Creating Awareness, using Rights as a Tool

Dandoll is a village situated 6 km away from Ranchi khunti road and is surounded by forest from 2 sides. The Gram sabha of this village was not functioning properley, Peole were sitting for weekly meetings but not in a regular way. Befor the intervention of the project team in the village, community members and people organization was unaware about the rights of the gram sabha. They even did not had much knoweldge about different social security schemes run by the government for them.

 

After the regular visit by our community volunteers, slowly people came to know about their rights. They wer informed about RTI & under this the people organization demanded for the information regarding the small bridge that was constructed in their villageĀ  a year ago. The people organization was shocked to know that the construction work was done without the aprrovalĀ  of gram sabha by doing wrong (dublicate) signature of leaders of people organization. Our project team put forward this matter in front of community members but because of pressure created by some anti social elements this matter was dumped down.

 

But, dramatically after 2 months, we got the news that group of people from the same village took this matter to the District collector office and an investigation team was formed to look after this case. After the investigation, engineer & Panchyat sevak were held responsible for this. Panchyat sevak and engineer were suspended and they got transferred to another district with suspension.

 

This was the effort by our team that community members & peoples organization became active and today they sit regularly for weekly gram sabha and all the decisions are being taken by the the proples organization.