With just
10 minutes a
week,
what YOU
can do to bring Right
to Recall laws
in India
Author : Rahul Chimanbhai Mehta, B Tech, Comp Sci, IIT Delhi ; MS , New Jersey State, Univ, USA
Orkut Community : Right to Recall Party --- orkut.com/Community.aspx?cmm=21780619
Google Group : http://groups.google.com/group/RightToRecall
Website : rahulmehta.com , Email : MehtaRahulC@yahoo.com ;
Phones : 98251-27780 , 98252-32754
Address : F1/A, Supath-2, Juna Vadaj Bus Stand, Ashram Road, Ahmedabad-14
The first goal is not to convince PM, CMs etc to sign the RTI2 law. But the first goal is to attract and convince concerned citizens that they should ask PM, CMs to sign RTI2 law. So please note : entire goal of mine and RRP is to attract and convince citizens, not the leaders. And the entire goal of this document is to explain you some of the ways by which you can attract concerned citizens with near zero monetary costs and minimal time. Now you may say that my spending 10 minutes per week will not improve India and so I don’t want to “waste” my N minutes. Well, I request you to consider different logic : of the all possible activities you possibly see and think, see which one is least inefficient and then please spend 10 minutes on it.
Money (except for newspaper ads) is
useless – Your time and newspaper ads are only things I need
My aim is get about some laws passed. I do not have even one rhetoric, do not have any “concept” plan or grand aims. And in the first round, the only aim is to get the RTI2 law passed, and it is my belief that if RTI2 law is passed, then most of the other laws will get passed using RTI2. Unlike all parties, winning election is not central or even an important part in the agenda. Contesting election is very important because election is the fastest tool to communicate with citizens about a proposed law. But I don’t insist that we can improve India only if and after citizens elect RRP candidates as MPs first. We at RRP can improve India even if we lose elections. How? If the citizens “work with” RRP activists in forcing PM in enacting RTI2 law, than improving India is possible. But what do words “wok with” mean? Does it mean collecting donations? NO. I am completely against donations of money. I do ask people to give newspaper advertisements to publish RRP laws, but here money directly goes to the newspaper, they will not pay me or any RRP volunteer. And it is optional for RRP members to give newspaper ads. But the most important thing and only thing (other than newspaper ads) I need from you is your time. Now how much time do I would need from you, and what exactly I want you to do with your time? This booklets explains this in detail. Please take a print out of this booklet.
List of activities , reason and time
it would take time : Set-I
Time needed is only 10 minutes per week.
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Set-I Activities |
Approx time (in min) |
Took step? (Yes/No) |
Took step? When? Date |
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1. Please read the 4 page document http://rahulmehta.com/001.pdf OR for Hindi, see http://rahulmehta.com/001.h.pdf OR for Gujarati see, see http://rahulmehta.com/001.g.pdf 2. Please read aloud draft RTI2, the first proposed law given in the above document |
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If you have any questions on proposed new law RTI2, please do call any RRP volunteer in your District, State or India, or call me, Rahul Mehta at 98251-27780 |
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Please sign the RTI2 petition at http://www.petitiononline.com/rti2en/ How
will this help us in bringing RTR, MRCM laws? : More the number of
citizens who sign this petition, easier it will be to attract more concerned
citizens. The PM will surely disregard the number, and so must he as
signature on internet has no value. But the number will be certainly useful
in attracting more and more concerning citizens. Your signing petition
increases the rate at which others will notice this signature. And above all,
it will not take more than 2 minutes of your time. |
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If you don’t know how to use internet, please ask a close relative of yours to 1. create an email ID for you 2. sign the above RTI2 petition 3. create a “proper” Orkut profile for you on orkut.com 4. join Right to Recall Party Orkut Community 5. create a twitter account for you 6. connect your mobile to Rahul Mehta’s twitter account 7. connect your mobile to twitter accounts of 10 RRP heads – myself, two state heads, two district heads, two ward heads, 3 RRP colleagues |
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Join the GoogleGroup at http://groups.google.com/group/RightToRecall How will this help me in bringing RTR, MRCM laws? : You can easily get emails the articles posted. And of course, as number of people who join this community increases, it will be easier for me to attract larger number of concerned citizens. OR Join any GoogleGroup supporting RTR. Join any FaceBook community Follow blog of any person who is actively campaigning for RTR laws, and has given at least one advertisement in a major newspaper to promote RTR or has distributed at least 50000 RTR pamphlets OR Give an ad supporting RTR in any major newspaper and start a FaceBook community promoting RTR, and ask at least 1000 persons to join that FaceBook community. |
