Online petitions are slowly changing the face of public campaigning. From human rights to women related issues, from child safety to civic problems — every issue is being highlighted through the online route. DEEBASHREE MOHANTY spends some time at the office of change.org in Shahpur Jat to see what India wants to change and how
It has been 30 years since the horrifying Bhopal Gas leak of 1984 but we have been suffering every day. Sometimes, I get up in the middle of the night to find my children gasping for breath. My youngest daughter has been battling the most dangerous TB virus for months. My eldest son, who was six when he inhaled that deadly gas, has a heart condition and can’t participate in strenuous activities. He can’t even get a decent job because of this. My other daughter also complains of heart pain. I have a big family to feed and their ailments require constant medical attention. All we got in the name of compensation was a paltry Rs25,000 from the Government. How am I going to survive,” asks Shehzadi Bee, who lives at Blue Moon Colony right behind the now closed factory in Bhopal.
Bee has been raising her voice actively against this unfair treatment of 1.5 lakh gas victims battling chronic illnesses in her community. She has started an online petition through change.org and it has already registered 28,000 responses. This, Bee insists, is just the beginning.
She and her husband were at home when the poisonous gas leaked from the Union Carbide factory half a kilometre away. “At first, we did not realise what the commotion was all about. A neighbour asked us to run and we did exactly that. However, by then, we had already inhaled a lot of toxic chemicals. Despite suffering life-long injuries, we were categorised as only “temporarily injured” and paid Rs25, 000 as compensation. More than 93 per cent of the half million affected residents have been categorised as temporarily injured. That’s unfair. We are leading a miserable life too and without any financial support, we feel, we have been left to die,” Bee, who is at Jantar Mantar to protest, says.
It’s been only three days that she is here, but the 40 something woman is determined to bring about a change. What better way than garnering support of like-minded people online and getting them to fight for a common causeIJ
Her demand from Ananth Kumar, Minister for Chemicals and Fertilizers, is two-fold: “Revise the casualty figure and extent of injuries caused by the 1984 Union Carbide Gas disaster in Bhopal and move for urgent hearing of the Curative Petition in the Supreme Court after this revision.” That’s what her short but crisp petition online says.
There is a greater role, she feels, justice in Bhopal will serve. “The adequate compensation for Bhopal victims is a demand for justice for all victims of corporate crime. If justice is done in Bhopal, corporations will be that much more careful about putting profit before the lives and health of people. Justice in Bhopal is important for a safer future for us and our future generations,” is how Bee concludes her petition on www.change.org.
There are millions like Bee from every strata and position in the society, who have started a petition online to have their voice heard. Is this the new revolution that we have been waiting for in IndiaIJ
“It’s still at a very nascent stage but online petitioning is slowly becoming a powerful medium. It provides a platform for everyone to talk about injustice and how they want a change for good. Indirectly, this kind of an agitation is making the society come closer. People are uniting without even knowing each other. That is remarkable,” Prashant Guha, noted social scientist and professor of Sociology in North Campus, Delhi University, says. Guha believes that the online way of agitation is soon going to take off in a big way.
For Preethi Herman, who is in charge of change.org’s India chapter, the movement has already begun. In the three years of its inception, there have been around 1.6 million people who have either started or signed a petition on this platform. Some of the problems that have come to the fore have achieved national importance.
“We work on a simple principle — that there is no power like people’s power. At change.org, we provide a platform to these people to share their stories of injustice and make a reasonable demand to the person/corporation or the Government. The issues that have emerged are phenomenal. At our end, we don’t just invite people to start a petition and garner support through signatures but we also make sure that their issues are being heard and noticed by the people concerned,” Herman, country lead of this venture, adds.
She explains how this works. “The petitions ensure that those seeking change are connected directly to those who can provide the change, whether they are politicians, bureaucrats, corporate firms or any other type of decision-makers. It also provides a tool for these decision makers to respond directly to petitions effectively and ensure both sides can take part equally in a conversation to bring about change,” Herman explains, adding that the platform is not just about putting up a petition online.
