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Finalist in the Ashoka Changemakers’ competition, 2011


GRINS was a finalist in the Ashoka Changemakers’ 2011 competition. Zahir gave a detailed interview on how community radio stations all across India are using GRINS. Original source here

Just for GRINS: An Interview with Gram Vaani’s Zahir Koradia

A large proportion of mobile phone users in India prefer voice communication to SMS or written interactions. Why? Because literacy rates affect how users interact with mobile quite a bit.

Clearly, if you’re illiterate—and more than 450 million people in India are—SMS offers little value. Community development institutions and social enterprises in the Indian subcontinent are turning to voiced-based technologies to connect users to their world.

One such example is Gram Vaani’s flagship automation system, GRINS, an entrant in the Changemakers Citizen Media competition, supported by Google. Gram Vaani is a participatory media organization that has built a nationwide network of community radio stations, proudly broadcasting on FM frequencies; telephony applications allowing the social sector to better engage with the public; and a voice-based rural news serviced powered by the mobile phone.

GRINS helps Gram Vaani realize its mission to develop solutions that give people a greater say in community matters by facilitating engagement between everyday citizens and established institutions like the government and development organizations.

Changemakers recently spoke with Zahir Koradia, Gram Vaani’s lead developer, to find out why the venture has been so successful—even landing a $200,000 grant from the Knight Foundation in 2008. (Hint: Gram Vaani is more than a single, popular mobile app or affordable tech feature—it is an entire network of action, information and accessibility to communication services.)

Changemakers: What was the big idea in 2008 that got this project started?

Koradia: The whole idea at that point in time was to try to see how we can build technologies to enable community radio stations in India. We weren’t really looking at anything beyond that, we were just saying, “Let’s look at the community radio movement in India and let’s see what we can do for (the poor, marginalized populations.)”

Our timing was just right, because community radio stations were just starting to open up. The government of India had started giving out licenses in 2006, and, in 2008, we were seeing the first couple of radio stations operated by NGOs.

We were just lucky, you know? We were just getting into the community radio movement at the right time.

Changemakers: Can you give a little background about the community radio movement?

Koradia: Before 2006, there were a few experiments by NGOs and community media organizations in India to create community-led programs where people spoke about the issues they themselves were facing. These basically pushed the government to say that community radio in India can work—here’s the proof.

In 2006, the government allowed NGOs and educational institutions with three or more years of experience to set up community radio stations. It was a big, drawn-out process where organizations had to apply, go through several ministries, and have to wait anywhere between six months to a year-and-a-half to attain a license, which grants you permission to broadcast on an FM frequency.

There were entities that got into place to provide stations with equipment like mikes, mixers, and broadcast equipment, but in spite of all these options, people would usually end up using a simple media player for broadcasting their content. And that’s where Gram Vaani actually fits in.

What we noticed was that the equipment that would allow stations to do that were extremely expensive in India. What we did was begin working with relatively inexpensive recording device that connects to a computer, and built an interface allowing station staff to receive calls and put them live on air with the click of a button.

That way, they wouldn’t really have to mess around with audio cables, or hardware switches or anything. The idea was not to just allow them to improve community participation, but to make it easy for them to do so.

Changemakers: The hardware technology is affordable, but your software offering, GRINS, is free to download, install, and use. The only charge is the cost of training and support?

Koradia: That’s right. We’ve sort of evolved. About two years ago, we were looking at ways of selling the automation system, but we realized that the only way we’re really going to have an impact is if the service is free; we’re only charging for basic training and installation costs, which basically cover our costs.

Changemakers: Gram Vaani makes community radio possible and affordable—that’s clear—but what does community radio offer people, who, in many cases, are living in poverty in rural towns?

Koradia: Instead of actually giving a high-level answer, the best way to explain is to give examples. There’s one radio station in Central India called Radio Bundelkhand that started out in 2008. They have their own folk music called Bundeli, which was dying down, so the community ran a regional version of American Idol called “Bundeli Idol,” a competition that invited anyone to record a song in the studio and have it played on the air.

Recordings were filtered by the public, who could call in and vote for their favorites, and a judge was eventually hired to determine the winner. The people loved the idea; they started telling their families and friends about it. There was a sense of pride being able to say, “I was on the radio.”

The program has actually revived the culture of Bundeli songs — after the competition, being able to sing Bundeli songs or play the folk instruments in considered cool, as opposed to passé earlier on.

And the station now has a repository of good Bundeli songs for community broadcast. Radio Bundelkhand is in the process of launching the second iteration of “Bundeli Idol.”

That highlights the cultural aspects of community radio, but there’s a tangible example of how it has made a difference in the quality of life of the people. India passed the Right to Education Act (RTE) that says all children between the ages of 6 and 14 must receive a school education.

There’s a radio station called Radio Namaskar, based in Orissa in eastern India, which broadcast a description about the act and asked the community to share information about children they know who aren’t attending school. They set up an answering machine system, using our GRINS automation system, and people called in, which then led to meetings and discussions between parents, children, and the local authorities to find ways to get them in school. Over a period of four to five months, they were able to reduce the number of children not attending school to zero.

Changemakers: That’s amazing.

Koradia: To me, that’s a dramatic achievement, and a testament to the power of broadcasting, the right to information, and being able to interact with the community.

Changemakers: How are the majority of people using the technology? Is it mostly cultural? Political?

Koradia: What we’ve noticed is that all these stations that are using GRINS are actually very different in nature—they all have their own specifics. But if I were to try to generalize it a bit: about half the stations try to interact with community, in whatever thing is being discussed—local issues.

Those are usually things related to traffic situations, or the availability of civic facilities, or things related to elections, or the difficulties that different sections of the population are facing. At the highest level, it’s really specific to the locality in which the station is located; generally, GRINs allows a high amount of interaction, which is something that was not possible before.

Changemakers: Gram Vaani also launched a mobile news service, Jharkand Mobile. How is that going?

Koradia: The mobile news service is actually being used in two places: the first is in the state of Jharkand in (eastern) India. We tried out the service with a lot of social activists on the ground; the whole idea was that people could call in and listen to news items that were posted on the system, and even record news items by simply leaving a voicemail.

We had several staff members validating the recordings and moderating the news tips before making them available to the public. It’s like a crowdsourced news service, if that’s the way you want to put it.

Changemakers: Which is kind of cool, because you get access to both national headlines as well as local news stories—made available before the mainstream media can get a handle on them.

Koradia: Our purpose for crowdsourcing news was slightly different. What we noticed was that there are areas where media organizations don’t do their tasks well.

It could be because it’s not really profitable for them, or because authorities make it hard for them, for whatever reason. In the state of Jharkand, we believe it’s the authorities that make it hard for news organizations to collect news.

In Afghanistan, which is another place where our service is running, the scenario is different. The difficulty is that there aren’t enough media organizations, and those that do exist don’t have the capacity to meet the news or information needs for everybody in Afghanistan. Our service adds to reporting capacities, so to speak

Changemakers: Gram Vaani has been around since 2008 and grown quickly. Where do you see yourselves going in the next five years?

