Mysuru :
The book ‘I, the Citizen,’ authored by Dr. R. Balasubramaniam, Founder of Swami Vivekananda Youth Movement (SVYM), Mysuru, was released at Cornell University, United States of America (USA) on Sept.9 by Joe Grasso, Associate Dean for Administration, Finance and Corporate Relations at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations and Gary Fields, a Professor at Cornell University.
The release event at the US was organised by The ILR International Programs Office and The ILR Global Affairs Club, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York.
The book, published by Grassroots Research And Advocacy Movement, Mysuru, a policy research and advocacy institute, is a milestone in a journey of reflection that began about seven years ago when the author, Dr. Balu started writing about his experiences in the development sector.
It is an experience where the author has donned the hat of a development activist, leadership trainer, policy advocate, civil society campaigner, anti-corruption investigator, academician and a researcher at various points in time.
This volume strings together the author’s experiences and perspectives over a period of three decades and has at its core, his first-hand engagement with people at the grassroots, especially forest-based indigenous people from South India’s rural hinterland, among many others.
Starting with an attempt to understand development and its various aspects, the book takes the reader through interpretations of development initiatives at the grassroots and what good governance means to ordinary people.
The book unravels the power of citizen engagement through the author’s experiences of leading civil society campaigns against corruption and towards strengthening democratic participation of people. The author also deals with the philosophical underpinnings of public policies, drawing from his on-the-ground experience as well as engagement with those in the higher echelons of policy-making and implementation.
The last section of the book provides glimpses into milestones of a development movement, which Dr. Balu founded and led, milestones that are responsible for a continued faith in citizen engagement despite the hindering forces.
The book fittingly ends with an epilogue where exemplars and realities of citizen engagement are dealt with. Throughout the book, the author throws questions at the reader, rather than providing solutions or answers, with obvious intention of fostering the discourse on perspectives of development and citizen engagement.
The power of the book lies in the versatility of the ways in which it can be used — to read, to draw inspiration, as reference or to teach from; it is a book that should be put down multiple times — to reflect, to question and to engage.
As Justice M.N. Venkatachaliah, former Chief Justice of India, observes in his foreword to the book, “In essence, ‘We, the People…’ the words at the beginning of the Preamble to the Constitution of India is not different from “I, the Citizen.”
Both call for reflection and action from all of us to make sure that democracy evolves into something better than it already is and India as a nation can be a testimony to the world about how democracy and development can indeed be compatible.
source: http://www.starofmysore.com / Star of Mysore / Home> General News / Sunday – September 13th, 2015