen lodges an online complaint on the MCG website, the contractor is bound by the contract to take remedial action within a stipulated time period, or face a deduction in the amount paid to him. For HUDA, there is no such facility for registering complaints.

4. So, if I wish that HUDA would take action regarding a particular road/street not having been swept, or gabage not having been removed from a particular spot, I have NO information regarding whom to complain to, and within what period to expect a response.

5. If we want, as conscientious citizens, to get HUDA to clean up Gurgaon, we FIRST have to ensure that all the relevant information is easily available, especially on a website. I have therefore sent a letter to the HUDA Administartor, and request you all to do the same ----- remember the "ek chidiya" jingle?

6. The letter that I have sent (duly received in HUDA office on 22nd August, 2012) is as below -----please feel free to modify/amend.

To

The Administrator

HUDA
HUDA Complex
Sector 14

Gurgaon

20^th August, 2012

Dear Administrator,

I write on behalf of a 2000 strong group of Gurgaon residents who are frustrated and disgusted by the utter lack of cleanliness in the city and wish to help improve sanitation in the city. However, we are handicapped by the complete lack of information regarding the arrangements that HUDA has made for sweeping of roads & streets and collection & removal of garbage.

While such information in respect of the areas under the jurisdiction of MCG is available in a transparent manner on the MCG website, and there is even an efficient mechanism for registration of complaints and their quick redressal, in the case of HUDA areas, the citizen is left to grope in the dark. May I request that all information regarding the arrangements that HUDA has made for sweeping of roads& streets and collection & removal of garbage be QUICKLY and URGENTLY uploaded on the HUDA website? If no website for HUDA Gurgaon exists, as seems to be the case, we would appreciate the information being uploaded on the MCG website. 

At the very minimum, we request that the following information be (1) uploaded on the HUDA website and (2) provided to us at the address mentioned below:

1. Which areas/neighbourhoods/sectors/colonies fall within the jurisdiction of HUDA for the purpose of making sanitation arrangements?
2. What are the sanitation arrangements that HUDA has made? Please specify the arrangements for cleaning & sweeping of roads and streets, and for collection & removal of garbage.
3. If these arrangements involve HUDA employees, please specify (1) their duties, hours of work (3) supervisory officer for lodging a complaint. Please provide this information for each area/sector/colony under HUDA’s jurisdiction.
4. If such arrangements involve a private contractor, please (1) provide a copy of the contract (2) name of the supervisory officer for lodging a complaint. Please provide this information for each area/sector/colony under HUDA’s jurisdiction.
5. Please specify the TOTAL amount spent in each of the last 5 years, and the current year, on sweeping/cleaning roads and streets, and collecting/removing garbage.
6. If there is any ongoing initiative for involving citizen monitoring of the sanitation arrangements, please provide details.

We are prepared to launch a signature campaign to prove our earnestness in obtaining this information, with the objective of sharing it among Gurgaon citizens, and helping HUDA do a better job of keeping the city clean by involving citizens in monitoring of the sanitation arrangements.

JAI HIND

thanks and regards

Priya VK Singh