Koradia: Gram Vaani is actually looking at building tools and platforms that will basically allow two things. First, increase the transparency of government services and their provision to citizens.

Second, provide a platform where citizens can come together and voice concerns or suggestions for government authorities—to bring out the kind of needs the communities have, and give governments something they can tap into.

We’re also working on “We Act,” which is a tool that we’ve built in conjunction with local municipal authorities in Delhi. It allows people to call in and report garbage collection issues, or broken roads, or any other missing civic amenities.

Those complaints are taken up and made available on a website. We tie this into the internal processes of the local government, so that the complaints can be delegated to the right people and addressed properly. The whole thing fits into the big umbrella of enabling accountability among government authorities, transparency, and enabling citizen participation in activities that government addresses.

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Adding value to the work of women’s labour unions


Gram Vaani platforms TTCU Kural and Urimai Kural, run in collaboration with women’s unions TTCU and GAFWU & PTS, support union work by providing a channel to voice sensitive grievances and enabling better tracking and resolution of these grievances. Since opening in late 2017, the two platforms between them have more than 10,000 listeners;  the unions have provided advisory and practical assistance to nearly 150 grievances recorded on the platforms.

The unions are now exploring new ways to leverage the platform’s functionalities to register members, file PILs and with TTCU Kural, improve access to justice beyond the union’s reach.

Please write to us at contact@gramvaani.org to know more.

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The Mobile Vaani Manifesto


July, 2019

Mission

The Mobile Vaani mission is to challenge socio-economic ideologies and norms that are responsible for the reproduction of all forms of inequality, by providing a community media technology platform along with services or guidance on the operation of the platform, to achieve the goal.

The forms of inequality we are most concerned about include wealth and income inequality, gender-based inequality, and caste-based inequality. These inequalities are reproduced by socio-economic ideologies and norms such as neo-liberal economics, patriarchy, caste hierarchies of work, and vestiges of feudalism[i]. These inequalities in turn manifest themselves in creating gaps in education, health, nutrition, access to information, and in general in allowing people to realize their capabilities and live fulfilling lives.

Our belief is that policies specifically targeting equality can rein-in the underlying norms and ideologies, but in a democratic setup these policies need to be demanded by the people. People will only demand good policies once they are able to understand the processes behind the reproduction of different inequalities. Arriving at this shared understanding requires communication between people and demonstration through action. Mobile Vaani aims to enable this communication and facilitate action through a community media platform that meets the following properties:

  • It should be equitably accessible to people despite existing inequalities in which they are caught
  • It should enable building a shared understanding among people of matters of concern
  • It should facilitate action by leveraging the power of media to demand better models of change

Mobile Vaani meets these properties in the following ways. First, the voice-based nature of the medium, and free of cost to access, allows a wide range of people to utilize it. Technology access to phones, and basic mobile literacy to operate the platform, are still important prerequisites though, and pro-active approaches are needed to ensure that access is not impeded due to a lack of these capabilities. Second, Mobile Vaani advocates editorial policies that enhance the context, completeness, and credibility of information on the platform. These properties have been validated to improve the understanding of people about messages floated on the platform by making the messages more contextual through contributions by other people, more complete by creating a culture that encourages diversity and debate of viewpoints from different stakeholders, and more credible by ensuring factual correctness of information published on the platform. Such a conversational approach to discussing topics helps build a shared understanding among people. Third, Mobile Vaani provides features to publish selective information on the web, social media, forward it to officials, run pledges, coordinate social movements, etc, to draw the attention of different stakeholders to important issues and bring about action which can encourage more people to participate. We invite individuals or organizations or collectives with similar views to set up their own groups on the Mobile Vaani platform, and use it to enable strategic communication among their members.

Why Mobile Vaani

Why not use other online platforms like Facebook or Whatsapp? The fundamental design of these platforms is broken to support the properties that we have listed above. For example:

  • The editorial algorithms of Facebook are geared towards sharpening echo chambers, there is no focus on fostering a diversity of views or even acknowledging to have diversity as a feature in the ranking of content in its news feeds
  • Moderation on Facebook is governed by “community standards” but these standards are not defined by the communities themselves. Rather the effort is towards centralized codification of standards for different countries or religions or other broad categorical definitions, which is unlikely to succeed because of its complexity, and the control rests in the hands of Facebook in terms of whatever it believes to be acceptable or non-acceptable expressions
  • Appropriate tools and authority is not given to users or group administrators to shape the usage norms for their groups. The simple tools that Facebook provides for users to anonymously report on each other, run into many problems, such as people not confronting one another in the open for a healthy debate, which ultimately leads to broken conversations that are not able to shape norms or bring consensus

Mobile Vaani on the other hand provides a rich moderation and content management backend to group administrators, to shape usage norms and define their own editorial policies. Training can also be provided on editorial policies advocated by Mobile Vaani itself, to create diversity and debate on topics of relevance to a group, maintain norms for the tone of argument to encourage mutual respect for different viewpoints, and ensure that a handful of users are not able to mis-appropriate the platform for their vested interests.

The use of personal data by Facebook is also controversial, it uses the data to be able to predict actions of users and of groups, to be able to benefit from these predictions. Mobile Vaani on the other hand does not even require users to register on the platform and it does not collect any personal details. Even on content contributed on the platform, groups are free to shape practices of whether or not users should reveal their identity when recording messages on the platform.

Whatsapp is not as insidious as Facebook in its use of data, in fact they do not have much data at all. The design however allows people to hide behind the veil of anonymity and untraceability to misuse the platform. Limits on the group size, and minimal methods for group administrators or users to enforce usage norms, thus leaves it open to misuse.

Twitter is more open than Whatsapp in terms of the observability of actions of people that it allows, which encourages a stronger culture debate by making echo chambers visible and enabling cross-chamber debate, but the very open and unmoderated design leads to users not having any control to establish usage norms. Like Facebook, Twitter too does not impose any value principles of its own, such as an emphasis on diversity. Platforms such as Slashdot and Reddit are more similar to Mobile Vaani in terms of giving sufficient tools for users to shape usage norms, and consequently both have been successful in avoiding misuse of the sort as seen on Facebook. However, the voice-based medium of Mobile Vaani makes it a more appropriate medium for collectivizing low-income and marginalized users in India.

How is Mobile Vaani sustained

Mobile Vaani sustains itself through service fees from primarily non-profit organizations to use the platform for different development objectives. Organizations leverage Mobile Vaani to create awareness and behavior change on aspects such as health and nutrition, agricultural practices, child education and career counseling, etc, within their specific groups. Slight profits made on these services are used to fund several non-paying groups, such as approximately 20 groups in rural areas of Bihar, Jharkhand, and Madhya Pradesh that work on improving local governance and educating people on policies for growth and development.

