By TCN Staff
Nov 2, 2019, 2019 Fremont, California. Last week Mr. Jayaram Venkatesan, convenor of Arappor Iyakkam ( non-violent war movement), Tamil Nadu shared his organization’s intervention in guaranteeing transparency and accountability in governance through mass participation of the citizens in a program organized by the Association for India’s Development (AID) California Bay Area chapter and the Ambedkar King Study Circle (AKSC), California. Several dozen students, professionals, and academics from the California region attended this presentation.
Arappor operates within the existing legal framework to petition the various government departments and agencies such as Directorate of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption (DVAC), corporations, Department of Rural Development and Panchayat Raj, Department of Municipal Administration and Water Supply. Mr. Jayaram shared his experience that people’s mass participation combined with the judicial intervention has the strategic potential to deliver justice even in the existing framework. He added that his organization utilized the Right to Information Act, 2005 and the Tamil Nadu Transparency in Tenders Act 1998 to gather documents to expose corruption.
In his talk, Mr. Jayaram started off with the history of how Arappor was established. Their first campaign was against political banners being displayed in public spaces violating rules and regulations of safety and the police force declining to take them down. While venturing to take them down themselves, Jayaram and a few others were arrested. Arappor was then established to fight for justice by mobilizing citizens support and with their intervention, an order was passed by the Tamil Nadu government banning political banners in public spaces.
Mr. Jayaram then recounted Arappor’s work in exposing irregularities in the construction of roads around Chennai. While by contract, the construction agency is required to take down the previously existing road before laying a new one, in practice this is not done, resulting in relaying of roads over existing ones and in the end, the roads are at a much higher level than the houses with potential to cause flooding when it rains. Arappor exposed that in tenders, the quote for removing the existing road is much lower than the market price and the quote for relaying the road is much higher than the market price, thus making the average overall cost on par with the market price. However, while laying the roads, the first process is often skipped, yet the construction agency gets paid most of the amount quoted in the tender since it is the second process that has the higher amount in the quote.
In this context, Mr. Jayaram outlined to the audience the nexus of contractors-bureaucrats-politicians in looting the public money. He presented a case in which Chennai Corporation contracts always go to selected contractors who operate through different proxies. For example, KCP Engineers, Vardhan Infrastructure and Constronics India are operated by the same set of people with different company names and contracts are rotated among them. Vardhan Infrastructure is owned by K.Sundari who is the mother of KCP’s K. Chandraprakash. In the case of Constronics, it’s owned by H. Karthik, one of the managers in KCP. Proxy of Gurumurthy Engineers Enterprise is G.G Infrastructures where G.G stands for Gowri Gurumurthy. The same is the case with Thomas Iyadurai Infrastructure owned by R. Thomas Iyadurai who operated under a front called RTI Foundation allegedly through his brother where R.T.I stands for Robert Thomas Iyadurai. Arappor exposed the violation of confidentiality in tenders where tenders are submitted from a computer with the very same IP (Internet Protocol) address.
In addition to this, Mr. Jayaram also provided information about his organization’s intervention in exposing irregularities in coal imports. The purchase of coal by Tamil Nadu Generation and Distribution Corporation Limited (TNGDCL) from Indonesia above the market price resulted in the loss of between 17 and 30 billion Indian rupees ( USD 2.4 and 4.2 million). Mr. Jayaram talked about after his organization’s active intervention through public mobilization and participation the DVAC started surprise checks in curbing corruption. The DVAC did not conduct any surprise checks between Jan 2015 and July 2017 but after Arappor’s intervention, the very department conducted 61 surprise checks in various government offices between Aug 2017 and Jan 2018 and found cases of irregularities in all 61 checks.
Mr. Jayaram concluded by saying that their movement’s ultimate aim is to build a just and equitable society and guaranteed transparency and accountability in public affairs is a necessary condition of such a society. Ms. Vidya Palanisamy of AID, California Bay Area chapter welcomed the gathering. Ms. Vidya said such movements play a role in social justice and participatory democracy. Mr. Cheran of AKSC delivered the vote of thanks. In his vote of thanks, Mr. Cheran quoted from India’s prominent journalist N.Ram’s Why Scams Are Here To Stay book, “India’s problem is looking at the corruption in moralistic values … When the corruption is not conceptualized soundly in relation to socio-economic, political, cultural factors, presented in simplified moral terms, results in ineffective anti-corruption measures.” Mr. Selva, Secretary AKSC presented a memento to Jayaram. Ms. Madhura of AID anchored the program.