Yathaa Raja Tathaa Praja, so we read in certain ancient texts. Times have changed. In these modern democratic days, Yathaa Praja Tatha Rajaa is more like it. Today, Raja only reflects Praja. The so called politicians and everyone else we blame no end only mirror our society and us.
Do you think we know and care enough about developments taking place in all our localities? Do you think the Praja truly participates in the way she is governed? We think not. What if we - the Praja - made efforts to know, care and participate? And it is not that our democratic leaders and appointed administrators don’t care at all. Many do, and they try, but lack of interest and participation from us makes their job a lot harder.
Praja.in aims to be a bridge between those who serve us and those amongst us who care and want to participate. Towards that, it aims to establish an Internet driven community to help make the connection at local levels. It wants to be a networking platform for active and concerned citizens.
Long term goals will always sound lofty and dreamy. But as a start, Praja.in aims to capture voices and opinions from the ground via web based tools of blogs and discussion forums. Once the community expands and builds credibility, we will take the next step of participation via RTI queries, town hall meetings, suggestions, complaints or PILs. Some examples of what we can do in future:
Please come join us, and help build an active networking-platform for responsible and caring yet concerned citizens.
Praja members Narayan82 and Santsub offered to help with the banner and logo. After looking at a few suggestions from them, Narayan's creation won the nod for banner as well as logo images. Narayan's banner creatively captures some of Bangalore landmarks, and the logo (holding hands) symbolizes networking.
A> We are neither trying to be alternate media, nor yet another NGO. There is some wide and serious space between journalism and activism that we are trying to fill and bridge. Our dream is to create a platform where citizens highlight their local issues, then network with like minded people to evolve possible solutions, and find ways of engaging with local government bodies to get things fixed. How does this system work with media or NGOs?
A> Praja.in is gearing to be the networking place for active and caring citizens. We are building a platform with Internet based tools to be the breeding ground for modern day and constructive activism. Constructive activism involves knowing, caring and participating, and can be a mix of online and on-ground activities.
A> Yes, because willingness to highlight and discuss your local issues is the first sure sign that you have the interest. We encourage discussions, provided they are local, fact based and constructively engaging. There will never be any pressure or moral extortion to push you towards volunteering for on-ground projects.
A> One reality is that to get good participation in on-ground activities, you need a bigger pool of citizens to draw from. Further, many don't realize that sharing and discussing full context is the only way to get more friends and volunteers for your on-ground projects. We have seen many NGOs and individuals who expects volunteers just like that.
From our experience, 2-5% tends to be the conversion rate - if 100 folks say "I will help", 2-5 will end up coming to the event or campaign.
Now, most self-help groups today will work primarily with this on-ground activist set (maximum 5% of the "interested" pool), and not have much for other 95% who have the interest, but couldn't show up often enough. But here, we won't belittle those who prefer discussions. That is because we know and recognize that not everyone is open to sacrificing weekends and evenings on a regular basis to do things on-ground. But, if we have a bigger pool of, say 5000 members, then, any call for "lets do this" should attract 40-50 folks. Every next event might see a different set 40-50 people - but is that a problem? Its not, provided we do these things:
Hope this explains what we are chasing here at praja.in.
A> Must clarify once again that we are not trying to be yet another NGO. There are plenty of NGOs and activist groups around, we are not trying to re-create or eclipse any of them or be the umbrella of any sort. We are only trying to provide a transparent, and Internet based platform for existing, or new self help groups. Here is how this platform is different:
I am a policy maker / journalist / business, how can I help, or do you have anything for me?
A> Here are some messages for members with special profiles:
Hope this explains and answers the most common questions that are asked about praja.in. Comments are most welcome, do help shape and refine this community's thoughts.
A> Read this help topic to know more, and to get started on Praja.in
A> We are in the process of registering as a Society. More details will be published soon, but here is a quick overview. The Society will consist of some donor members who pool in funds to pay for technology and day to day operations of this website. An executive committee of this Society will be governing non-technical behavior (as in, the use) of Praja.in platform.
A> There are no dominating big names, no media houses, neither any established NGOs as donors. Donors are all ordinary citizens who see the need for such localized modern day Internet driven citizen networking platform. Donors are currently a closed group, and we add more only by invitation. But we will soon set ourselves to open up to receive support from any registered member.
1. My Posts/My Comments: Automatically come
2. Friends Posts: Go to the Post you like. Click on Flag User link to check your friend posts.
3. My Interests Posts: To add, go to the post you are interested and click Add favorite content link to add to your interest posts.
4. My Terms: Go to My Praja à My Account & Choose àAll Categories Tab
· All terms of the category vocabulary will be displayed with a corresponding flag. Click on Add Favorite Term and all articles tagged with this term will come under My Terms.