Current activities on Mobile Vaani

Over 40 groups are operating on Mobile Vaani, to bring about change on topics of working conditions in factories, provisioning of welfare schemes and public services, health and nutrition of mothers and small children, financial inclusion of women, sexual and reproductive rights of adolescents, employment opportunities for physically disabled people, career counseling of youth, agricultural advisory for farmers, and the treatment of migrants in cities, among others. Content of wider relevance is often cross-published across multiple groups. In all the groups, the foundational discussion-based methodology of Mobile Vaani is used to build a better understanding of the users through the editorial policies of enhancing context, completeness, and credibility of information. The media function of making information publicly available is actively utilized to bring about action on individual and community level grievances by putting pressure on authorities to pay attention to the reported issues. Users have reported that significant learning happens through these processes and builds their agency for further action.

If you are interested to participate in any of the existing groups and want to bring your own members to it, then download the Mobile Vaani app or ask us for the IVR phone numbers.

Alternately, if you are keen to set up your group then let us know. App-based groups can be created at no cost, IVR groups and any other services such as content creation and moderation can be provided for a fees.

To download the app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.gramvaani.mobilevaani&hl=en_IN To try the IVRs, give a missed call to these numbers and you will get a call back:

Saajha Manch, on rights of industrial workers in Delhi NCR 9211153555
Meri Avaaz Meri Pehchaan, on gender empowerment of rural women in Nalanda 9266614000
Hamari Vaani, on jobs and support for people with physical disabilities 9266344222
Kahi Ankahi Baatein, on sexual and reproductive health and rights of adolescents 9266292662
JEEViKA Mobile Vaani, on livelihood generation for Self Help Group members 9250200111
IVR of district clubs, on local news and governance improvement                                                                                                                       Ghazipur, UP                                                                                                                       Madhubani, Bihar                                                                                                                       Jamui, Bihar                                                                                                                       Munger, Bihar                                                                                                                       Bokaro, Jharkhand                                                                                                                       Dhanbad, Jharkhand                                                                                                                       Shibpuri, MP   9266300111 9250300111 9266066111 9278701369 9266653111 9266673444 9266613222

[i] The neo-liberal ideology of competitive and free-market based economic growth is able to benefit from various inequalities and perpetuate them. Greater concentration of wealth gives the capitalist class greater power to mould policies in its favour for continued exploitation of the workers, and reproduces income and wealth inequality. Gender and caste-based divisions are similarly exploited in the neo-liberal system to create fragmentation and work differentiation, making it harder for workers to unite and overcome these inequalities.

Social norms of patriarchy are exercised to withhold girls and women from economic independence, or have equal access to better health and education opportunities, thus perpetuating gender-based inequality.

Feudal practices of dependency on local elite continue to persist in the form of loan arrangements and sharecropping in rural areas, they are facilitated by caste-based work hierarchies, and relentlessly perpetuate wealth and income inequalities. Formalization of these arrangements by expanding markets for neo-liberal practices only changes the methods of exploitation but doesn’t overcome the inequalities.

Social norms of caste-based work hierarchies facilitate many of the processes above, and continue to reinforce caste-based and other inequalities.

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About Gram Vaani


We are a social tech company incubated out of IIT-Delhi. We started in 2009 with the intent of reversing the flow of information, that is, to make it bottom-up instead of top-down. Using simple technologies and social context to design tools, we have been able to impact communities- more than 2 million users in over 15 Indian States, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Namibia and South Africa. More interesting than this are the outcomes of what we have done: Thirty rural radio stations able to manage and share content over mobiles and the web, corrupt ration shop officials in Jharkhand arrested due to citizen complaints, Women Sarpanches in Uttar Pradesh sharing learnings and opinions, citizen monitoring of waste management in Delhi. Download our brief profile here.

Though we continue to produce significant published research and receive industry awards, we evaluate our success by the social impact of our work on communities. We have worked with several fantastic partners with support from the Knight Foundation, Grand Challanges Canada, Power of Ideas, Rockefeller Foundation, and the Ford Foundation.

For media inquiries, send a mail to contact@gramvaani.org

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Shram ka Samman: What Migrating Means: Voting Becomes Difficult

Every vote counts - Being the responsible citizen that I am, on my short trip to India, I got a chance to vote for BMC Election. Yay !!!


by Vani Viswanathan

 

Why are migrants unable to vote – in their destination city or in their hometown? What assistance do they expect in this regard? Here’s an assortment of opinions from Mobile Vaani users who reported on Shram ka Samman on how their migrant status affected their participation in choosing the next government.

 

 

                                                                            Listen to Devilal here.

Going back to vote is a costly affair for most migrants, especially those that have moved to other states. It entails taking time off, a luxury for many since it is uncertain if they will have their job when they return. ‘It will require at least four days,’ says Krishnapal, asking who will pay for this – both for the journey and for the possible loss of income he will incur in the time he spends in fulfilling a ‘duty’.

 

Many Mobile Vaani users pointed out that while they were aware of their right – and duty – to vote, governments did not do much to get migrant workers within India to vote. Ranjan believes that over 100,000 young people have migrated from Chakai and Sikandra blocks of Jamui district in Bihar. ‘On the one hand, the government keeps asking us to vote, but on the other, it’s not doing anything to stop migration [due to which many young people are unable to vote].’

 

Listen to Sishupal here.

 

The request for special provisions for migrant voters came up often in users’ thoughts around elections. ‘It’s the government’s and the Election Commission’s responsibility to think about how to get migrant workers to vote,’ says Sanjay Mahto from Giridih, Jharkhand, brother to Ajay Kumar Mahto who has been migrating seasonally for work for eight years now.

Broadly, users’ request for special provisions fit into the following three categories:

 

Listen to Kalicharan here.

 

Listen to Ajit Kumar here.

Listen to Kalicharan here.

Although the government has previously floated attempts to open up voting for Non-Resident Indians, similar provisions haven’t been considered for migrant voters. Solutions aren’t easy to come by – or even proposed, with the massive increase in requirement for poll officers, awareness-raising, and potential misuse being given as excuses. Several users were baffled that a country that was pushing digital solutions for everything from PDS (for food grains) to banking was not considering online solutions for voting or approve the use of biometrics for voting.

However, a few users don’t believe that migrant workers require special provisions to fulfil their electoral duty – such as Shivam Kumar from Uttar Pradesh, who believes that they have to take the efforts to vote because the government has given them the right to vote.

What does it mean for migrant workers to take the steps to vote? An Indian citizen is allowed to change the address on their voter ID to ensure that they can vote if they move anywhere within the country. The process, however, is cumbersome, as this article by Shonottra Kumar from the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy highlights: there isn’t a fixed timeline indicated within which the Election Commission will complete the transfer of a voter’s constituency; there is no appeal mechanism, either – and this is assuming that the voter knows in the first place how they can access the service to change the constituency from which they can vote.

Exacerbating these issues is the fact that many migrant workers are seasonal, and few have the privilege of having address proof that they can use to change their constituency on a voter ID.

I’ve been trying for many years to register as a voter in Delhi I have lived in Delhi for many years, and try every so often to get myself registered to vote here. But as a migrant worker, I don’t get any rent agreement from my landlord that can serve as address proof. I’m also unable to go back to my village to vote. Because of these issues, I haven’t voted in many years. ~ Pujari Tiwari, Delhi-NCR
Listen to Pujari Tiwari here.

