6th July, 2014
Every day is different and is filled with air
of different moods. 6th was a Sunday and I was so motivated to work
that I planned a meeting with Vijay Kunjeer. AM had mentioned that Vijay has good
understanding of core city politics and history and it would be good to talk to
him. Both of us were aware of the fact that Vijay stays just upstairs where my
parents stay. Which means that actually vijay and me have been neighbours for
last 2 decades. And i was not aware of his expertise. Now that a right reason has
arisen, we were quick to drop our inertia and to meet.
The meeting started with AM explaining what
we are trying to do under participatory budgeting, in 5 prabhags (electoral
ward). It’s a real life experiment. After listening and understanding, Vijay
dwelt upon the topics of Corporators behaviour in core city, the trends, the
power games and much more. It was a completely different language that I was
hearing for the first time and I hardly understood anything. There were times
when I thought I understood and the next moment it had all vanished.
What I could gather from the meeting is this:
1.
Vijay has good understanding of
power structure of the core city.
2.
He doesn’t know much about the
peripheral areas.
3.
The tangible benefits of land/
real estate play a major role in Corporators behaviour and hence the core city
and peripheral Corporators behave differently.
4.
He finds Inquiry based approach
interesting but doesn’t have time for it.
5.
“You run with twice the speed
at which you ran yesterday to be in the same place.” - VK
6.
The pace of life has increased
so much that no one in the city wants to give time.
7.
The best way to tap people
would be at cultural programs and religious programs.
8.
Everyone wants autonomy over
their time.
9.
The city came into existence
for achieving the anonymity for every person to be distant from an unwanted
past.
10.
In each ward there are 5-7
aspirants for becoming Corporator other than the ones who actually are and standing
in the election. They have parallel networks through which they get similar
things done.
11.
Understanding of politics has to
be broad based. Party position politics doesn’t makes no sense.
12.
In the core city, political
people are aware, active and alert.
13.
Most of the issues are settled
and practises are in place.
14.
In the periphery, the
politicians are not ready to share the information easily. (land connection)
15.
What are these networks? –
bachat bhishi gat, mandal – repositories of middle age politics, newspaper
reading soc, religious, pilgrimage
16.
The core city wards are market wards.
17.
Who can be a right person to
get information out of Corporator? : an outsider even a foreigner, they don’t
feel threatened by her presence. But to other Pune-ites or even to the same ward
citizen, they could be hesitant to share the information.
18.
The transport and traffic needs
to be seen in a light health of the citizens. The hawker and vendors are at
continuous risk of health due to pollution. But nobody wants to speak about it even
the affected. This conspiracy of silence needs to be broken.
19.
We have to accept that the old
city was not planned for this quantum of traffic and plan the usage accordingly.
20.
The daily labours, informal
sectors should get pension.
21.
Health: The health facility
should be available at ward level itself.
22.
The waste management should
also be at ward level or even lower level. Not at all at city level.
23.
There should be cross sectional
financial calculation which should be made available to people to understand
what is better for the city and the citizens.
24.
Media and Corporators are
speaking the same language.
25.
Can it (any project) be done in
inexpensive way? The faith that only when the solution is expensive, it is good
needs to be shaken.
26.
Demography: the city is young
and hence facilities are not thought about for old people.
AM proposed VK:
- Booklet/ series
of articles about core city
- critiquing Community
Facilitators work for better understanding
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