An Appeal for Joining "India Against Corruption"

from Venkatanarayan Krishnan
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After a little bit of silence from my side, I am back in action.
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There has been a lot of happenings in the past week and the developments have been on a very positive side. First I have contacted Shri. Shivendra Singh Chauhan of "India Against Corruption" (IAC) and he provided the list of people in Tamil Nadu who had registered at www.IndiaAgainstCorruption.org. I have sent mails to all the people and there has been more than enthusiastic response from all the quarters. It is very heartening to know that there are lot of people who are getting together to lead our India against corruption. I have also got in touch with the Mr. Krish who is volunteering / steering the Coimbatore chapter of our struggle.

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I had communicated to many of you about the Indefinite fast of Shri Anna Hazare to be commenced by first week of April. As a show of solidarity, we also are planning a rally at Chennai on 10th April. The exact details of the rally will be announced later after obtaining the requisite permission from the Police. In the meantime, we need to start organizing ourselves to make sure that our movement reaches out to many more enthusiasts who will be willing to join us in this Fight against corruption. I have put together a list of Action Items that we may undertake towards this objectives.

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Volunteers: Getting a group of very active volunteers is critical to the success. There are plenty of us now ready to spend a bit of time. We need to have a group of at least 20 people who can spend about 1 hour a day during the weekdays and 3 to 4 hours during the weekends. There are many tasks to be taken up, and once we get the list of active volunteers, we can prioritize and assign each of us the tasks.

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Connect with NGO's: We have 5th Pillar an organization that has been leading the fight against corruption as a major contributor to this movement. We need to bring in several more NGO's who share our vision of India sans Corruption (Now who am I kidding, "sans corruption" is too very heavy a statement but who says that we cannot dream :-) ). There are several people in this list who work with NGO's and better India initiatives (Mr. M.G. Devasahayam, Mr. Gopalaswamy, Mr. Naresh Gupta, Mr. Oza, Mr. Kris Dev, Mr. Prasanna to name a few) who can and will bring in the people who will make the difference. More importantly the reach of these organizations and individuals can accelerate the reach of our message to people in a hurry.

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Connect with colleges: There have been several suggestions that we include students. This is a section that is certainly going to bring in so much enthusiasm that it is going to be difficult for us to keep pace with. But this is very much required for keeping us on the toes. However, this being the (March and April months) time of the final examinations, we should not be involving the students who are in their final years since that may be detriment to their studies. Let us know if any of you have any contacts in the colleges where we will be able to meet the students and invite them for our meeting,

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Connect with Media: I have a feeling that many of the mainstream media are not very enthusiastic in carrying out the messages to the people. I may be mistaken. However, it is important that while we seek the mainstream media's coverage, we also need to concentrate on the neighborhood weeklies (Mambalam times, Adyar times etc). Many of these weeklies are starved for worthwhile news (am I being needlessly caustic here?) and will be willingly post our events in their first or second page. Though not on the same league in terms of reach when compared with their mainstream cousins, these weeklies certainly reaches sizable audience and can be useful in our crusade.

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SMS and MMS Campaigns: We need to come up with catchy message (should be lesser than 160 words and really catchy) for the SMS which can spread easily. For the MMS, we need some short shoots (not more than 60 ~ 90 seconds for maximum effect) done by prominent people with impeccable pedigree giving a short speech. Mr. Shivendra had indicated that some shoot (in English / Hindi) is planned by Mr. Arvind Kejriwal. We can plan something in Tamil too?

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T-Shirts: We can have some T-shirts printed with powerful messages. I am trying to source this directly from Thirupur to lower the cost. I am planning to have about 200 T-Shirts printed as a initial order. The cost is likely to be around 120 ~ 150 Rupees. I will be finalizing the order before 5th March. We need to come up with some slogans for this. Mr. Bhamy Shenoy had forwarded an art material. If you have some ideas too, please share it.

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Badges: Our friends at Coimbatore IAC have designed badges which is likely to be available to us soon. It will cost less than Rs. 20

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This is just the beginning. I am sure that you will be having more ideas that will make our fight much more effective. I would like to hear from you on how to take this forward to the grassroots level. If you have already some experience in taking such ideas to that level or if you think that any of your idea can make a difference, please share it.

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We are planning to have fortnightly meeting with the next one slated for 5th March. Whatever ideas we are able to generate in this forum can be discussed an finalized as action points during these meetings.

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Sincerely,

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Venkat

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Venkatanarayan Krishnan

vn.krishnan@gmail.com

99400 66327