Our work with Saajha Manch has shown, over and over, how many migrant workers in Delhi-NCR are unable to access social security or employment benefits because they don’t have proof of address or of employment.

When voices of migrant workers aren’t enforced through an election, it is hardly surprising if their concerns are represented in election manifestoes. Many users talking to us as part of Shram ka Samman registered their disappointment in manifestoes of most parties, stating they did nothing to quell their questions about increasing local employment or improving facilities for migrant workers.

Since March 2019, we have been reporting different factors that lead to migration, and the struggles that migrants face in their destination cities in the Shram ka Samman series. News media, community based organisations, and platforms such as Mobile Vaani attempt to carry their voices farther. But unless these migrants are able to vote, these voices cannot be a sufficiently strong enough force for action that changes their lives for the better and addresses their issues with livelihood, safety, and income. These concerns aren’t new; studies have been submitted to the Election Commission of India, but with little movement towards a solution.

An incident from early June that we covered in our labour rights platforms aptly summarises the discussions we’ve had on Shram ka Samman. A young Oriya boy working in Tirupur, Tamil Nadu, was beaten up badly by locals following an altercation. This unfortunate turn of events reflects simmering anger and tension among both local workers and migrant workers.

Local workers are angry that while employers treated them with respect earlier, they are now casually tossed aside for migrant workers who work at lower rates and put up with unfair working conditions that employers impose to exploit the migrants’ vulnerability. Local workers complain about the jobs and benefits they lose to migrant workers, but also the inflated prices they have to pay as rent or for transportation, rates that are charged for the migrant workers. Migrant workers, on the other hand, complain of ill-treatment by local workers and their employers who pay poorly and don’t provide them the social benefits they are entitled to. They are unable to access their Provident Funds, or use their Employee State Insurance, which offers medical benefits, because they don’t know how to make these work.

This incident highlights the need for workers to see the common ground in their predicament, and to put forth a collective voice, be it through unions or through elections. Our attempt with Shram ka Samman was to bring forth, in workers’ voices, the issues they face, and the solutions they propose for addressing these. Even as employers exploit and benefit from rivalries and aggression between workers, low wage workers, no matter which state they hail from, share common interests in working together to ensure equal entitlements and constitutional rights for all workers, local or migrant.

Featured image credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/mhatrey/

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Community Research


Thousands of NGOs and development organisations across India interact with the grassroots everyday – with people, their influencers, their local leaders and government bodies – as part of their programmes. Only with the right communication, can awareness gaps of people be bridged, consensus built, information exchange established across different stakeholders, and people motivated for change. Helping development organisations in their communication requirements has been one of our critical offerings: we have worked with over 150 organisations so far including CREA on spreading the word in local communities in Jharkhand about reservation for women in Panchayati Raj Institution elections; Enable India to reach thousands of people with disabilities in rural Karnataka and the Hindi speaking states; PACS and their cadre of community level workers (mitras) to spread awareness about the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana; and many more. Communication platforms such as Mobile Vaani can enhance and amplify the impact of development interventions by reinforcing messages and helping the right stakeholders interact with each other.

However, communication alone is not sufficient and there is a significant need for consistent and continuous monitoring of programme implementation, to ensure the programme can be modified as required to be more effective. Designing monitoring systems and processes – that allow for monitoring and modification of the programme while it is ongoing – has to be an integral part of its design. Such feedback loops in programmes designed by development organisations often tend to be delayed and anecdotal however, based on feedback from occasional field visits and internal reviews. Can technology platforms be used to get quick feedback, and modify the strategy if needed?

Here’s where our platforms and technologies can help too: going beyond just engagement with target audience groups and related stakeholders, to leverage the communication to incorporate effective monitoring both during and after the implementation. 

Our years of work on the ground have given us rich experience in engaging with various levels of grassroots communities to enable the information collection capabilities at scale in grassroots development interventions. Here are a few examples of how we are enhancing our platforms to strengthen interventions, expand their reach and measure their results effectively.

Gap Analysis and Programme design

We helped identify the right stakeholders to engage on a social issue. We worked with a large development organisation that wanted to raise awareness of government benefits under the Janani Suraksha Yojana among expecting women. A quick survey on the Mobile Vaani platform indicated that the problem was not lack of awareness (67 percent of respondents were aware of government’s antenatal care benefits) but people’s trust in the quality of the government centers where they could avail these benefits. These results helped frame the design of the project not so much in terms of awareness, but rather as a social accountability intervention which collected data on the quality of care and infrastructure in health facilities, which was then forwarded to the local government and administrative authorities for action. The reports were also featured in major regional media dailies and led to the improvement of several facilities that impacted thousands of people.

Using our platforms to concurrently track effectiveness

The Mobile Vaani platform also enabled Knowledge-Attitude-Perception tracking for a campaign on maternal health. Our surveys at the beginning and end of an Oxfam programme ‘For the Mothers’ in 2015 helped us identify how users’ perceptions around various aspects related to maternal health changed through the campaign. This was followed up with a recall survey to see whether campaign messages were retained in people’s minds.

Through our platform, we can reach ‘media dark’ areas and try to bridge the gap left by communication that relies on mass media. For instance, Mobile Vaani’s IVR system was used to engage in real time the audience of the TV series Main Kuchh Bhi Kar Sakti Hoon (MKBKSH), an entertainment-education programme to promote gender equality and address social issues run by the Population Foundation of India. The IVR was used to reach audience members from media dark areas with information from the series and enabled them to provide feedback, listen to curated content and record opinions on several social issues. Over 1.7 million calls were received from 29 Indian states, proving the series’ audience engagement and positive actions taken by viewers thanks to the series, which helped PFI use the IVR system as a barometer to understand mindset changes the TV serial had brought about.

Comparing the effectiveness of different strategies 

Our platform also has the capability of A/B testing: comparing two routes (of communication, action, etc.) to see which performs better. We used this in our own analysis of financial incentive structures for Mobile Vaani volunteers, wherein we tested two sets of volunteer payment methods in different ‘clubs’ of Mobile Vaani. In some clubs, we implemented a group incentive structure where the volunteers were paid equally but based on the performance of the group, and in the other clubs we implemented an individual based incentive structure based on the performance of each volunteer. We found that individual payments however led to disputes and poor performance of the clubs overall; group payments, on the other hand, were distributed evenly among volunteers, and peer pressure and collective accountability ensured that there were no freeloaders. Clubs following the group-based structures had call volumes almost four times that of other clubs on average and grew much more quickly at a lower cost per user acquisition. Coupled with other observations to strengthen our selection process of volunteers, we came up with a structure which highlights how monetary, purposive, solidarity, and social incentives come together nicely in group structures to lead to extremely dynamic clubs.

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Leveraging Participatory Media for Grievance Redressal

We believe that a participatory media platform is efficient only when it is entrenched in the local community, when it can be leveraged for collective action to strengthen the state’s accountability. Gram Vaani’s participatory media platforms play a powerful role in putting pressure on authorities to act on grievances that people face when accessing their rights to schemes and welfare benefits offered by the state. Over the years, local inefficiencies on a range of topics have been resolved after they were reported on Mobile Vaani. 

