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Notice (8): Undefined variable: urlPrefix [APP/Template/Layout/printlayout.ctp, line 8]interviews/social-entrepreneurs-and-promoters-of-the-platform-azadi-in-radhakrishnan-ram-manohar-siddharth-vijayan-praveen-paul-and-stalvart-john-interviewed-by-shilpa-nair-anand-the-hindu-4679875.html"/> Interviews | Social entrepreneurs and promoters of the platform Azadi.in -- Radhakrishnan Ram Manohar, Siddharth Vijayan, Praveen Paul and Stalvart John -- interviewed by Shilpa Nair Anand (The Hindu) | Im4change.org
Resource centre on India's rural distress
 
 

Social entrepreneurs and promoters of the platform Azadi.in -- Radhakrishnan Ram Manohar, Siddharth Vijayan, Praveen Paul and Stalvart John -- interviewed by Shilpa Nair Anand (The Hindu)
-The Hindu

A crowd funding platform for legal fees, www.azadi.in, is enabling greater ease of access to justice for all. The founders are four young men from Kochi

Four young men from Kochi - Radhakrishnan Ram Manohar, Siddharth Vijayan, Praveen Paul and Stalvart John – a couple of years back thought up something that won our hearts – ‘Sisters Across Borders’. Those were hard times in flood-hit Kashmir; aid was pouring in from all directions. A lot of the aid material was going waste due to glitches such as distribution issues. Rather send in relief material that might not go to waste, as part of a GoAir and Kudumbashree CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) initiative, they zeroed in on an essential commodity, one that is often missed, sanitary napkins made in Kerala. The team had started two-and-a-half years back, managing CSR for corporate houses by helping them plan, design and implement CSR initiatives. They proudly claim “We have not raised any external funding and have been running the company completely bootstrapped since inception.”

They moved to Bengaluru last year, to be incubated at N.S. Raghavan Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning (NSRCEL), IIM. Along the way they realised that “through technology and the crowd, we can impact a huge number of citizens in our country. This made us launch a crowd funding platform (www.azadi.in) for legal fees to provide access to justice for all that is incubated in IIM Bangalore and introducing the concept of crowd funding legal fees in India,” they say. As their first campaign, they are partnering with the respected Common Cause, which is working on legal impact in the country.

Edited excerpts from an email interview.

* How did the platform Azadi.in come about?

Today thanks to the Internet we are coming to know of government inadequacies with ease. Concerned citizens talk about it on social media and maybe even sign a petition. But that’s about all we can do without turning into full time activists. It’s a real limitation. With Azadi.in we want to address the general public’s inability to do anything solid. We wanted to make a platform through which we can encourage and support the actual ‘change makers’ working in their particular domains of concern and we help crowdfund their work. We work issue to issue and unlike a blanket contribution to an NGO, each rupee raised has an agenda and is spent only for that particular cause. We require the change makers to post updates to contributors within stipulated intervals. This increases accountability and the ‘funders’ can see the developments as far as their cause is concerned.

Our first campaign is by Common Cause, one of India’s respected NGOs founded by H.D. Shourie three decades ago. They have been involved in ground-breaking interventions, their most famous being the cancellation and re-auction of the 2G Spectrum in 2011 and re-auction of captive coal blocks in 2012. Common Cause is now preparing to lobby to implement the Right to Education (RTE) Act. 
 
It is set to lobby for the right and will approach the Supreme Court if advocacy does not work.

* Your involvement with Common Cause. Or rather what do you bring to the table for Common Cause.

Once we got incubated at the N.S. Raghavan Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning (NSRCEL), IIM Bangalore’s incubation zone, we headed to Delhi to set up the team and discuss our idea with the experts. We met top Supreme Court lawyers like Prashant Bhushan and Ram Jethmalani. In a meeting with Prashant Bhushan, he invited us home to speak further and introduced us to Common Cause. We spoke to Vipul Mudgal, director of Common Cause, and he said, “You are the missing piece in the puzzle”. He was very keen on trying to reach out to the whole of India through our platform. Through Azadi.in concerned citizens can invest into such causes rather than just read about it.

* Have you indentified areas that need intervention in education at the grassroot level? Or does Common Cause do it?

In this campaign, Common Cause will be researching and zeroing in on the problems and areas that need intervention, address those needs right from the district level and all the way up to the Centre. If a suitable answer is not obtained, they will approach the Supreme Court like they did for all their previous interventions. It’s a time and resource-consuming process that requires plenty of legwork.

The vision of this campaign is 1.5 million schools get better facilities, a shortage of 1.34 million toilets be taken care of, 8 million students, who are entitled to free education between the ages of six and 16 will get back to school, shortage of 500,800 teachers across India will be met and many more gaps in the way RTE was implemented will be filled.

* How has the response been so far? How have the ‘armchair activists’ responded?

With zero marketing cost, we have received Rs. 18,800 from 31 individuals who were armchair activists. We are getting good response from colleges for Rs.100 as they love the cause and what we are doing and we are providing them with ‘Change Maker’ digital certificates too. In times of Pokemon Go and Kabali it’s wonderful to see the younger generation looking up to such campaigns that can change the educational system in India.
 
 
Please go to http://www.azadi.in/rte to make donations to Common Cause (NGO)
 
 
The Hindu, 1 August, 2016, please click here to access
 
 
Image Courtesy: The Hindu