“Petition starters can employ various strategies and tactics to turn their petitions into winning campaigns. They reach out to the media, escalate a campaign by calls to action (such as organising events) and can come out with smart ways to reach out to the decision-maker,” Venkatesh HR, director of communications for change.org, tells you.
Pavithra Shetty, mother of a toddler in Bangalore had started a petition in July when a six-year-old child was raped in a popular private school. In a week’s time, she was able to mobilise more than 1.5 lakh people around the issue. Her demand was that the Karnataka Education Minister issues a directive to schools to take measurable steps to ensure safety in educational institutions. After much persuasion, the safety guidelines are in place now and Shetty has got what she set out to achieve. By doing so, she has also inspired more mothers like Maithreyi Nadapana to talk about the bigger picture.
I have started a fresh petition on school safety guidelines. The State Government has constituted a 14-member committee to monitor the implementation of these guidelines. But my problem is that this panel does not include any parent representative. If you are going to discuss safety of the children at school, isn’t it important that you have a parent representative tooIJ My plea to Education Minister Kimmane Ratnakar is that the Government should include parents as stakeholders to be part of this implementation process. This will ensure better representation and monitoring,” Maithreyi Nadapana, mother of two young daughters, a multi-media designer, and Member of Bangalore City Committee, loksatta Party, tells you.
Nadapana was initially circumspect about putting up her petition online because she wasn’t sure of an outcome but the moment she did, the signatures started pouring in and everything changed. “It was as if I was in a virtual dreamland. My old petition which was about overall safety of Bangalore city received over 64,000 signatures.
Such a platform gives you a lot of confidence. How else would you come to know that there are like-minded people who are supporting you,” she inquires, adding that she has a Plan B in place if her petition doesn’t get the desired response.
There are many like Nadapana who have resorted to this platform to make themselves heard and the result has been very encouraging. But does this involve risks as wellIJ “We are a transparent platform which works in our favour. But the safety of our users is our primary concern. The details of the petition starter are never shared unless the petitioner is fine with it. As a policy, we do not pass any judgement on the petitions that we receive. But if someone is trying to rig the signatures, we have a full-proof plan to reject them as spam,” Herman says.
She recalls a particular case where a TV crew started misbehaving with a group of college-going girls in Hyderabad and taped them in their drunken state. One of the girls went online and started a petition against such type of moral policing. The petition received a lot of support from across the country. But the channel refused to budge. Instead, it started a reverse petition and mobilised people from its own office to sign up for that ‘reverse petition’. "This petition was subject to an attempt at fraud and manipulation — almost 5000 signatures were added by two IP addresses. We have multiple levels of systemic checks to prevent this kind of abuse and ensure that the integrity of our platform is maintained. The fraudulent signatures were removed to reflect the count of genuine signatures & the petition starter was notified of the development."she recalls.
People are also using this platform to help law and policy makers focus. An example of that is Jyoti Gupta, a resident of Gurgaon, who lost her husband and son to a road accident recently. She used her personal story to petition Prime Minister Narendra Modi into changing road safety laws. More than 1.8 lakh people signed her petition, and now a new Road Safety Bill draft is set to be introduced in the Winter Session of Parliament.
“Road safety has been plaguing India with as many as 10,000 deaths due to accidents in 2013-14. There is no proper law nor a Safety Bill to counter this problem. When this petition was doing the rounds online, it created a lot of buzz and people signed it instantly. Newsy petitions are the ones which get the maximum support because a lot many people can relate to it. This is popular because it is convenient, accessible, cheap and very easily monitored. Not every day can one go to Jantar Mantar to protest. They do it online,” Namit Shah, social activist from Delhi, says.