Our work on grievance redressal picked up pace during the COVID-19 pandemic – during and after the lockdown – and we helped resolve issues of over 800 people who were stuck without food, migrants looking to go back to their homes, unable to procure ration or register their demand for NREGA jobs, or access other welfare offered by the central and state governments, and more. 

Why grievance redressal is a part of our participatory media work: Many social welfare schemes in India suffer from implement problems, putting them out of reach of the very people they are meant to help. People with low literacy levels often don’t have information on schemes and their eligibility criteria, how to apply and where to go if they face issues in application or accessing the benefits as an enrolled beneficiary. Grievance redressal mechanisms set up by the government are complicated to navigate, slow and often inefficient. For instance, people may not know how to navigate a government helpline, or know which document to refer to, to get a number that one needs to enter in the helpline. Many also feel intimidated to speak to a government official to convey a grievance. 

Gram Vaani’s participatory media platforms seek to equip our users with information and contribute to their agency to make positive changes in their lives. Providing information helps people understand their entitlements and demand accountability from the state to resolve their grievances. 

Why does IVR work in grievance redressal? An IVR serves two purposes in grievance redressal: first, it is an easily accessible technology to help people register a grievance; second, its ease of use means items recorded by a person and ‘published’ on the platform can be easily heard by, and forwarded to, others – including fellow community members, local media, authorities and service providers, building pressure on the local stakeholders to address the particular issue. 

Going beyond just technology: Technology alone isn’t sufficient in grievance redressal, as people have repeatedly emphasised the importance of a person whom they can trust, and who understands their contextual issue. The presence of volunteers, drawn from the community itself, encourages people to confidently air their grievances on the platform and feel understood. The volunteers, on the other hand, are equipped with eligibility and access-related information for a range of schemes, trained by Gram Vaani to access government grievance redressal mechanisms, and build networks with local administrators. This training helps them understand and use a rigorous pathway to resolve issues and drive impact in grievance redressal. For instance, when a volunteer comes across an agriculture-related grievance from a user, they take it first to the relevant Block Officer, and if still not resolved, escalate the grievance to the District Officer, and then on to the Deputy Commissioner. 

The grievances we’ve heard on our platforms: In over 10 years of Mobile Vaani and a range of participatory media platforms, here are the kinds of grievances that users have shared on the platform: 

  • Food: Not enrolled in the Public Distribution System (PDS) or not getting ration from the local PDS dealer because of authentication issues, corruption, etc. 
  • NREGA: Not able to apply for job cards or demand work; not getting work despite applying for it; not getting paid for work done due to a range of issues
  • Infrastructure: Poor/damaged roads, lack of electricity, streetlights, public handpumps, etc. 
  • Welfare schemes: Issues in applying for or receiving benefits of disability or widow pensions, elderly pensions, PM KISAN, Ujjwala, etc.
  • Access: Difficulties in accessing local medical services due to unavailability of staff or services, in using banking services because of issues at Customer Service Points or non-functional ATMs, etc. 

Especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, our platforms were leveraged by citizens and civil society alike to raise and address grievances. For instance, people in rural areas who had developed COVID-19 symptoms but couldn’t get test done despite trying to reach government health centres, were assisted by our NGO partners – with Gram Vaani platforms being the medium in which the people recorded their grievance, which was then forwarded to our NGO partners. 

Outcomes we have contributed to: Gram Vaani platforms have helped address hundreds of grievances, ranging from the release of six months’ pending wages to school teachers, to dispatch of fumigation equipment against malaria after a series of deaths in a village, to having fines imposed on officials who were taking bribes for beneficiary enrolment, to pointing out illegal use of machinery in NREGA works, and highlighting stone smuggling to police officials which eventually led to a crackdown on these activities.

Volunteers use their knowledge of administrative workings and local contacts to drive accountability when grievances are recorded: 

“… We applied for a crop failure subsidy with the Block Development Officer (BDO) previously, but he refused to accept our application without stating any reason… Mobile Vaani volunteers then helped us get the subsidy released when they interviewed the Block Development Officer for their weekly Janta Darbar program pushing for greater accountability and the course of action for current week’s issues and reports on the status of previous week’s grievances…”

– A farmer from Jamui, Bihar  

Volunteers, being an integral part of the community, also raise issues on behalf of the community and initiate action. 

Here’s another example of volunteer-led action: 

“A few weeks back I recorded a message on JMV about a school headmaster harassing the students by charging Rs10 per student for issuing the admit card. When a few students refused to pay, the headmaster threatened to fail them in the practical exams. After my message was published on JMV, it spread like wildfire. Everybody got to know about the tactics of the headmaster. So the headmaster called a meeting of the parents and owned up to his mistake. He promised not to repeat such a mistake in the future and also appealed to the students to write their exams without worrying about all this.”
– A volunteer, Jharkhand

In 2020, our volunteers and teams acted collectively to get NREGA working for its intended beneficiaries – people who were out of work during and after the COVID-19 induced lockdowns in India. Due to absent Rozgar Sewaks, who are government officials whose responsibility it is to help people apply for and get NREGA work, we found that many people who wanted to take up NREGA work were unable to fill forms to get job cards or register their demand for work. Here is how Archana, a college student and volunteer with Jawahar Jyoti Baal Vikas Kendra in Samastipur, Bihar, and a regular listener of Mobile Vaani, decided to use the platform to understand the issues people faced while applying for work under NREGA.

Upon listening to people’s grievances around applying for job cards or registering demand for NREGA work, Archana decided to take it up with the local administration. Using Mobile Vaani’s forwarding feature, she shared these grievances directly with NREGA officials such as the Rozgar Sewak and the block programme officer. Shortly, the Rozgar Sewak announced that the Rozgar Diwas (a weekly day to help people apply for job cards, register demand for NREGA, etc.) will be held every Wednesday at the panchayat office. Archana ensured that the Rozgar Diwas was held regularly. 

Archana also learnt the process of applying for job cards through Mobile Vaani and helped 40 people apply for cards with the assistance of the Rozgar Sewak. All along, Archana shared updates on the process, interviewed the local officials and their statements about the programme, to ensure accountability to their statements later. 

Read Archana’s story (in Hindi) here.

The volunteers are also able to spur collective action by informing people of their rights and entitlements, and encouraging them to raise their voices when they are denied these. In the case of NREGA, we delivered letters to the panchayat representatives in nearly 300 panchayats, urging them to organize a Rozgar Diwas regularly, publicize it among the people, and ensure that anybody who needs work is able to get work. Additionally, in 20 panchayats we have helped institutionalize a Rozgar Diwas each Wednesday through which so far over 400 people have gotten job cards and been able to register their work demand.

Wherever people were unable to come to the Rozgar Diwas, we collected and submitted their details to the panchayat. We are also closely tracking the time it takes for them to get work, get paid, and the payment modalities, so that we can advocate for a smoother process in the future. Read our detailed report on the NREGA work here. 

During the COVID-19 pandemic, our platforms were actively resolving people’s issues accessing food, transportation (especially migrant workers stranded in other cities), health services and more. 

