| Toolkit Comes to Crank up Democracy
By
Sanjay Suri
NO, IT isn’t something to fix an old
car with; it’s a toolkit to fix democracies not going
quite the way they should.
That name ‘toolkit’ was chosen
deliberately.
“These are not general sort of recommendations
on the kind of things that should be done,” says Rajesh
Tandon who has been overseeing the development of the toolkit.
“These are examples of best practices that are out there
and which can easily be implemented in other places as well.”
An example is the progress documented by women
groups in Uganda, Belize and India. A study shows how women
groups in these countries have built themselves up to take
on leadership in local bodies. It looks at the role played
by the women, and the support they got from civil society
and the political systems that helped that happen.
One study looks at the private sector, government
and civil society organizations working together to provide
drinking water in Uganda and Jamaica. Efforts made in The
Gambia and India to get street children off the streets form
another model.
The toolkit holds up several practical models.
In Tanzania and Belize popular theatre was used to raise awareness.
In East London community organizers led meetings to raise
awareness of minimum wage.
In 19 African countries citizens worked together
in a programme to control river blindness. In Uttar Pradesh
leaders from the panchayat, the village elected body, were
encouraged after some initiatives to work with women’s
groups.
Under the toolkit, all these and more are
held up as examples of successful action that could be replicated
elsewhere.
“This is the first time such a toolkit
has been put together,” says Tandon. “It is unique
material, it is practical experience that needs to be shared
more widely. People are looking for practical ideas.”
The group that prepared the toolkit got down
to business after the Commonwealth Foundation presented a
report to the heads of government meeting in Durban in 1999.
The report was found promising; the Foundation was asked then
to go back and prepare a definite plan and to suggest workable
ways to implement those ideas.
A CD-ROM of the toolkit will be released
in Abuja Thursday. Civil society groups will be invited to
offer feedback and additions. A final toolkit is due to be
presented by April next year.
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