Although online petitions are across India, there is a large concentration from metro cities like Bangalore and Mumbai. The issues coming out are varied. While Delhiites mostly talk about women’s rights, civic issue is a hot topic for Mumbaikars and Bangaloreans. “We are looking at making a site in Hindi so that we can reach out to those in the Hindi-speaking belt too. At present, the petition can be typed in any language but the website’s language is only English,” Herman explains.
But is this a serious medium which people will use judiciouslyIJ “It depends on who is starting a petition and what he wants from it. If you have simply logged in to vent your frustration and forget about it, then expect no change. But if you are determined to track it and make it a success then no one can stop you from doing so. With the help of many signatures you can even file for a PIl in a court of law,” Nadapana says.
Social scientists believe that there is a huge gap between policy and action, between accountability and reality. “We are working to bridge that gap between people and decision makers. This is a platform where we are working towards a world where no one is powerless, and where creating change is a part of everyday life. A country that has a million problems requires a million solutions and they need to start from each one of us,” Venkatesh says. The latest online petition on fire is that of a 14-year-old boy who wants an answer from the principal of his school — 100 maths sums in a day, read a chapter in Physics and practise Hindi dictation! This is my homework for a single day. I am only 14 years-old, I don’t think I need to work so hard. Please revise the homework rules in the school for the benefit of every student.
It’s time for a change, isn’t itIJ
ONlINE AGITATIONS
SUCCESS STORIES
Petition: Better voting rights for Indian Armed Forces personnel and their families who aren’t able to vote because of postings.
Starter: Rajya Sabha MP Rajeev Chandrasekhar.
Target: VS Sampath, Chief Election Commissioner.
Stand-out feature: Change.org uses missed call system to get ‘signatures’ in addition to online signatures; first time an MP’s petition results in victory.
Outcome: Election Commissioner HS Brahma assures Rajeev Chandrasekhar that changes will be made.
Petition: Petition: A father pleads for help for Arian, his 12-year-old son, who has Hunter Syndrome which costs up to Rs7 lakh a week to treat, for life. Without medication Arian would not have lived.
Starter: Kolkata-based Sib Sankar Chowdhury, father of Arian in Kolkata, West Bengal.
Target: Union Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan.
Stand-out feature: Dr Harsh Vardhan promises help on national TV after more than 1.2 lakh people sign the petition.
Outcome: It took almost a year but in the end Dr Harsh Vardhan was able to get the drug maker Shire to provide Arian medicines for free throughout his life.
Petition: A man in Chittoor district, Andhra Pradesh, petitions the local Government to save a 250-year-old Peepal tree in his ancestral village from being cut down. He asks the district administration to declare the tree as Government property.
Starter: Chittoor-based man Gurunatha lankipalli.
Targets: District Magistrate of Chittoor; MRO of Vayalpad.
Outcome: After more than 14,000 people from across the world sign the petition, the MRO issues an order declaring that the tree is Government property.
Petition: Allow Sikhs to play with their turbans on in international basketball matches.
Starter: Delhi-based RPS Kohli
Target: President of the International Basketball Association (FIBA) in Switzerland.
Outcome: FIBA agrees to review its rules and allows athletes to play with headgear on a trial basis.
ONGOING PETITIONS
Petition: With the RTI rudderless without a Chief Information Commissioner, an activist petitions the Prime Minister to appoint one immediately.
Starter: Delhi-based activist Anjali Bhardwaj.
Target: Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Where it’s at: More than 16,000 have so far signed the petition.
OTHER PETITIONS
Petition: Called on Narendra Modi, Rahul Gandhi and Arvind Kejriwal to a US-style debate.
Starter: Mumbai-based media professional Shamoly Khera.
Targets: Narendra Modi, Rahul Gandhi, Arvind Kejriwal.
Stand-out feature: 85,000 people signed and it nearly became a victory. Kejriwal responded directly on the site agreeing to a debate. Senior Congress leader Jairam Ramesh also responded positively.