How does RTI help in curbing corruption in Nagaland?(Related to Joshua Sheqi's write up in the newspapers published on 14th Dec'11)
Kekhrie Sorhie: YouthNet members have been warned on several occasions by many affected officials as per the write up by Joshua Sheqi.
Naga Manung: Congrats YouthNet team. Fear not! keep doing the right thing. Oh! how much we hate the corrupted people. Be our 21st century Robin Hood :) Naga Style of course!
Yeptho Tokato: Keep the faith and keep the stone rolling. Never quench the spirit. Keep the spirit alive. Thanks youthnet for your commendable works. Hekali and Joshua, your works are visible. When you got the light, flies will surely come. But to address the flies we cant go back into the darkness again right? Just keep burning the light and in time we have a solution to tackle the flies also. Let all the student unions make it a point to organise an RTI clinic at least once in a year to make it popular among the educated young people. Let us lead the way for a new Nagaland, a bright Nagaland.
Hekani Jakhalu: Dear all. Thank you all for your support and for the feedbacks. Joshua Sheqi full article this morning clarifies lots of issues. But I would like to state few points as well. Since YN started in 2006, RTI has been part of our work. In a way we did not choose to do RTI, RTI chose YN. When YN started, our agenda was to focus on youth issues only, but maybe it was God's plan that everything kept falling back to RTI. We then decided to use RTI as a tool to empower youths. And that’s what has brought us this far. In the first place we don’t have any intention to become Anna Hazares of Nagaland, We are very clear that we are ordinary people empowered with some knowledge and with a conscience to stand up for what we believe is our right. We decided that instead of blaming others all the time, or waiting for someone to do it, we need to do whatever little we can do in our capacity.
Sophy Lasuh: I just read the full write-up on Morung Express. If the RTI campaign is being met with opposition, Youth Net is exactly where it should be. RTI is the only tool that makes us ordinary mortals confront the Chairs usually with Corruption as its chief occupant. YN is solely responsible for spearheading the RTI Campaign in Nagaland and as Joshua Sheqi writes "directly affected 10, 000 people". Threats, in all optimism merely means, the other party is threatened. The status quo has finally been shaken. Well done. To me, that itself is an achievement.
All that being said, a two cent thought - our societal set up on which we take a lot of pride has an adverse impact on campaigns such as RTI. Everyone knows everybody and if an individual wants to file a complaint, an uncle, aunt, relative, cousin, friend, colleague, neighbour will in all likely circumstances request you to back off because they are acquaintances.
Digging out the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) projects in Nagaland
Browsing through the work status report of Nagaland in the website http://nrega.nic.in/ shows zero projects completed in the financial year 2011-12 since the website has not been updated as it should have been updated every month.
Vivek Iyer: Friends here is a link(http://nrega.nic.in/) which tell us the figures that not even a single project is completed under the MNREGA scheme till date in Nagaland! NREGA is not a developmental scheme but a scheme for minimum rural employment ,many village development projects are serviced with man power from NREGA hence irrigation, road and flood proofing land development provide employment to villagers, now when this employment salary is not provided to the beneficiary then what’s the point of having such scheme? (This is the case in majority of states not only Nagaland) so if we want infrastructure development then we better empower the VDB’s which will really benefit a state like Nagaland where the land etc are owned by the same community. This will bring development and infrastructure built up faster . But people who are listed in the beneficiaries list are also corrupt they don’t turn up for work and take the money! The money meant for Naga rural folk is being siphoned off by some oligarchs. Who knows who is taking the money meant for you against your job card!
Vikeduo Linyü: NREGA from what I heard is now going to be implemented with bank accounts but that will take a long time for a country like India where postal address is fix as "opposite to" "near so an so" etc. yes NREGA is full of corruption or it creates space for corrupted officials no doubt about that, but at least some development can be seen in the grass root level. Especially in Nagaland and when I visited a remote village recently I told them to harness the power of NREGA, because that is the only scheme which can bring some development to the village, the LADF(local area development fund) never reaches them, at least NREGA is controlled by the community level to implement, so corruption is lesser evil I guess. Something is better than nothing.
Senti Aier: Sanctions has already been allowed for the year 2011-2012 but the MIS reports has still not been submitted to the center due to the late installations of the upgraded SQL server from 2011-2012. As a result of which the figures shows zero completions of projects. Yes I do agree that the MGNREGA is one of the most corrupted schemes but at the same time some villages under it has developed to a great extent.
Kuhoi Yeputhomi Naga: Come to my village and see how MGNREGA works are done. But sorry to say, government websites are never updated.
