Changing India – Step I

Dear Friends, Thanks to all of you for an overwhelming response to my two posts: Who is B Shantanu? and Changing India – One Step at a Time.

I am more hopeful than ever before and absolutely convinced that we are heading towards a transformation of the political landscape in India…It will not  happen overnight…or even in weeks or months…But the fire of “hope” has been lit…and it is spreading slowly but steadily…

Many of you who emailed or called me after these posts asked what should they do, how can they help and what were my next steps. This post is an attempt to answer some of these questions…

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***  What can you do? How can you begin participating in this noble cause? ***

1. Read and read lots…Unless we are well-informed and aware, we will be hostage to media manipulation, poor arguments and suspect statistics. So please make sure that you set aside time every day to read about the issues that face us (and I dont mean newspaper headlines about murders and rapes) and how would you think about them if you were in power?  By way of reading list, I would recomend the monthly magazine “Pragati” and a collection of blogs on politics and economy (some names that jump to my mind include Offstumped, Acorn, Deeshaa, Indian Economy, Bharat-Rakshak etc; there are many others…this is just a sample list).

2. Discuss. Try and have regular informal discussions amongst your friends and acquaintances on these topics…they could even be at a social occassion…and need not be very structured…The important thing is to get people “thinking” about India’s problems – and how the roots for all these lie in poor leadership, ineffective governance and bad policies…and of course, please do join the various discussions on this blog. For those of you who would like to join in serious policy discussions, I would recommend the Freedom Team’s Google Groups where many policy-related issues are discussed in great depth (You of course don’t have to agree with everything that is expressed).

3. Get involved directly: Please think about joining one or more of the new political groups/parties that have recently been formed. There is more information on them here and here.  Pl. try and use some of the “tools” that we now have to ensure more accountability, such as RTI.  If you are in India, please consider these two excellent initiatives…If you have some more time, pl. consider helping ADR

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*** How can you help? ***

4. You can help in this by spreading the word…Some of you have already done that…Thank you, in particular to Varnam and Dr Surya…but this work is ongoing …and we cannot afford to be complacent.

5. and finally, If you can help organise meeting(s), seminar(s) and/or fund-raising dinners in your city for me, please let me know by emailing me at jaidharma AT gmail.com The “funds” raised thus will be chanelled towards organising the first-ever meeting of leaders from new political parties, hopefully sometime early in 2009 (pl. see point # 6 here). More on this particular point, later.

I have some more ideas which I will share in the coming days. In the meantime, If you need to talk to me with some specific suggestions or ideas, please email me at jaidharma AT gmail.com and we can set up a skype/ googletalk call…or of course speak on the phone.

Jai Hind, Jai Bharat!

Please read: Changing India – Step 2 

Related Posts:

Fixing the “system” – getting down to the nuts and bolts 

Lets come together to build a *new* and proud India 

Politics & Corruption: Here�s how to fix the “system”