Placeholder post for notes from Saturday's meeting. All those who attended are encouraged to write some.
Was a great meeting! Most important, almost all attendees took away some action items. Recurring monthly meetings should help a lot in getting ourselves structured and better organized. Already looking ahead to next month's meet :)
ಪ್ರತಿಕ್ರಿಯೆಗಳು
Praja Meeting at Lal Bagh December 13, 2008
After very fruitful discussions some of the points were
1. It is unproductive for Praja to bother about claiming credit and would be self defeating to do so.
2. RTI is being put to good use by praja as was evident by the discussions.
3. It is possible to use kannada medium in Praja web site if required.
4. Praja is making inroads in influencing the decision makers’ policies effectively.
5. Several projects and respective teams relating mainly to violations were identified to be taken forward.
6. Further changes / improvements on praja site design were discussed and planed
7. “Safe Passage” project was on a hold as Ckannan was preoccupied with some crisis in his business.
8. It was decided that each person should write a paragraph summarizing the vision statement for Praja
My take on the Vision statement is:
Praja should be a platform to attract and mobilize like minded people to come together for the purpose of bringing a change for the better in all governmental policies. It should spearhead proactive movement among various similar organizations to synergize the total out put towards this goal. It should be democratic in working within and with other similar organizations. It should also try to stem the rot of destructive social aberrations by joining hands with the Lokautka.
Good to have met such an enthusiastic bunch of people
my takeaways from the meeting
My top takeaways from the meeting were:
Ananth, Rohith and Srinath will be getting together to attack #1. their recommendations will most likely drive a redesign of the home/front pages on the website.
Over next 3-4 months, let us take up 2-3 projects, and track and analyse them to great details. This will be like how Syed, Rithesh and gang are driving the BIAL-RTI work. If we do 2-3 more projects, we can show everyone how easy it is to do some "public vigilance/tracking" via online collaboration and RTIs - not a lot of work.
Gali Anjaneya Temple flyover (Mysore Road), BWSSB's projects, tracking JNNURM spending and project status were some sugestions. I would add BTRAC to that list.
Let us figure online tools of working on these "projects", and then we will get started. Meanwhile, Syed is working on a Gyan page on RTI. There are plenty of RTI resources on the web, but Syed will write a page relevant to Bangalore (who to ask what).
What is Praja...
projects under Praja -Double line of Bangalore- Mysore
What is Praja....
Others have already talked about our Lalbagh get together. It was great to meet up again, and we should certainly repeat this every month.
Here is my take on what is (and should be) Praja.
Thanks,
Ravi
A few pictures
praja meeting