Citizen Awareness and Attitudinal Change

Introduction

For the last few decades, Governments have emphasised creation of knowledge society and knowledge economy. People in such society are empowered with the help of information, education, accountable institutions and social inclusion. The movement towards this goal started from the top through

• legislations like Right to Information Act, Right to Education Act
• inclusive policy-making and budgeting
• Welfare schemes, laws, bodies, institutions etc. for vulnerable sections
• devolution of powers to local governments
• e-governance projects

But the impact remained short of expectations due to lack of people participation, cultural rigidities and lack of sense of ownership in the communities. Individualism started to dominate over communitarian spirits. This has caused problem of corruption, environment degradation, social and political inequalities. The weaker sections are made dependent on the government due to populist measures which is evident from the fact that still the major electoral agenda are Roti (food), kapda (clothes), makaan (house). Due to poor public communication and outreach campaigns, the citizens remain unaware of their rights and entitlements. The faulty methodology of calculating poverty exclude needy people from benefitting from certain schemes. The local bodies are guided by caste and community biases resulting in social exclusion. Even the local bodies remain understaffed and underfunded to do any meaningful work.

Dhara’s Vision and Mission

Dhara For Sustaining Life aims to close the gap between expectation and reality. We aim to ensure that even the last stakeholder is able to get due rights and entitlements. We aim to make the community empowered so that it can hold institutions, which impact them, accountable. We aim to create inclusive societies that are knit together through espirit-de-corps. We aim to revive Gandhiji’s Trusteeship model by making the citizens aware about their responsibilities also.

Dhara’s Activities

• Surveying the households to obtain detailed data around economic, social, educational and health status of the communities
• Creating awareness about the major developmental initiatives by the government that can benefit the household
• Informing the people about social audit mechanism and equipping them with relevant skills
• In each community, deploying “Dhara Mitra” who acts as first point of contact regarding handling queries about government schemes
• Conducting nukkad nataks, awareness campaigns to engage people and try to change their attitudes
• Organizing trips and day-out activities for civil service aspirants to different states and regions so that they get practical exposure which will make them effective public servants in future
• Collaborating with local institutions of influence to spread message of peace, harmony and fraternity

How you can help

• Donate to our projects. You can follow the ongoing and completed projects here
• Volunteer with us to help execute the ongoing projects and to help kickstart the upcoming ones
• Share your idea about how we can benefit the people more or how we can reach out to more people
• Partner with us and we can jointly work to create more impact

Contact Us

Drop us an e-mail at dharaforsustaininglife@gmail.com or call us at +91-9999-801-394 or drop by at our office in 10/70 Basement, Old Rajender Nagar, New Delhi-60.