Dear Sarbajit, Thanks for the clarification. I hope you will recollect from the history of socialism and communism that NGOs are anathema to those ideologies as it acts as a counterforce to the socialist/communist parties. This is a major reason why there is no NGO sector in West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura. The dialectical materialism approach is a useful tool for historical and socio-economic and politico-cultural analysis. I do not think NAK despite being an NGO was using that tool in the course of their work. NAK has not held any Jan sunwai till date. They believe in citizen-focused action where the system must deliver on promises to every individual automatically. As it does not do so automatically, they are stepping in to make it work. So your apprehensions on both counts are misplaced. The point of circulating that story was to show how survivors of the 2002 communal violence in Gujarat have empowered themselves with knowledge of the law and are using RTI as a tool to hold government accountable for issues that matter to them very much in the small town of Kalol. I just did not want to make that point while narrating the story because surviving communal violence is not the sole source of their identity. The law and the system failed them in 2002 and continues to do so in myriad ways even today. But they continue to have faith in the the law and the system and are struggling to make it work for the underprivileged. I believe as citizens of India they have a constitutionally guaranteed right to do so as much as you and I and other members of this group have a similar right to critically evaluate public policies and practices. They have a right to tell their story - this is part of their freedom of speech and expression. However they are not as good at English as the members of this group are. So I helped them narrate the story in English. I think at least some members of your group would appreciate reading such stories. That is why it was posted here. And by the way Panchmahals is the name of the district where they work not some pressure strategy that they use. Moderation of this group is better aimed at blocking calumniating messages of the kind that made disparaging references to Brig. Ujjal Dasgupta. Such references and their repitition on such discussion groups have the potential for inviting action for libel. Such difficult situations could be avoided by an unbiased moderation of this group. Thanks Venkatesh Nayak
_____ From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of sroy1947 Sent: Tuesday, September 22, 2009 1:02 PM To: [email protected] Subject: [rti_india] Re: Raising a Stink over Toilets: Using RTI for Fixing Accountability in the Nirmal Gujarat Campaign Dear Venkatesh Every member is perfectly free to circulate anything relevant to RTI over these computer resources. I was raising an issue arising from your post - namely the role of NGOs who hijack the CITIZEN's right to information by irresponsible methods (such as "panchmahals" or "jan sunwaais" etc) and thereby create obstacles for genuine citizens who use RTI responsibly and outside of the "dialectical materialism" approach. Sarbajit . <http://geo.yahoo.com/serv?s=97359714/grpId=17293050/grpspId=1705239643/msgI d=4657/stime=1253604746/nc1=4507179/nc2=3848641/nc3=5191953> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