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Join the Right to Recall Party orkut community at http://www.orkut.co.in/Main#Community?cmm=21780619 How will this help me in bringing RTR, MRCM laws? : Bigger the community, higher are the chances that more concerned citizens would notice it. So your joining the community will increase the rate at which concerned citizens will notice RTI2 law, Right to Recall Party etc. OR / AND Join any community which officially supports RTR and RTI2 laws in your State, District or India OR / AND Create a community which supports RTR, RTI2 and ask at least 1000 persons to join that community. |
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Add yourself to “follow the blog” list for http://mehtarahulc.blogspot.com/ How will this help me in bringing RTR, MRCM laws? : You can easily get RSS feed of the articles I write. And of course, as number of people who follow this blog increases, it will be easier for me to attract larger number of concerned citizens. This step is very important. This way, you can keep in touch with official articles RRP has issued. OR Follow blog of any person who is actively campaigning for RTR laws, and has given at least one advertisement in a major newspaper to promote RTR OR Give an ad supporting RTR in any major newspaper and start a blog promoting RTR, and ask at least 1000 persons to follow the blog so that they can be in touch with a person committed to promote RTR |
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Join the FaceBook Group at http://www.facebook.com/#/group.php?gid=56633688102 How will this help me in bringing RTR, MRCM laws? : You can easily get RSS feed of the articles I write. And of course, as number of people who follow this blog increases, it will be easier for me to attract larger number of concerned citizens. OR Join any FaceBook community Follow blog of any person who is actively campaigning for RTR laws, and has given at least one advertisement in a major newspaper to promote RTR or has distributed at least 50000 RTR pamphlets OR Give an ad supporting RTR in any major newspaper and start a FaceBook community promoting RTR, and ask at least 1000 persons to join that FaceBook community. |
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[Why join or create so many groups? : You need not participate in all these groups. Nor you need to receive all the mails from the groups. But please do join (or create) the groups on Orkut, FaceBook and GoogleGroups. Why join so many groups? Because we, the supporters of RTR, need to attract concerned citizens from all over India. Now one inexpensive way to attract a person is to have a community with 1000s of members. Say we create a community on Orkut with 1000s of members. This this will be sufficient to attract all concerned citizens on Orkut, but will not attract anyone in Facebook. And so it becomes necessary for us to have a community on most common social networking sites.] |
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Please join Right to Recall Party on YahooGroups at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/RightToRecall/ |
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Join the Right to Recall Party (State) community for your State . e.g. If you are from UP, please join Right to Recall (UP) community at http://www.orkut.co.in/Main#Community?cmm=90266403 . If there is no RTR community for your state, please start one. How will this help me in bringing RTR, MRCM laws? : Bigger the community, higher are the chances that more and more concerned citizens would notice it. |
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Create
a “proper” profile on Orkut and GoogleGroups. The proper profile should have : 1. First name and last name spelled in plain ascii English and should have no other characters. Why? Because non-English characters are not searchable. IOW, if I spell my name in orkut in Gujarati or Hindi, then no one in Orkut will be able to search me and reach me. Also, many non English characters are unreadable and make reading painful. 2. In Orkut, please put “demands Right to Recall” or “supports Right to Recall” or “RRP” or “RRG” or “Right to Recall Party” or “Right to Recall Group” 3. The males are requested to put their passport size picture as their main picture. For females, picture is optional |
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2 to 20 |
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2 to 20 |
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The above tasks in Set-I list will take you 4 hours at most, and you may split it over days if you wish. Of course, if you decide to follow options given under “OR / AND “ it would take more time.
How do these steps help?
