RTI Week – Dec 1st – 7th - An IIM Indore Initiative
Written by Rohit C
Wednesday, 03 December 2008 05:51
Mr.Gautam Kothari is the President of the Pithampur Industry Association. In his capacity as a stakeholder responsible for the infrastructural development of this industrial region of Madhya Pradesh, near Indore, he was perturbed by a certain recent development. A government contractor had installed streetlights in Pithampur some time back, and he was paid for it. However the lights used to malfunction very often, causing great inconvenience. Added to this the electricity bill was charged for the full duration of utilization of the lights at commercial rates.
What exactly did Mr.Kothari do? Ten years ago, he would have had no option but to endlessly seek divine intervention for things to get better. But now, times have changed.
Mr.Kothari filed an application under the RTI Act (Right to Information) against both the contractor and the electricity board. In just one month, success was on his side. The contractor and the corrupt electricity board officials were booked. While the contractor lost his contract, an enquiry was ordered against the electricity board officials. Hence, the RTI Act proved to be the savior and ensured justice.
The RTI Act is indeed a potent weapon in the hands of the public against government corruption. Using it to full effect would lead to a society free of corruption and would make the government mechanism highly transparent, thereby ensuring the end of bureaucratic control and red tape.
However, the biggest roadblock to the extensive use of the RTI Act is the procedure of filling applications, which many among the public are ignorant of, and hence shy away from the RTI completely.
RTI Week 1-7 Dec: IIM Indore students putting up the RTI Week banner at Sadhu Vaswani Garden, Sindhi Colony, Indore – one of the Direct Action Day venues
In this regard, we, the students of IIM Indore have come up with the idea of an “RTI Week” from December 1-7. The RTI week is being coordinated by Pragati, the social activity group of IIM Indore. As a part of this initiative, IIM Indore in association with Cadburys and MyFM is conducting a series of workshops at various educational institutions of Indore over the week.
These workshops are being conducted by Mr. Saurav Sharma from Joint Operation for Social Help (JOSH) and Mr. Santosh Jha from Parivartan who have been actively working for the cause in New Delhi. The volunteers will be trained in the nuances of the RTI act and also in drafting RTI applications to elicit relevant information from public offices. Selected volunteers from among the participants of these workshops will camp at various venues across the city on December 7th and help the citizens of Indore understand the benefits of the act and draft RTI applications to various departments and government offices.
For more details and to particiate in the RTI week, visit www.indorertiweek.com
IIM Indore Students on NDTV
Written by Shashank Jha, on 01-12-2008 00:57
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With the election season going on in Madhya Pradesh along with a few other states of India, it’s difficult to remain untouched by political discussions. Even more so if you are a part of an esteemed institution like an IIM. At IIM Indore we see ourselves as pro -active citizen of this country and therefore when invited by NDTV for an election-special talk show called Young Tantra, we could not miss a chance to be represented.
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Two of our participants from PGP 1 – Shashank Jha and Nishant Niraw took part in the program and expressed their views about youth and their role in politics. The program was one amongst a series of talk shows held by NDTV across different cities in India within the states undergoing elections. On 17th November '08 Young Tantra reached Indore, the first city in India to boast of an IIT-IIM combo.
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The talk show had some of the prominent politicians of Madhya Pradesh, especially Indore region, including the PWD Minister of MP, Mr Kailash Vijayvargiya. The show brought forward several issues such as - “How to enhance the involvement of youth in politics?”, “Why is young India not interested in politics?”, “Why a majority of youth do not vote?” etc
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Amongst several views expressed by youngsters from different sections of Indore, one that attracted strongest reactions from the politicians was a comment by Shashank stating that instead of everyone exercising his voting rights, its high time that each and everyone exercises his right to abstain from voting unless they feel they have a suitable candidate contesting the elections. This if exercised deliberately and effectively, he said, would act as the non-cooperation movement of today and the strongest statement that youth can make. Another important issue was raised by Nishant where he questioned the process of selection of candidates who are supposed to run the machinery of a state or a country. He said that when we, who are to run only a business unit, have to go through an extremely rigorous and competitive test called CAT, shouldn't there be a tougher test for the politicians as they they have the far greater responsibility of running the state or the nation.
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While the one hour program may be insufficient to make an impact on the course of politics and mindset of politicians, the initiative from NDTV India made sure that the voices of today's youth reach the corridors of politics loud and clear.
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We hope that more such initiatives come up, especially in a city like Indore which is well and truly a representative of the emerging India and we as an integral part of the city play our own part to the maximum potential.
The third day of IRIS 2008 proved to be just as entertaining as the last couple of days, with some of the flagship events having their grand finales and more innovative games being introduced.
