Voter India Initiative in Malkajgiri -- Status report for Dec 2013

--Results in Dec 2013--
New voter submissions: 2340
New voter forms yet to be submitted: 1200
Existing voters verified: 2000

--Results for 6 months from July to Dec 2013--
New voter submissions: 4521
Existing voters verified: 20400
Number of booths completed: 14
Number of booths ongoing: 12
(Total number of booths in Malkajgiri: 385)

Endorsements so far: Rajamouli and Kiran Bedi
Website: www.voterindia.com

--Request--
Please consider to ask your contacts to donate to sustain and scale up this activity: www.dilipsankarreddy.com/donate

--Details--
In December month, we have facilitated the enrollment of 2340 new voters as part of our voter verification and enrollment drive in Malkajgiri. Due to problems in the Election Commission's website, we could not upload 1200 additional new voter forms that we have with us.

We helped the voters to fill the voter registration forms, including procuring their passport-sized photographs and identity-proof documents. Then we scanned their photographs, digitized their data and ensured that their application was filled online directly in the Election Commission's website. Daily, we set up at least two booths in different parts of the constituency so that citizens can reach out to us.

--Expenses--
We are paying a stipend to dedicated members of Voter India team. Other costs include the expenses for stationary, voter form printouts, voter list printouts, Internet, phone calls, travel costs to head to different parts of the constituency, etc. We get few hundred phone calls every month from people asking for the status of their submissions and related queries. Many volunteers are also involved on pro-bono basis.

We want to scale up this activity by paying stipend to cover the basis expenses of dedicated people who are walking the streets daily from morning to evening.

Today is the story of every honest Indian. A sad but brave story.

Friends, today is a bad day for every honest Hyderabadi, every Indian. Today is the story of one man who fought against the most hardened criminals-cum-politicians of the city -- those who encroach upon acres of vacant land illegally and loot hundreds of crores. Today August 15th is the day when Suresh, my brave colleague at Lok Satta Party, fought against Raju Yadav, one of the 150 corporators of the city, who allegedly has so far encroached upon land worth 400 crores.

Suresh makes a living by publishing books and other literary activities. He has another vocation -- a more powerful one. To inspire honest people to join politics. He writes books, sells booklets, pens articles, walks on streets engaging with people.

Yesterday, Suresh called me. He talked about his new adventure -- to save the park in Venkata Ramana colony from being encroached by the local corporator, Raju Yadav. He said that he is conducting a national flag hoisting adjoining the park and during that time, to symbolically pledge to free themselves from the vices of the local corporator. He invited me to the event. Suresh told me that he has been working on this for last 30 days and pointed me to a detailed newsletter that he has published. He said that he was busy distributing 10,000 copies of his newsletter.

Today I went to attend his event organized along with the colony residents. I spent some time there and left. Even TV media had arrived. After one hour, I got a call that he is attacked. I rushed to CARE hospital, when he was in emergency section.

I learnt that after the media left, about 30 to 40 well-built rowdies came to the spot in the colony and beat him. The scared colony residents ran away. Few Lok Satta members could not do anything as they were outnumbered. Rowdies took turns to beat him, all over his body. They left him lying on the ground, suffering in extreme pain. He was left semi-conscious on the wet road.

I learnt that a well-connected well-wisher of Suresh had warned him about the impending attack the previous day. However, as I said earlier, Suresh was a brave man.

Direct cash transfers is hijacked by 2014 electoral politics

It is sometimes interesting to observe the dynamics between politics, technology, social aspirations of the “talented elite” and national economics. All these have come into play over the last four years, falling conveniently in place, may be unintended, to lay out an ambitious attempt by the Indian National Congress to stake claim on the Indian throne for the third time in a row in 2014

It all started around 2009 when some of the most talented and self-made corporate honchos forayed into the corridors of the New Delhi babudom with a social vision to provide a Unique Identity card (UID card) to every single Indian. An ambitious task – given the size of our population, our broken processes and our near-empty coffers. With an estimated project cost ranging from Rs. 18,000 crore to Rs. 150,000 crore, debates rage on the need for such an initiative in the present moment of our country’s growth trajectory. I have always believed that this initiative is necessary and it is better to go ahead with it. The private citizens who started it out thankfully did not blew it up. They covered a lot of ground in spite of bureaucratic hurdles, thanks to their experience in building technology companies against formidable rivals, and we can see the cards now in various parts of the country. And I thought that in next few years we should be seeing a slow and steady rollout of the cards and its intended benefits. However, things have taken a different turn that we will discuss here.

Elsewhere in the world, in countries as varied as Brazil or Philippines, we can observe that the direct cash transfers (DCTs) are playing a better role in alleviating poverty when compared to targeted subsidies. Providing a DCT to the right individual has always been one of the potential benefits of the UID project. It is a doable task, even though it amounts to opening up tens of millions of bank accounts for the beneficiaries in villages and settlements where there are no banks. It is a task requiring a diligent approach spanning more than a few years.

Now we enter politics! Coming to the streets of the country, political parties are vying with each other to provide freebies to people who are so used to them that they are demanding more and more. Lok Satta Party has been opposing the penchant for governments to rely on freebies to win over the people. However, in this melee, UPA Government has been searching for a silver bullet to go to the polls in 2014. They seem to have placed their belief in the direct cash transfer scheme albeit with a twisted approach. Instead of replacing subsidies with direct cash transfers, the Central Government is going ahead with additional freebies – an additional welfare scheme! Moreover, the UPA is pressing for large-scale implementation of DCTs through UIDs covering a wide swath of India by 2014 General elections, ignoring all the problems that would crop up while actually putting in place the logistics of delivering such a big number of DCTs at break-neck speed.

UPA might be going to the polls in 2014 with the slogan “Aap ka paisa aapke haath” – your money will be in your hands. This concerns all of us taxpayers for two reasons. Firstly, more of the taxpayers’ money will be going for more welfare purposes in this precarious fiscal situation, with the Government shy to replace the existing subsidies with DCTs but adding DCTs to existing subsidies. Secondly, a whole lot of taxpayers’ money is wasted while opting to build quickly the infrastructure to actually implement DCTs.


So rests the story of a noble initiative hijacked in an unwholesome manner by the Government to serve its political interests while nullifying to a good extent the very objective of the initiative. That said, we should be careful not to attack the idea of UIDs and DCTs.