Advocacy to ‘Be the Change’ (ABC) Maharashtra Tour

Context

A tour in Maharashtra will be the stepping stone to bringing awareness of the law and judicial mechanisms. In the simplest terms it can be seen as a tool based on the power of information and awareness to bring about a change at the grass-roots level. It is the starting point towards beginning to exercise our rights, demanding implementation and challenging faulty enforcement. In essence, it is the common man’s vehicle for questioning the system and getting from it what is due to him.

The main focus of the tour will be to bring judicial as well as non-judicial reforms through public participation. Public participation includes discussing issues like delays in cases, pendency in cases, undignified treatment to common people in court premises, inadequate number of judges, inadequate allocation of funds for judiciary branch, delay in filling up vacancies in the courts, lack of commensurate infrastructure, misuse of the process of court with impunity, irresponsible filing of appeals by the government, prolix arguments, enormous procedural complexities in civil and criminal matters, prevention of vexatious litigation by government, accountability and transparency in the system, setting up of human rights courts and child right courts at the district level, filing public interest litigations, etc.

The problems faced by the people often are beyond the literal meaning of the law, and this can be understood only with direct interactions with the people. This is also the reason why we focus on non-litigating solutions to problems of the people as well.

Project Goals and Objectives

1. Increase the participation of the common people in accessing justice delivery system and to make the system people oriented.

  • To bring awareness among the general public to use law for social change
  • To increase and strengthen access to justice
  • To sensitize the stakeholders in the justice delivery system
  • To engage lawyers in legal aid work
  • To engage students to work with socio-legal perspective
  • Engaging media to reach out to masses

2. Advocacy through direct intervention in the court

  • To encourage common people to approach the court for rights
  • To identify issues of mass violations
  • To have dialogue with people/communities/groups whose rights have been violated
  • To collect and analyze data for filing Public Interest Litigation
  • To represent such communities/groups in court

3. Advocacy through non-litigating strategies

  • To understand the situation of various stakeholders when a human rights violation has occurred.
  • To empower these stakeholders to find their own ways to solve the problems they face.