One estimate is that about 6 crore people in India have access to broadband via their home PC or office PC or college PC. Of these 6 crores, about 15 lakhs to 20 lakhs are interested in reducing corruption in police, courts and also interested in reducing poverty and to an extent that they would be willing to spend 1-2 or more hours a week. The goal is to form a communication network amongst these 15 lakhs citizens. There is no need to organize them, communication groups are sufficient. Please note – I think that a few national level, a few State/District level communication groups are sufficient, we do not have to have an organization. An organization is different from communication group and I will explain that later. So the task of forming and working in a communication groups has 4 parts – joining these communication groups, reading messages in that communication group, writing messages if time permits, forwarding messages to inside and outside the group and seeking people interested in reducing poverty/corruption and asking them to join the communication groups. And quitting the communication group if the main persons in-charge are not interested in reducing corruption, poverty.
The above tasks only consists of joining internet communities. Why am I asking you to join these internet communities? To create a large pro-RTR group on internet so that cost-free communication becomes possible. An ethical and reasonable demand like Right to Recall or MRCM does not need hype and grand shows, but does need communication. And the biggest reason why I think we at RRG can get RTI2 law passed and bring changes in India is because we today have a free communication mechanism such as internet which connects about 4% of India. What about rest 96%? Some of the people in these 4% with internet will become more involved and take the information to the remaining 98% via word of mouth or pamphlets.
Now let me explain why organization is not needed and may end up becoming waste of time. An organization is a group with hierarchy, assets, funding and has reporting structure. The reporting structure is key and the members who defy reporting structures are often expelled or at least never ever promoted. The organization not only makes a list of “to-do” but also makes a list “cannot do” and thus reduces efficiency of member. An organization can be also hostile to variations and mutations. The organizations need significant funding and funds are collected by membership dues or worse by collecting donations . The memberships dues mostly fall short. And so organizations ask members to collect donations. And that’s where the end begins --- the leaders of the organizations have to now accept terms and conditions of donors. The unsuspecting members later realize this, but too much time passes away before this.
If one wants to do activities like running education institutions, hospitals etc then the funding is must. But political reforms only needs communication and nothing more. We already have an organization called as Government, and our goal is to improve Government. To improve Government we need to enact laws like Right to Recall. To enact laws like Right to Recall, Jury, MCRM etc we need law like RTI2 or we need to win 100-300 Parliamentary elections. The latter depends more mistakes of adversaries and is clone negative approach, while former doesn’t need adversary to mistakes and is clone positive approach. And to have law like RTI2, we need a mass movement, and to create a mass movement, we need communication amongst those who want Recall, MRCM, Jury etc. We do not need an organization where people are giving and accepting orders on physical and material activities. The organization will only end up wasting away precious money and time.
Now do we need money to run a communication group? Common sense says that everything needs money. But in the model I proposed, the person with internet is already paying money in form of charged paid to internet company. So it is not free. So where is the difference in RRP and other organization who collect money? Well, in other organizations, you have to pay to those at the apex of organization. While here, you directly paid to internet company, and not to any RRP officer bearer. This ensures that RRP activist working with you cannot make any money from you. And there will never be siphoning out of money.
Now what about 110 crore people of India who do not have internet? To communicate with some, we can use SMS, which again are free. For rest, we need pamphlets and newspaper advertisements. For this, those who are very much committed to Recall, Jury and MRCM laws may contribute, but pay directly to newspapers not to any RRP member. The first set of activities described above creates a big communication group. Next set of activities deal with attracting mediamen’s attention.
The method is clone positive
Each step mentioned above is clone positive and hence more people join the movement, India will inch towards the goal.
List of activities , reason and time
it would take time : Set-II
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Set-II Activities |
Approx time (in min) |
Took step? (Yes/No) |
Took step? When? Date |
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10 |
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5 |
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60 |
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List
of activities , reason and time it would take time : Set-III
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Set-III
Activities |
Approx time (in min) |
Took step? (Yes/No) |
Took step? When? Date |
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60 |
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20 |
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60 |
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60 |
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List
of activities , reason and time it would take time : Set-IV
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Set-IV
Activities |
Approx time (in min) |
Took step? (Yes/No) |
Took step? When? Date |
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60 |
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40 |
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240 |
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120 |
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120 |
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List
of activities , reason and time it would take time : Set-V
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Set-V
Activities |
Approx time (in min) |
Took step? (Yes/No) |
Took step? When? Date |
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