Linked with Linked with Texts and Reports, like Women in Slums, an UN study, with Background-Report on Cities in Transition, with W.O.M.E.N., with Hope in the slums: women’s work in Bangladesh, with Rethinking resettlement in Mumbai, and Mumbai pavement dwellers finally get their homes, with NGO’s like Ankur, with SHACK, Slum Dwellers International SDI, and TERI The Energy and Resources Institute, with persons like Shanta Devi – India, and Leena Joshi – India.
Nirbhay Bano Andolan, The ‘Be Fearless Movement’, India, for Community. Start Year 1993.
Contact Information: Shakil Ahmed, Ashoka Fellow Activist, Nirbhay Bano Andolan (people’s movement), A126, Azad Mohalla, Shanti nagar, Wadala (E), Mumbai – 400037, India. Tel: +91-22-20604029, +91-22-24167494, E-mail.
Positioning in the mosaic of solutions:
– Main barrier addressed: Corrupt or inept government and public systems,
– Main principle addressed: Build non-violent paths to rights, access & assets.
(Find the whole rest on this web-page of changemakers).
Description of initiative:
We work in Mumbai’s slums and to empower the most marginalized in this huge city to fight for their rights. In a system that is corrupt and inefficient, it’s mostly the poorest who suffer the most. They have no access to even basic, hygienic living conditions and are always facing the worst human rights abuses – whether they are police brutalities or forced evictions.
Nirbhay Bano Andolan is a community education and watchdog movement to make the state more accountable to even its poorest citizens. We are empowering citizens with knowledge about their rights and encouraging them to fight for them, taking on the state machinery without fear of coercion, violence, and marginalization.
Our community activists live in Mumbai’s slums and respond to people’s issues immediately. We listen to their concerns at roadside meetings, investigate them further, document cases of human rights abuses, assess the situation, brainstorm about the solutions that could be explored and then collectively decide on the course of action whether it is a media campaign, a court case or a public protest. Our supporters comprise people like lawyers, retired judges, retired bureaucrats, journalists and we utilize their resources to access justice. The idea is to document and highlight issues and empower more people by involving them in the movement and making them more aware of their rights as citizens. This makes them more confident and builds up a pressure group to voice the injustices against them.
Description of innovation: The NBA does not just fight the causes of people; it empowers ordinary people to fight on their own.