Local Democracy and Welfare Rights and Access to Justice are the two broad areas our work is divided into.
Under Local Democracy and Welfare Rights, we focus on facilitating better access to rights and entitlements, providing channels for grievance redressal and demonstrating how Panchayats can work in the letter and spirit of the Constitution.
The 70-plus organisations we partner with under this category work with Gram Sabhas, community-based institutions and the elected representative body of the Gram Panchayat and local youth.
We actively support the strengthening of various community collectives such as women’s Self-Help Groups and farmers’ groups.
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We collaborate with partners to build perspectives on local democracy among community leaders and elected representatives; engage with youth and other sections of the population. We also focus on issues of social justice, equality, transparency and accountability. This has helped improve the operations of local government institutions — such as regularised and better performing standing committees at the Panchayat level.
We also help to ensure that citizens get smooth access to entitlements and services — by resolving demand-side gaps such as lack of awareness and lack of citizen participation, and supply-side gaps such as lack of training of government functionaries and failure in last-mile delivery.
Our sustained efforts have yielded positive on-ground results such as improved citizenship and democratic rights of the people, through better representation, participation in decision-making and holding government functionaries accountable.
We have also worked towards improved access to rations, work under NREGA, entitlements, social security, health, education, land and forest rights. Additionally, we have succeeded in increasing citizens’ awareness on schemes, procedural, and grievance lodging mechanisms.
The second area of our Governance work is termed Access to Justice.
Under this, we support over 40 organisations that seek to enhance legal awareness and ensure participation and representation of vulnerable groups in upholding their constitutional rights through training, legal counselling and legal aid.
Our partners, working with some of the most marginalised and vulnerable people of India, provide rights-based, public-spirited and pro-bono lawyering through centre-based legal-aid.
They also engage with critical stakeholders such as the judiciary and Legal Services Authority and build a network of para-legal volunteers among the community.
Their work has helped people from vulnerable backgrounds — such as children, Dalit, Adivasi, and women — gain access to legal aid and get represented to fight cases in court. It has also helped victims obtain entitlements such as land rights and compensation. Many people from vulnerable backgrounds have also received legal relief such as bail or acquittal.
In the area of Governance, we work through our partners.
