It is evident from PAC’s experience that uninformed and poorly organised citizen groups have little chance of making a strong and sustainable impact on the quality of governance. Recognising this fact, the Centre has devoted significant efforts to capacity building and networking as a strategy to widen the reach of its initiatives. Special efforts have gone into the preparation of materials for PAC’s capacity building workshops. PAC has developed resource kits in English and Kannada on urban and rural local body elections, as a guide to help NGOs, CSOs and community based organisations (CBOs) in educating, sensitising and motivating people to vote. The kit contains information on how to conduct various electoral campaigns, and is used by PAC resource persons in their training programmes. Immense interest has been shown across the state for such training and orientation on elections, especially in the past two years.

During the Urban Local Body (ULB) elections in 2001, PAC decided to launch a state-wide campaign to facilitate a participatory and better informed electoral process in the state.  During the first phase of elections, the Centre created a network of interested groups in various parts of Karnataka, such as Mysore, Tumkur, Davanagere, Hassan, Shimoga, Bhadravathi, Doddaballapur, Challakere and Chickmagalur, towards carrying out the “It’s Time to Act” Campaign. A kit on ULB elections was prepared and disseminated to all partner groups. More than 200 organisations in Bangalore alone were supplied with information kits regarding details about the verification process. Public meetings with the contesting candidates were organized in all the places mentioned above, opening up a new window of opportunity for the voters to engage in dialogue with their future leaders.  It was nice to see that the groups made use of media like cable TV networks to broadcast the interviews of the candidates and communicate their ideas effectively to the public to help them make better choices in the election.

As a follow-up to the campaign, PAC organised an interactive session between the groups and officials of the Election Commission of Karnataka. The groups involved in the programme shared their experiences, so that an assessment could be made on its success and a future agenda developed. Mr. H.C. Nagendra, Karnataka’s Joint Chief Electoral Officer, chaired this evaluation meeting and interacted with the groups. Various suggestions to improve the system based on the experiences of the campaign were compiled and presented to the Commission for further action. 

PAC has been able to bring together a large number of groups across the state in its efforts toward free and fair elections. Most civic groups had limited their efforts to specific issues such as HIV/AIDS, women’s empowerment, micro-credit, disabilities, etc. With their involvement in PAC’s campaigns, for the first time many groups were able to go beyond these issues and participate in the larger realm of governance reforms. PAC’s campaigns are ideal platforms to conduct training, and have served as good capacity building exercises. Of late, groups in the far-flung and under developed districts of North Karnataka have evinced interest in participating in PAC’s electoral campaigns. There has also been demand for such capacity building programmes from groups outside Bangalore, such as in the state of Orissa.

Strengthening community participation in rural governance

In July 2003, the State Election Commission extended the disclosure law to Panchayat elections. With this, the Karnataka SEC joined the handful of states that have taken a proactive stance on voluntary disclosure at the grassroots. The Gram Panchayat (GP) elections in Karnataka, held in February and March 2005, presented an ideal opportunity for PAC to work in rural areas of the state. Until then, PAC’s electoral interventions had been confined to the urban areas. With the objective of enhancing the quality of Panchayat polls and to promote informed participation by voters, PAC embarked on a four-pronged campaign called “Parinamakari Panchayati” (effective local governance).  

PAC trained groups in several districts on how to verify electoral rolls, scrutinise affidavits of existing candidates, train candidates (especially women) to file their nominations and organise public meetings (called Muhka-Mukhi) where contesting candidates declared their past achievements and future plans for a particular village. The Parinamakari Panchayati programme brought to light a number of interesting findings, such as widespread anomalies on the voters’ list in the villages, including names of deceased persons. Although CSOs made an attempt to conduct the informed choices programme, many were forced to abandon it due to the immense difficulties involved in procuring photocopies of affidavits, pointing to the fact that reforms initiated in urban areas were yet to percolate down to the villages. Almost all the partner groups were able to organise Mukha-Mukhi (face-to-face) meetings in their respective Panchayats.  The large turnout and the quality of debate and discussion were encouraging.  The promises made by the candidates in this public meeting were recorded, such that people could follow up later. The programme suffered a blow in Bellandur, (widely regarded as a “model Gram Panchayat”, on the outskirts of Bangalore), however, where certain candidates along with their close associates prevented PAC from conducting such an information campaign. But by and large, the programme was met with enthusiasm by CSOs and villagers, encouraging PAC to continue with its agenda of strengthening rural governance.

PAC also organised meetings at which partner CSOs could interact with the election authorities in Bangalore and convey the lessons, as well as the hardships, that they discovered during the programme. A number of recommendations were then forwarded to the SEC to improve transparency and citizens’ participation in the electoral process.

Later, PAC launched a similar campaign during the Zilla Panchayat and Taluk Panchayat (the upper two tiers of the Panchayati Raj system) elections,  held in during December 2006. In its continued efforts to improve the quality of polls and strengthen rural governance, PAC collaborated with CSOs in Dakshina Kannada, Udupi, Bidar, Bangalore South, Shimoga, Kolar, Davanagere, Bellary, Bagalkot and Chitradurga districts.  The groups organized dissemination of information with regard to the contesting candidates and Mukha-Mukhis meetings with the candidates in the above mentioned places.

A noteworthy feature during this campaign was that the SEC trained the Returning Officers throughout the state before the polls, making use of the satellite training facility available at the Administrative Training Institute in Mysore, following PAC’s recommendations. The SEC also cooperated with PAC by issuing a letter of instruction to the concerned authorities to provide the copies of the candidate’s affidavits to public interest groups upon payment of a nominal fee.

Despite these instructions, the groups encountered a lack of cooperation and struggled to obtain the required information in time. Nevertheless, these highly motivated groups from the above- mentioned districts managed to collect and disseminate the information on candidates to encourage citizens to know their candidates before casting their vote. These groups also organized public meetings in selected taluks and obtained encouraging responses from the public. The public meetings organized by Maithri Seva Samithi in the Hospet taluk, for instance, held a mirror to the candidates’ ignorance. Candidates who arrived at the meeting without any knowledge of the local issues had to regret for the same in public. The candidates became anxious when information regarding their education, criminal record and property details were put in the public domain.  This experience is just an example of what transparency can do to for people’s electoral freedoms.