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In keeping with this year’s theme of “Break Free”, IRIS 2008 introduced a lit event 3ΦΦ. Structured innovatively with 3 rounds on a time-slide rule with decreasing time periods, each participant from a team of 3 had to play a part in each round at the same time. The rounds were one on pot-pourri and puzzles, another on writing a story based on key words and the third on compiling a poem with strips of two lines. The catch though was that each team member would have to continue further on what his team mate had completed before him in the same round. There was further fun for everybody when the teams were asked to act out the poems they had compiled. The final round comprised of a combination of dumb charades and literary quiz, where a team member had to crack a literary question and mime it for his team mates to guess the answer. Amongst tough competition from teams from IIT Delhi, MICA, IIM Bangalore and IIM Ahmedabad, the team from IIM Indore won through.
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The guest speaker for the 2nd day of IRIS 2008 was Mr. Anupam Dutta, managing director, Kellogs who talked on “Opportunities & Challenges posed by the large lower income segment in India”. He elaborated on market segmentation, emerging retail markets, the changing Indian society and how Kellogs was handling them by “Looking at most relevant trends which may impact food directly, identifying possible need states that exists, understanding the roles of food and exploring more food options”. He was joined by Mr. Nanda Kumar, Founder President and CEO of SunTec Business Solutions, in interacting with the audience.
IIM Indore held its annual festival IRIS 2008 here at the institute premises from Nov 6th to 9th. With a theme of “Break Free”, this year’s version saw an increase in the scale, variety and number of events, the prize money and the number of participants from the 30 B-schools that were invited.
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IRIS 2008 though started off much before November 6th. This year’s record breaking version of Klueless –Klueless 4, the online puzzle game, was a sign of things to come. With more than 2 million hits from 1444 cities across 92 countries within 2 weeks of its launch, the numbers tell the story. There were also a host of programmes organized in the week leading up to IRIS. On the 4th of Nov for example, the students of IIM Indore launched Dharti ke Lal, an initiative to understand the problems plaguing rural India and to interact with people at the grassroots level. The host of invitees were from such diverse vocations as the President of the Rau municipality, a retd principal of Gurukul – the govt hr sec school, the Sarpanch of theRangwasa Village, farmers, teachers, journalists and reporters. The meeting set an action plan on how the proximity of an IIM could impact the lives of people in the surrounding areas in a positive way, with the students of IIM Indore themselves taking away quite a lot from the meeting.
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This year’s flagship events of IRIS also had added incentives apart from the prize money. Team Progenie from Great Lakes who pocketed Rs.1.2 lakhs as winners of Sanjeevani – the B-plan contest, for example have now been promised capital investment of upto Rs.30 million from the VC firm SeedFund, the event sponsors. Similarly, Team Parichay from XLRI, the winners of Kalpavriksha, the social venture challenge, wonRs.1.2 lakhs and will also be presenting their plan at the Global Social Entrepreneurship Challenge (GSEC) at the Foster School of Business, Seattle, USA. The most looked forward event of IRIS,Ashwamedha, lived up to its billing in terms of the quality of participants and the testing and gruelling rounds it comprised of. The 30 invited finalists were put through multiple rounds that tested every aspect of their theoretical knowledge and practical smartness. The rounds comprised of, among many others, tests on game theory, live negotiation & bargaining, a simulation round of running a fast food joint, a reverse interview, poetry writing, a stint in rural marketing in the nearby Harsola village and finally a live interview for the 4 finalists in front of a packed auditorium. Mr.Abhinav from IMT, Ghaziabad won through in the end and walked away with the crown and a prize money of Rs.1.5 lakhs.
On the evening of 4th November, the students of IIM Indore in line with their commitment to understand the problems and contribute to the city of Indore and surrounding areas launched Dharti ke Lal, an initiative to understand the problems plaguing rural India and to interact with people at the grassroots level. At a meeting in the institute’s amphitheatre, the main issue of discussion was how the proximity of an IIM could impact the lives of people in the surrounding areas in a positive way. Among the people called to shed light on these issues were :
Tej Shankar ji Dasora, Retd Principal of Gurukul, Govt higher secondary school
Jagdish Parmar, Sarpanch, Rangwasa Village
Gajanandji Mandle, Farmer from Rau
Madhav Singh Patel, Farmer
Chandrashekhar Patidar, Farmer
Ajay Yadav, Reporter of Dharmyudh magazine
 The main issue of tackling rural education effectively was brought forward by the former Principal. The crux of the matter was the poor training and education imparted by government schools due to the lack of proper teachers. These schools were in poor shape in terms of maintenance and facilities due to lack of adequate funding from the government. He contended that as long as these schools didn’t match up to the education levels provided by the private schools, it will be very difficult for a rural child to rise up to a higher standard of living and compete with private school students.