“I am a waste collector in Bahadurgarh. A few days ago, I shared on Mobile Vaani that I’ve been hungry for several days and haven’t been able to get any food to feed others in my family. The Mobile Vaani team helped me with provisions such as 5 kilos of rice, atta, fuel, and more. I thank them for the help.”

Vinod Sah from Bahadurgarh, Haryana 

In March 2020, frontline health workers (FLWs) of the Katkamasandi block in Hazaribagh district, Jharkhand, raised the issue of not having enough Personal protection Equipment (PPE) such as mask, gloves and sanitiser. The Medical Officer in charge of the Community Health Centre (CHC) confirmed that they had received some equipment but this would not be sufficient for all the workers. Hence, they sent a letter to the district administration with their requirements. 

Hazaribagh Mobile Vaani aired this issue on 30 March. 

On 15 April, Mobile Vaani volunteer Ravindra Kumar mentioned that this story was taken to district authorities who took action and sent additional PPEs to the CHC. 

While volunteers support citizens in addressing grievances reported on Gram Vaani’s participatory platforms, the grievances are recorded on a public platform – where they can be heard by others – rather than as an individual complaint on a hotline or a government department. This public exposure seems to improve the success rate by making the authorities more accountable. On many occasions, government officials listen to a grievance broadcast on our platforms and take action even without the intervention of a volunteer:  

“… the volunteers decided to highlight the inconsistencies in the mid-day meal scheme in their district… meals weren’t being provided to the students as per the norms or were stopped entirely. A short message informing people of their children’s entitlements and current irregularities was created and aired on the club. People were asked to press number 9 if they had witnessed these irregularities and wanted authorities to act on them. We received close to 2000 pledges and used this count to write a letter to the District Education Officer (DEO). The DEO wrote back that he had constituted an investigation team. He further invited the volunteers to monitor the scheme, who now do this at the school level…”
– An example shared by a Community Manager in Bihar 

Many labourers of the Pasai Dalit community in a village in Hazaribagh, Jharkhand, who were not enrolled in PDS, were stuck without provisions after the COVID-19 lockdown. As soon as the issue was broadcast on Mobile Vaani, the mukhiya arranged for food grains for them and also announced that others who did not have ration cards could also contact her for assistance. Strengthening agency of our users: Technology is a tool to facilitate development and is not an end in itself – it needs to be adopted by people to use in their agendas for change. Our volunteers have, in many cases, adopted the platforms as their own – leveraging their own strong connect with the community to understand its challenges, they use the platform to educate users on their rights and encourage them to record their grievances, and even train themselves to escalate the grievances to various levels, be it with local media or administration. An area of impact we have seen over the years, both among users and volunteers at Gram Vaani, is that listening to others from their own community bring up grievances encourages them to also believe they have the right to demand accountability from the state. This contributes to building their agency, spurring them on to be their own change agents.

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Our Services

Meri Awaz Meri Pehchan

In Bihar’s Nalanda district, women utilized IVR and a mobile application to power a voice-based community media platform Meri Awaz Meri Pehchan (“My Voice My Identity”) that fostered peer learning and collective action among users. Women created and shared information and views on topics such as early marriage, dowry, and water availability, and used the platform to safely express their concerns and discuss collective solutions to their most pressing challenges.

The project received seed funding in November 2018 from USAID as part of the Women Connect Challenge,  a “global call for solutions to improve women’s participation in everyday life by meaningfully changing the ways women access and use technology”.  The solution was among the nine winners globally in its first round. 

Why this project: Access to media and information is highly unequal across India along the lines of gender, rural/urban locations, caste, class, disability, and other forms of marginalisation. This is especially the case among women in rural Bihar, where patriarchal norms limit their mobility and access to technology such as mobile phones. Poor coverage of women in mainstream media further reinforces a male perspective, compounding the marginalization of women’s perspectives. There is also a lack of broader platforms where women can safely voice their concerns, learn from peers and grow their capabilities, leading to restricted self-expression. Meri Awaz Meri Pehchan (MAMP) sought to do the following towards the broader goal of gender equality:

  • accelerate the access of women to technology
  • enable discussions around social and cultural practices and perceptions to shift social norms, 
  • strengthen local governance

MAMP worked towards these objectives by:

  • fostering peer learning and collective action among women users
  • providing actionable information to guide progressive practices and claims to entitlement
  • acting as a source of evidence and pressure on local government to increase the chances of accountability and complaints redressal

Our community and their needs: MAMP primarily involved women and girls aged 18-45, with access to (even if not ownership of) mobile phones, and have mobility to go outside their homes to participate in activities such as the village meetings (Gram Sabhas). The women and girls belonged to both historically privileged and historically marginalised castes, including Dalit castes. 

The project began with a needs assessment to understand the perspectives of women and girls, as well as their male family members’, on women’s social, economic and political empowerment. A series of Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) with women aged 21 to 40, and women and girls less than 21 years old, to understand key content areas and specific messaging. Based on the needs assessment, we identified key content areas as education (for young women themselves and for their children), livelihood, agriculture, information on government schemes, financial literacy, discouraging early marriage and giving dowry, women’s political participation, violence against women, and women’s health. The needs assessment also helped us understand that messaging for women from Mahadalit communities had to be tailored in some instances. 

“Everyone knows that giving or accepting dowry is a crime, but it is still prevalent and it is impossible to marry of daughters without giving dowry. Even neighbours and relatives would laugh if we tried to marry off our daughters without paying dowry.” ~ a participant of our needs assessment from Haranut, Bihar

Creating the right technology mix: The needs assessment also helped us understand the specific technological requirements for this project. Only around 1 in 4 of our FGD participants had finished high school, and only 40% had their own mobile phones – and there was strong resistance to “allowing” young women to own and use phones as it is generally seen as inappropriate for young women to be talking to others. Our earlier work with women has also shown that they usually do not see their “need” to use a phone for anything beyond talking to a relative, something that their male family members can help them do. 

These factors meant that our community engagement measures had to include more women being positioned as community leaders, who could encourage other women to use their phones, and in the case of those attending SHG meetings, to bring their phones to the meetings. We also helped them save the platform’s number or gave stickers with the number so that women did not need to remember it and could easily access it.

The IVR was created to be simple for users to listen to, play for others, share their thoughts on what they hear, and send content to other people. Complexities were introduced slowly, once the audiences were comfortable with basic navigation of the IVR.  

Simultaneously, we developed and rolled out a distributed moderation interface to be utilised by the community reporters. The content received on the platform from the community goes through the process of moderation, which helps decide which content stays for how long to be listened to and commented on by the users, where it appears in the order of content users listen when they access the platform, and whether the same content is suitable to be played on the platform, or it needs some modification (and therefore re-recording), etc. 

The distributed moderation interface was developed specifically to encourage decentralisation of this process of vetting the content that was to be made available on the platform. This way, the content that eventually goes up on the platform – for instance, opinions shared by listeners – were moderated, in consultation with the community by volunteers and reporters, where the community have more stakes in deciding which are the contents that are more relevant to them. 

