Parivartan (''Transformation'') is a
grass-roots
A grassroots movement is one that uses the people in a given district, region or community as the basis for a political or economic movement. Grassroots movements and organizations use collective action from the local level to effect change at t ...
activism
Activism (or Advocacy) consists of efforts to promote, impede, direct or intervene in Social change, social, Political campaign, political, economic or Natural environment, environmental reform with the desire to make Social change, changes i ...
organisation based in the Sundar Nagari area of
New Delhi
New Delhi (, , ''Naī Dillī'') is the capital of India and a part of the National Capital Territory of Delhi (NCT). New Delhi is the seat of all three branches of the government of India, hosting the Rashtrapati Bhavan, Parliament House ...
, India. During the 2000s, Parivartan used
Right to Information
The Right to Information (RTI) is an act of the Parliament of India which sets out the rules and procedures regarding citizens' right to information. It replaced the former Freedom of information act of 2002 (India), Freedom of Information Act ...
(RTI) to address citizens' grievances related to
Public Distribution System
The Public Distribution System (PDS) is an Indian food security system that was established by the Government of India under the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution to distribute food and non-food items to India's poor a ...
(PDS), public works, social welfare schemes, income tax and electricity. By 2012, Parivartan was largely inactive, and its main leaders
Arvind Kejriwal
Arvind Kejriwal (Hindi: ɾʋin̪d̪ ked͡ʒɾiːʋaːl born 16 August 1968) is an Indian politician, former bureaucrat, and activist who is the 7th and current Chief Minister of Delhi since February 2015. Currently, he is the national conv ...
and
Manish Sisodia
Manish Sisodia (born 5 January 1972) is an Indian politician and Deputy Chief Minister of Government of Delhi. He has been the Deputy Chief Minister of Delhi since February 2015. He is also an elected (third consecutive term) MLA from Patpargan ...
had launched a political party - the
Aam Aadmi Party
The Aam Aadmi Party (; AAP) is a political party in India, as one of the national political parties. The AAP was founded in November 2012 by Arvind Kejriwal and his then-companions following the 2011 Indian anti-corruption movement, popular ...
.
Establishment
Parivartan was founded by a few citizens of Delhi, including Arvind Kejriwal and Manish Sisodia.
It was not a registered
NGO
A non-governmental organization (NGO) or non-governmental organisation (see spelling differences) is an organization that generally is formed independent from government. They are typically nonprofit entities, and many of them are active in h ...
- it ran on individual donations, and was characterised as a ''jan andolan'' ("people's movement") by its members.
Later, in 2005, Kejriwal and Manish Sisodia launched Kabir, a registered NGO named after the medieval philosopher
Kabir
Kabir Das (1398–1518) was a 15th-century Indian mystic poet and saint. His writings influenced Hinduism's Bhakti movement, and his verses are found in Sikhism's scripture Guru Granth Sahib, the Satguru Granth Sahib of Saint Garib Das, ...
. Like Parivartan, Kabir was also focused on RTI and participatory governance. However, unlike Parivartan, it accepted institutional donations. According to Kejriwal, Kabir was mainly run by Sisodia.
In 2003, the group had 450 registered volunteers in Delhi, out of whom 60 were regularly active.
Anti-bribe campaigns
In 2000, Parivartan requested the Tax Commissioner to make the Income Tax department more transparent. When the request was overlooked, the group filed a
public interest litigation The chief instrument through which judicial activism has flourished in India is public interest litigation (PIL) or social action litigation (SAL). ''Public interest litigation'' (PIL) refers to litigation undertaken to secure public interest and de ...
(PIL) demanding transparency in public dealings of the Income Tax department, and also organized a
satyagraha
Satyagraha ( sa, सत्याग्रह; ''satya'': "truth", ''āgraha'': "insistence" or "holding firmly to"), or "holding firmly to truth",' or "truth force", is a particular form of nonviolent resistance or civil resistance. Someone w ...
outside the Chief Commissioner's office.
As a result of Parivartan's protests, the Commissioner implemented tax reforms. Kejriwal and other activists also stationed themselves outside the electricity department, asking visitors not to pay bribes and offered to help them in getting work done for free.
Audit of public works
In 2001, the Delhi government enacted a state-level Right To Information (RTI) Act, which allowed the citizens to access government records for a small fee. Parivartan used RTI to help people get their work done in government departments without paying a bribe. In March 2002, Parivartan staged a demonstration in front of
Municipal Corporation of Delhi
Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) is the municipal corporation that governs most of Delhi, India. The MCD is among the largest municipal bodies in the world providing civic services to an estimated population of more than 11 million citiz ...
(MCD), forcing the MCD officials to share information under the RTI directives.
In 2002, the group obtained official reports on 68 public works projects in the area, and performed a community-led audit on them by comparing the claimed work to the actual work done. The campaign exposed misappropriations worth 7 million in 64 of the projects.
On 14 December 2002, Parivartan organised a ''jan sunvai'' (public hearing) in Sundar Nagari, to examine the work of MCD's Engineering Department. In this public hearing, the local residents held public officials and leaders accountable for the lack of development in the locality, based on the audit.
The local
MLA, councillor and MCD engineers tried to disrupt the hearing, and the police had to be called in to maintain order.
In February 2003, the citizens of Sundar Nagari found that the MCD workers laying out a street were using poor quality sand and less
cement
A cement is a binder, a chemical substance used for construction that sets, hardens, and adheres to other materials to bind them together. Cement is seldom used on its own, but rather to bind sand and gravel ( aggregate) together. Cement mix ...
than required. The citizens, led by Parivartan members, complained to MCD. The Junior Engineer involved in the project was transferred, and the road was laid out with proper quality material.
