May 17, 2002 — the day we brought down the curtains on the first campaign. Five months and ten days in the making.
While we are tired at the end of what has been a remarkable and unforgettable period, we know that we have barely scratched the surface of general citizen cynicism, or system inertia. This will take much more effort, further planning and development. However, more importantly, we need to see more community energy of the sort that we saw in the first campaign.
We had a poll conducted by T N Sofres Mode, to understand how those who are totally unconnected to the campaign felt about Janaagraha.
Their response can be seen as ‘the light that beckons us’: a staggering 89% of the citizens said that not only did they support the idea of Janaagraha, but that it should continue and grow.
Remarkably, 25% of these respondents were willing to commit themselves to forming a community group to participate; an additional 33% felt that some member of the family would do so.
These are not just retired senior citizens with time on their hands. Nor are they the passionate idealists. These are the average wage earners, with two children, a job, and very little spare time. They cut across the economic spectrum, from slum dwellers to the super-rich. Their feedback proves that the average citizen is not apathetic, but rather does not know how to connect, or make a difference. The problems have always seemed too overwhelming, the ‘system’ too impenetrable.
We must find a way to tap into this civic conscience, without asking the citizens to sacrifice their personal lives. We must organise the idea of citizen participation so that we hear people say, “I can give my three hours a month, and actually believe that I have made a difference.” As opposed to the concept of passionate patriotism when we fought for independence, I call this ‘practical patriotism’.
This requires a structure that is informal, grassroot and professional. Just as one examines a business model in the private sector to determine whether it can survive the rigours of the marketplace, we must also test new propositions in the public space to determine their strength and longevity. Janaagraha is really a search for this goal, and we hope that we have encased some aspects of long-term structural solidity in the first campaign:
- It makes a case for localised decision-making in a collaborative manner between citizens and government:
a) This factors in the efficiency argument, which states that things are better left managed at the lowest level of any institutional structure.
b) More importantly, it confirms the self-rule argument, that the people know what is best for them, and need the space to express this. - It enables citizens who care, to take the idea forward into their neighbourhoods. While this takes longer, it makes for stronger bottom-up mobilisation. There is no figure of high-command making decisions on behalf of citizens.
- It provides a sense of common identity to community activists, just loose enough to allow them to carry on their work in their local neighbourhoods, yet also gain the benefits of a larger platform.
- It does this by bringing a hitherto unseen professionalism into the arena of citizen-government interface: technology, communications, focus, etc. All these are being harnessed to make citizens’ energies more productive, and easier for citizens to interact with one another on specific issues.
We now rest for a while at this first milestone.