Creating engaging, relevant – and “safe” content: Keeping in mind the profile of our users and insights from our needs assessment, we knew that the platform had to be made directly appealing to the women – obviously different from our other platforms that are made for mixed gender groups. For instance, our content was made more entertainment-oriented, such as through song competitions, dramas with local and contextual characters and incidents, highlighting women’s social and legal entitlements such as on property ownership, details of women’s helplines, content on maternal health and nutrition, and highlighting achievements by women in local and national platforms. Our objective was to create a safe space for women to engage and participate in all these thematic topics. 

At the same time, we had to treat these topics in a non-threatening way, so that even if men were to listen to the content there is less chance of backlash or stopping women from listening to “wrong” things. The content had to be created in a way that women could listen to it along with their family and thereby be “allowed” to use this service in the future without being questioned. We had to build this trust through our content and engagement activities. 

How we enabled community participation: With a broad content strategy and technology in place, we identified a cadre of women, from diverse communities and age ranges, to be community reporters and volunteers. These women were trained on thematic and technical aspects (i.e. using our IVR technology), on thematic content creation – including those based on community demand and requirements – as well as to mobilise users by encouraging women to listen to the platform.

Our research showed four major pathways to engage community members and enable their participation: by reaching out to educational institutions, to engage girls aged 12-20; Self-Help Group meetings, to reach women aged 21-45; community meetings and village health centres to reach a broader spectrum of women. For those who are hardest to reach – the very poor, and marginalised due to caste – our community volunteers go to the remote villages to reach users and to help spread important development information. 

Some of the most popular content on MAMP is that on government programs that primarily affect those with grievances or disabilities, widows, and other marginalized people from the lowest castes. In many cases, women work together to advocate for change and to let their voices be heard by local decision makers; in one community, the mayor has used the platform to directly connect with women and solicit their feedback on community development strategies. 

Outcomes: MAMP has reached 17,000 women since February 2019, when the IVR was rolled out. We have published over 6,000 voices from the ground, of women’s thoughts, experiences, and even songs on issues that are close to their heart.  

Meri Awaz Meri Pehchan users have reported using the platform to help convince their husbands to continue education for their daughters, delay early arranged marriages until girls have obtained some level of education, gain access to beneficial government programs, and to improve their lives in other ways. Listen to the voices of women who have been encouraged to take small but firm steps towards economic, social and political empowerment: 

One day a didi (sister) came to our village and gave us a pamphlet and explained about MAMP and how by listening to it we can know about and contribute on many socially relevant programmes and issues. I started listening to MAMP and one day I heard about Kanya Samrudhdhi Yojana. But I couldn’t gather all the information from the clip. So, I approached the same didi and with her help I gathered the relevant information about the yojana and registered my daughter for it in the Anganwadi Centre. After 15 days, I received 2,000 rupees as the first instalment of the yojana – Shilpi Kumari, May 2019 

My life has changed because of Mobile Vaani. Since the early days of my marriage, I was emotionally abused by my in-laws. I never felt like raising a voice against that and accepted it as my lot in life. The programmes on MAMP showed me a new way. I shared my pain with one of the Mobile Vaani didis and she suggested that I voice my concerns to my husband. The didi and I also spoke to my in-laws about why their behaviour was improper. A lot has changed since then. My in-laws have started behaving well with me. Meri Awaz Meri Pehchan helped me to resolve this crisis in my life – Anjana Kumari, April 2019 

Projects such as MAMP, grounded as they are in the community and involving community members as volunteers, also lead to significant changes in the lives of the volunteers. Watch this video to see how our community reporters and volunteers were able to make positive changes in their own lives while working on MAMP, and inspire other women to do the same:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5KdSq1_EQY&t=44s

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Our Services

A platform for every worker: Saajha Manch

India’s factories are increasingly powered by migrant workers travelling for part or all of the year to take low-wage jobs to supplement declining farm incomes in the country’s least developed and poorest states. Numbering at least 100 million, this workforce faces myriad challenges in securing their workplace entitlements. The poor enforcement of employment law is compounded by the difficulties of being an out-of-state migrant, low awareness of what rights apply and how to secure them, and convoluted and un-transparent procedures. India’s digital inclusion and universal ID have thus far not addressed these issues, with grave consequences for working and living standards of these people.

Gram Vaani’s Saajha Manch (“everyone’s platform”) uses voice-based IVR technology to build engagement of these populations in entitlements and governance. The platform focuses primarily on workers in the industrial areas of Delhi and the National Capital Region.

What life is like for many of India’s migrant workers:

Employment itself is hard to come by and highly uncertain from day to day and both men and women workers in the capital region are facing joblessness.

Earnings reduce with working hours and lower wage rates. Migrants who had always depended on ‘overtime’ payments to save from wages struggle to get by and face uncertain payments even for the work they can find. While women who had earlier focused on child care are pulled into the search for work, other workers hedge their bets by shifting from registered to unregistered workshops who pay piece rates fortnightly.

As employers tighten their belts, relations with workers deteriorate as workers-on-demand are being dismissed without notice and work contracts are revoked in an ad hoc manner. Worker bargaining power appears to be reducing and the situation is exacerbated by the inaccessibility of Provident Fund (PF) and labour officials in the context of COVID-19. Scope remains for workers to take local collective action to stand up to the employers, but such action requires awareness, courage and initiative to coordinate.

Insurance cover from the statutory Employee State Insurance Corporation and an option to draw down savings from the PF, should have provided workers some protection during this period of crisis. But in spite of relaxing eligibility and procedures for both schemes, it is clear that migrants have faced too many & high barriers in their efforts to avail them. While 16% of all recent queries on Gram Vaani’s migrant platform have requested help with PF withdrawals, data shared by our ESI partner Safe in India reveal just over a quarter of insurance card holders meet the eligibility criteria of the unemployment insurance. Men and women workers respond to this uncertainty by requesting exit from the PF scheme which cuts their wages by 12%.

Living conditions have further deteriorated as migrants facing already weak municipal services in the zones of exception where they dwell, face the triple whammy of:- flooding/ drain overflow and the associated risk of vector-born disease; neglected waste, sanitation and transport services on account of the unavailability of timely support; and poorly functional protection provided by government hospitals. Migrants also have had to face and contend with violence and theft, endemic to these low-income high-churn neighborhoods.

How Saajha Manch (SM) helps: Operating through IVR on simple mobile handsets, Saajha Manch provides workers useful information on accessing their entitlements and an easy means to share local news and experience. Saajha Manch is accessed by making a missed call to a unique phone number and receiving the call-back, listening to a pre-recorded playlist and following simple instructions to navigate and record one’s own voice. Listeners can also volunteer to answer survey questions by selecting responses by pressing digits in response to multiple choice questions. Saajha Manch content is also accessible on the Mobile Vaani app.