Kekhrie Sorhie: YouthNet members have been warned on several occasions by many affected officials as per the write up by Joshua Sheqi.
Naga Manung: Congrats YouthNet team. Fear not! keep doing the right thing. Oh! how much we hate the corrupted people. Be our 21st century Robin Hood :) Naga Style of course!
Yeptho Tokato: Keep the faith and keep the stone rolling. Never quench the spirit. Keep the spirit alive. Thanks youthnet for your commendable works. Hekali and Joshua, your works are visible. When you got the light, flies will surely come. But to address the flies we cant go back into the darkness again right? Just keep burning the light and in time we have a solution to tackle the flies also. Let all the student unions make it a point to organise an RTI clinic at least once in a year to make it popular among the educated young people. Let us lead the way for a new Nagaland, a bright Nagaland.
Hekani Jakhalu: Dear all. Thank you all for your support and for the feedbacks. Joshua Sheqi full article this morning clarifies lots of issues. But I would like to state few points as well. Since YN started in 2006, RTI has been part of our work. In a way we did not choose to do RTI, RTI chose YN. When YN started, our agenda was to focus on youth issues only, but maybe it was God's plan that everything kept falling back to RTI. We then decided to use RTI as a tool to empower youths. And that’s what has brought us this far. In the first place we don’t have any intention to become Anna Hazares of Nagaland, We are very clear that we are ordinary people empowered with some knowledge and with a conscience to stand up for what we believe is our right. We decided that instead of blaming others all the time, or waiting for someone to do it, we need to do whatever little we can do in our capacity.
Sophy Lasuh: I just read the full write-up on Morung Express. If the RTI campaign is being met with opposition, Youth Net is exactly where it should be. RTI is the only tool that makes us ordinary mortals confront the Chairs usually with Corruption as its chief occupant. YN is solely responsible for spearheading the RTI Campaign in Nagaland and as Joshua Sheqi writes "directly affected 10, 000 people". Threats, in all optimism merely means, the other party is threatened. The status quo has finally been shaken. Well done. To me, that itself is an achievement.
All that being said, a two cent thought - our societal set up on which we take a lot of pride has an adverse impact on campaigns such as RTI. Everyone knows everybody and if an individual wants to file a complaint, an uncle, aunt, relative, cousin, friend, colleague, neighbour will in all likely circumstances request you to back off because they are acquaintances.
Digging out the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) projects in Nagaland
Browsing through the work status report of Nagaland in the website http://nrega.nic.in/ shows zero projects completed in the financial year 2011-12 since the website has not been updated as it should have been updated every month.
Vivek Iyer: Friends here is a link(http://nrega.nic.in/) which tell us the figures that not even a single project is completed under the MNREGA scheme till date in Nagaland! NREGA is not a developmental scheme but a scheme for minimum rural employment ,many village development projects are serviced with man power from NREGA hence irrigation, road and flood proofing land development provide employment to villagers, now when this employment salary is not provided to the beneficiary then what’s the point of having such scheme? (This is the case in majority of states not only Nagaland) so if we want infrastructure development then we better empower the VDB’s which will really benefit a state like Nagaland where the land etc are owned by the same community. This will bring development and infrastructure built up faster . But people who are listed in the beneficiaries list are also corrupt they don’t turn up for work and take the money! The money meant for Naga rural folk is being siphoned off by some oligarchs. Who knows who is taking the money meant for you against your job card!
Vikeduo Linyü: NREGA from what I heard is now going to be implemented with bank accounts but that will take a long time for a country like India where postal address is fix as "opposite to" "near so an so" etc. yes NREGA is full of corruption or it creates space for corrupted officials no doubt about that, but at least some development can be seen in the grass root level. Especially in Nagaland and when I visited a remote village recently I told them to harness the power of NREGA, because that is the only scheme which can bring some development to the village, the LADF(local area development fund) never reaches them, at least NREGA is controlled by the community level to implement, so corruption is lesser evil I guess. Something is better than nothing.
Senti Aier: Sanctions has already been allowed for the year 2011-2012 but the MIS reports has still not been submitted to the center due to the late installations of the upgraded SQL server from 2011-2012. As a result of which the figures shows zero completions of projects. Yes I do agree that the MGNREGA is one of the most corrupted schemes but at the same time some villages under it has developed to a great extent.
Kuhoi Yeputhomi Naga: Come to my village and see how MGNREGA works are done. But sorry to say, government websites are never updated.
(The Naga Blog was created in 2007 by Yanpvuo Kikon. This column in the Morung Express will be a weekly feature every Saturday)