· One can also add to favorite term under the term node display
Ex: To add bus as your favorite term, type http://praja.in/en/tags/bus
& then on top, click Add Favorite Term
Placeholder book to group together some past discussions that have happened about Praja.in itself. These discussions are initiated once in a while to hear back from members. Responses to such discussions initiated by site admin generate more private messages and emails than comments.
[Please Note: Contents of this post have been moved to a page under "About" section of the website. The FAQ will be maintained there]
Let us be clear here. We are building Praja.in to be the breeding ground for citizen activism. Activism involves knowing, caring and particpating, and can be a mix of online and on-ground activities. One reality is that to get good participation in on-ground activities, you need a bigger pool of citizens to draw from. From our experience, 2-5% tends to be the conversion rate - if 100 folks say "I will help", 2-5 will end up coming to the event.
Now, most self-help groups today will work primarily with this on-ground activist set (5% of the pool), and not have much for other 95% who have the interest, but couldn't show up often enough. But here, we won't belittle those who prefer discussions. Because, we know and recognize that not everyone is open to sacrificing weekends and evenings on a regular basis to do things on-ground. But, if we have a bigger pool of, say 5000 members, then, any call for "lets do this" should attract 40-50 folks. Every next event may see a different set 40-50 people - but is that a problem? Its not, provided we do these things:
Hope this explains what we are chasing here at praja.in. There are plenty of activist groups around, we are not trying to eclipse any. But, we are trying to provide a transparent, and Internet rooted platform for existing, or new activist groups. Our strength will be:
Before we close this post, here are some messages to members with special profiles:
Hope this explains and answers common questions we may have about praja.in. Comments are most welcome, do help shape and refine this community's thoughts.
A "whats next" type discussion has been pending for sometime now, how about we start one. To kick it off, here are the two broad thoughts what got us started in the first place:
=> Need for a platform to enable citizens to be activists in their areas of concern and interest. Platform as in enable and equip, with information, pointers, complaint numbers, contacts of relevant people, success/failure stories and alike.
=> Try to utilize the power of Internet to build a big and strong community. We realize that if easy and online ways of activism are made available, there will be better participation because the reality of present times is - most of us are not willing to give these things serious personal effort and time.
So we took off, with this website Praja.in, and the first goal is to build a sizable community of like minded urban residents. Like minded as in concerned, knowledgeable, aware, and at times willing to indulge in activism.
But, with time if we could supplement the discussions with some field-work, that should bring us visible results and satisfaction. Towards that, we could:
- organize events, like meet with BBMP/BDA officers to ask or to tell.
- File RTI applications on behalf of community
- Few of us participate in town-hall/RWA type meetings and communicate thoughts and ideas on behalf of all of us
- and more (PILs?)
Frankly, converting an active online community to be more meaningful is an area of challenge, and the ideas should come from the community itself.
So let us know what your thoughts are, and help us define goals that fit the broad theme of community driven activism leveraging Internet as the networking and enabling platform.
One more thing. We want to keep and grow Praja.in as a faceless and champion-less group as much as possible. We are not a bunch of publicity seekers or glory hunters. A big and active online-citizen's community is our goal, and we are all stakeholders in building and maintaining it. So while we, the admins run the site and watch after technicalities and moderations on as-needed basis, please contribute, via content now and some field-work later.
- {Praja.in admin team}
Recent comments and messages from a few members indicate that it may be time for us to take some next steps to "do more". We are trying to see if there are good and practical ideas on "what next" and "do more", this is the place-holder posts to capture your input.
Doing things in consultation with members fits in our culture as we wish to be open and transparent community limited only by practical constraints of time, money and the initial thoughts that started it all. So here is some context before we kick this off.
First, a quick list of the thoughts that bind the set of about a dozen people who joined hands to build what we have today.
Next, and pretty important, a quick note on how it all works today:
Bottom-line - be aware of the thoughts behind building this place, and think practical aspects of implementing what you would suggest.
Look forward to a healthy discussion, this time about Praja itself.
Okay then. Time now to test ourselves, and the theory, that with a bigger pool (1000+ now) of members, we will have correspondingly bigger numbers for on-ground activities. Let us start our first "working group" (or WG) on Praja. Taking the window of opportunity offered by Mr Tripathy, and well aware that the subject is most popular thus far, the first WG will be on Public Transport. Before forming this group, let us figure out this generic concept of WG:
We will perfect this WG concept as we go along. But post your comments and feedback to this proposal. Once the members are okay with the proposal on structure and workings of Praja WG, we will get going with organized action on the ground.
And BTW, if there isn't enough interest and commitment, no sweat, and no worries :) We will try this again a bit later once we get bigger and broader. Remember, our motto is "Collaborative Activism", and our strength comes from transparent and democratic setup wherever and as much as possible.