In response to the various issues outlined above, Saajha Manch offers the following services:

1.       Sharing accurate and detailed information on government entitlements, helplines and facilitation services, which users often find difficult to get in one place or know how to access

2.       Record questions from listeners with the support of a network of experts, ranging from lawyers to activists to advisers and officials, and then sharing the recorded question with the user who posted it as well as publishing it on the platform for all listeners

3.       Offline support for grievance redressal, with support from local NGOs and unions, which helps us take cases to court and see them through to resolution, while also ensuring job safety of the individual worker – who may lose their job if known to have complained

4.       Building links with local bureaucrats and elected officials to strengthen accountability, especially on civic issues such as poor living conditions for migrant workers

Choosing the right technology to reach workers:

Smart phones are widely used among younger migrants while older ones tend to depend on button phones, so our services are available both on our Mobile Vaani app and the regular IVR.

Far from becoming obsolete, the pre-internet IVR technology on which Saajha Manch is primarily built remains relevant. Simple phone handsets and audio medium are preferred by workers due to low literacy in dominant languages (Hindi and English) as well as acceptability to employers who frequently bar workers from carrying smartphones. As anxiety over data protection and employer reprisals increase, simple handsets emerge as preferable for worker protection, insulated from internet and visual surveillance. On the other hand, the IVR provides high quality data on user behaviour (e.g. who hears what for how long, how users navigate and whether they contribute). Such real-time data is used to improve the service but never shared with mobile numbers. Gram Vaani maintains control over moderation to assure quality, relevance and avoid hijack of platforms by the powerful or politically motivated. These factors contribute to the trust built among users which secures platform sustainability and reduces costs over time.

How we enable community participation: In Delhi-NCR, given the constraints of time and public space for low-wage workers, most of Saajha Manch’s mobilising is done on the street. Adjacent to factories, our volunteers and team members distribute pamphlets during lunch, tea and work off time; in residential colonies, they visit local markets, tea stalls and boutique training centres; they set up desks outside government offices and courts where workers come to file complaints.

The power of the platform comes from Saajha Manch volunteer champions, who are migrants themselves, and a mix of factory workers and others, based mostly at destination. Each champion volunteer fosters a ‘club’ of users in the locality, nurturing contributors to post and engage and laying the ground for shared identity and group grievance redressal.

Nand Kishore, for instance, was formerly a tailor, tailor trainer & Ayurveda products direct sales, and lives on the Delhi-Gurgaon border. He has connected with various NGOs and social campaigns (e.g. Anti Corruption Campaign). Tireless mobiliser & news reporter, he joined Saajha Manch because he’s fed up with the injustice all around him.

Ram Karan worked for many years as a skilled tailor, and came on board following Saajha Manch’s help in securing higher compensation at lay-off. A resident of Ayar Nagar just inside the Delhi border, he has been involved in labour rights with other NGOs/ unions and feels the time is right for a community media approach. He is a trained folk singer and has a repertoire of revolutionary and motivational songs!

Besides this, Saajha Manch works with a range of organisations To support curated responses and grievance follow-up offline for its users. For instance, the various chapters of CITU in Gurgaon, Delhi and Noida, partner with Saajha Manch to take occasional cases offline. We have also formalised partnerships with several NGOs with a rights perspective, for different urban-industrial regions. Safe in India (https://www.safeinindia.org/) focuses on ESI health insurance while Nari Shakti Manch focuses on women worker welfare, both in Gurgaon. We have one consultant lawyer practicing in Gurgaon and other district courts to help with legal aid, and request occasional contributions from probono lawyer collectives, including the Human Rights Law Network and Nazdeek.

Our volunteers, users’ opinions, and expert counsel help us build build locally relevant actionable information, as well as offer information and referrals to local parties who can help workers with their issues. Along with this practical assistance, building local voice (news, testimony, opinion) seeds collective identity among workers.

Outcomes we’ve contributed to: Saajha Manch’s listeners come from diverse occupations and livelihoods. A quick listener survey conducted in February 2020 revealed that, of 678 respondents, a third were in garment and other factory work, while a further 23% were currently out of such work. Another 14% were self-employed and, interestingly, 18% informed us they were students. The listener base now totals close to 10,000, of whom 4,000 or so call at least once in any month.

Here are issues we have helped resolve in recent times:

Drinking water in Maruti plant vicinity

At the end of June 2019 in the height of summer in the capital, SM volunteer Raj posted a contribution on behalf of workers of Maruti and other companies that the Maruti plant’s general access water cooler was continuously out of order  (http://voice.gramvaani.org/vapp/mnews/1129/show/detail/1809385/). The audio was then forwarded to the Maruti responsible person as well as the sarpanch of the area, and, within two weeks, the plant was up and running again, to the benefitted of some 100 workers. http://voice.gramvaani.org/vapp/mnews/1129/show/detail/2071035/.

Payment of wages

In mid June 2019, SM’s volunteer champion Manohar Lal Kashyap filed a complaint on behalf of workers located at Unit 72, Bahadurgarh Industrial Area, Sector 17, that wages were not being paid on time. This adds to difficulties already experienced by low wages (even below the legal minimum) and is especially an issue when workers request emergency leave (due to a crisis back home, for example) and the company refuses to release their payment:- http://voice.gramvaani.org/vapp/mnews/1129/show/detail/1799344/. Manohar forwarded this news to the Deputy Labour Commissioner as well as company management, after which the labour department  verified the case with workers and then issued a common notice to all the companies to give wages by the 7th of each month, according to law. Manohar estimates that 350 workers benefitted from this, by early July 2019 (http://voice.gramvaani.org/vapp/mnews/1129/show/detail/2071132/).

Illegal termination

SM’s champion Raj recorded on behalf of Prem, in September 2019 that he and 60 other workers had been fired with no notice from a company in Gurgaon Manesar’s IMT. Within the month, SM provided a verbal response to guide the workers as to their rights in a situation of unfair dismissal and for the need to prove that they had worked for the company and for how long (http://voice.gramvaani.org/vapp/mnews/1129/show/detail/1856948/). Then, the SM team contacted the workers to ask if they wished to file a case and when they agreed, SM referred them to the Gurgaon branch of CITU, who guided the workers to register a case against the company. The company then called the CITU and workers for a negotiation, which ended, by December 2019, with 32 workers being awarded three months compensation for unfair dismissal, according to law.

Our efforts during the COVID-19 lockdown: When, on 24 March 2020, India’s internal migrants learned that they were henceforth prevented from both earning and travelling home, Saajha Manch was inundated with distress reports and calls, forcing us to repurpose, from our regular focus on rights-at-work, to respond to the looming crisis. By the third week in April, it had become common to receive more than 100 SOS calls in a day. To improve efficiency to cope with numbers, Gram Vaani created an SOS channel. By pressing 0, workers transferred to a question which asked them to select their location from a list of eight, across the three states of Haryana, Tamil Nadu and Gujarat.

Of the over 3,000 unique callers fielded by Saajha Manch between 26 March and 31 May, together with our partners (Gurugram Nagrik Ekta Manch, Feeding India and Ideal Youth for Revolutionary Changes) we were able to respond to 1,590 requests. Other than on-the-ground assistance to relief partners, we leveraged the IVR platform as a way by which SOS calls were registered and allocated, and through which beneficiaries could be verified by phone and in person on receipt of the benefit. Read a detailed report of our efforts during the lockdown here.