Expose of PDS scams
In February 2002, a poor widow named Triveni had approached Parivartan, with the complaint that the
ration shop
The Public Distribution System (PDS) is an Indian food security system that was established by the Government of India under the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution to distribute food and non-food items to India's poor a ...
s were always out of stock whenever she needed subsidised foodgrains offered under PDS. Parivartan obtained her ration records using RTI, and found that on paper, she had been receiving her full quota of foodgrains. To probe other such cases, Parivartan decided to obtain more such records. However, the Food and Civil Supplies Department denied the request, stating that these records were private. After protests from Parivartan, the administration agreed to release the records. However, a group of 17 ration shop dealers approached the
Delhi High Court
The High Court of Delhi (IAST: ''dillī uchcha nyāyālaya'') was established on 31 October 1966, through the ''Delhi High Court Act, 1966'', with four judges, Chief Justice K. S. Hegde, Justice I. D. Dua, Justice H. R. Khanna and Justice S. ...
, and obtained a stay against Parivartan's attempts to access 'private' records. Parivartan then asked citizens to file individual RTI applications and get their records themselves. On 29 August 2003, around 300 people filed RTI applications to access their ration records. Subsequently, Parivartan obtained all the records for 25 ration shops in the area using RTI applications. It found that over 90% of the subsidised foodgrains were being siphoned off by the dealers in collusion with civic officials. The campaign resulted in violent attacks on Kejriwal's team; in one such attack, the corrupt dealers slit the throat of a young activist Santosh, badly wounding her. The residents of the community protested against the attack by organising a rally and
hunger strike
A hunger strike is a method of non-violent resistance in which participants fast as an act of political protest, or to provoke a feeling of guilt in others, usually with the objective to achieve a specific goal, such as a policy change. Most ...
s. The protests received considerable public attention and forced the officials to take action against the corruption.
In 2008, the computerisation of PDS records by the Food and Civil Supplies Department exposed a massive scam centered on duplicate
ration cards
A ration stamp, ration coupon or ration card is a stamp or card issued by a government to allow the holder to obtain food or other commodities that are in short supply during wartime or in other emergency situations when rationing is in forc ...
. As many as 109 ration cards had been issued in name of a single resident, and around 10 percent of the total ration cards in Delhi were found to be bogus. Parivartan surveyed the ration card holders in Sundar Nagari, and found that most people were not aware that duplicate cards had been issued in their names. Parivartan estimated that in the past four years, the state had suffered a loss of 259.5 crore owing to diversion of subsidized food grains on the basis of bogus ration cards. The group demanded an independent inquiry into the case, alleging a nexus between the ration shop dealers and civic officials.
Other campaigns
In November 2004, Parivartan used RTI applications to access communication between government agencies and the
World Bank
The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans and grants to the governments of low- and middle-income countries for the purpose of pursuing capital projects. The World Bank is the collective name for the Interna ...
, regarding a project for privatisation of water supply. The activists found that the project would have spent 105
crore
A crore (; abbreviated cr) denotes ten million (10,000,000 or 107 in scientific notation) and is equal to 100 lakh in the Indian numbering system. It is written as 1,00,00,000 with the local 2,2,3 style of digit group separators (one lakh is e ...
on annual salaries of 84 foreign experts, although the total annual budget of the Delhi Water Board was only 163 crore. They claimed that the project would have hiked water tariffs ten-fold, thus effectively cutting off the water supply to the city's poor. The project was stalled as a result of Parivartan's activism.
The World Bank denied Parivartan's accusations, and criticised Kejriwal for "propagating serious mischaracterisations of the World Bank's actions and intention".
Another campaign by Parivartan led to a court order that required private schools, which had received public land at discounted prices, to admit more than 700 poor kids without fee.
Recognition
In 2006, Kejriwal received the
Ramon Magsaysay Award
The Ramon Magsaysay Award (Filipino: ''Gawad Ramon Magsaysay'') is an annual award established to perpetuate former Philippine President Ramon Magsaysay's example of integrity in governance, courageous service to the people, and pragmatic idealis ...
for Emergent Leadership, for his involvement with Parivartan. The award recognised him for activating the RTI movement at the grassroots, and empowering New Delhi's poor citizens to fight corruption.
Kejriwal stated that the award belonged to every person associated with Parivartan.
Decline
By 2012, Parivartan was largely inactive. Sundar Nagri, where the movement was concentrated, suffered from irregular water supply, unreliable PDS system and poorly done public works.
Its founders - Arvind Kejriwal and Manish Sisodia - had entered politics under the banner of
Aam Aadmi Party
The Aam Aadmi Party (; AAP) is a political party in India, as one of the national political parties. The AAP was founded in November 2012 by Arvind Kejriwal and his then-companions following the 2011 Indian anti-corruption movement, popular ...
. The organisation at that time had two paid workers, one of whom, Santosh Koli, later died in a road incident not long after being selected as an election candidate by Aam Aadmi Party. These people were paid by the
Public Cause Research Foundation
Public Cause Research Foundation (PCRF) was a Delhi, India-based non-governmental organisation (NGO) that campaigned for just, transparent, accountable and participatory governance.
History
Public Cause Research Foundation was established on 19 D ...
, which had been founded by Kejriwal in 2006 using money that he received from the Ramon Magsaysay Award.
Kejriwal noted in 2012 that the success of the organisation was limited, saying that it was "ephemeral and delusionary in nature. We got success on the issue till the time we worked on it in that area but as we moved on to next issue the old issue became even worse than before."
References
{{reflist
Right to Information in India
Organisations based in Delhi
2000 establishments in Delhi
Anti-corruption activism in India