Meeting Mr. Ashawant Gupta, Haryana State convener of Aam Aadmi Party

Attendees: (As in photo) Satendra, Varun, Deepak, Mr. Ashawant (आशावंत जी ), Himanshu, Kalpana, GiGi, Jayesh (not in picture).
When/where: Apr 27th, 2013,  Piscataway, New Jersey.

It was great to have an interactive session with Ashawant ji. He shared how he was involved in IAC movement in his town (Ambala) and update on activities in AAP Ambala (his town) and Haryana state.

Ashawant ji explained the organization structure of AAP at state, district, block and village and the progress in Haryana (for stats: Haryana has 21 districts, each district has around 6-8 blocks and each block has around 80 villages. This makes around 500 villages per district and 10000 villages in whole state of Haryana).

He shared activities of AAP Ambala active volunteers and local issues they are taking up. Recent issue being handled is cleanliness drive in one area at a time, awareness drives in city and outside.

Few drives run by AAP Ambala in remote areas of Haryana are :

1. Going to villages with a small speaker and announcing "do you know that every school (Govt/Private) needs to fill 25% of their students from families whose parents combined income is less than Rs. 200,000 (Rs two lakhs) under RTE (Right To Education Act)?" Villagers didn't know this and were happy to know and exercise it. (Small detail: as per Govt, schools are considered as charity and not as business. So Govt gives special status/credit, and no taxes are levied on school unless they make profit.). Read more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_Education_Act
2. AAP Ambala volunteers go to villages and announce "all political parties come to you and say happy Diwali, Happy Baisakhi. Do they tell you that as per "Panchayati Raj" every sarpanch needs to have a gram sabha meeting twice a year and explain the budget and its allocation/expences. Every villager is a member of gram sabha. Forget about past and in forward thinking, just ask your sarpanch when is your next gram-sabha.". Villagers didn't know that and were happy to know and exercise this right.

It was great to listen to his experiences and views first hand and realize ground level achievements and challenges of AAP.

One instance he shared from recent past. In recent bijali-pani Civil Disobedience Movement in Delhi in March, AAP Haryana volunteers were in Delhi to support the movement. Mr Ashawant was in Connaught Place (Rajiv Chowk) with his team distributing flyers about Mr Arvind's fast . When they were roaming around and giving flyers, they also had people calling them "Hey aam aadmi, where did Arvind Kejriwal sit on fast. I am aam aadmi, give me one flyer.". Some footpath shopkeepers (who temporarily put their stuff on footpath everyday in Palika Bazar area) even asked their customers to wait so they could get details about AAP's movement.

He also mentioned about Gurdaspur, a remote village very close to Pakistan boarder, with very little development, scarce transportation and medium of communication. He said he met a team of volunteers who are ready to go to Delhi in November and help AAP in elections. Those volunteers said, every family in Punjab has relatives in Delhi and they will persuade all their relatives to vote for AAP.

After Q&A session, following tasks came up about what NRIs can do:

1. AAP volunteers should be visible by doing events (talks/shows etc.) or be approachable to desi people in Indian markets. Put AAP news in media (desi or international media).
2. In line with activities of AAP in India, hold similar activities in USA (protest outside Indian Embassy, UN office etc.).
3. division of work in AAP global (organizational work, movement work, etc.) so AAP volunteers can work in areas which suits them.
4. Connect with AAP state/district/block/villages conveners/volunteers of your area in India. This boosts morale of everybody and makes NRIs feel connected/updated.

We also discussed about forthcoming AAP NJ activties:

1. phone-campaign.
2. interactive session with Dr Kumar Vishwas (he is in NJ now).
3. awazaapki.org.
4. We all agreed that we should devote some time for AAP activities. Time can be at our conveneince. It can be 30 min. everyday or 1 hour every alternate day or couple of hours on weekends. This time can be in the morning, evening/night or during the day. There will be activities we can do or make calls to AAP volunteers in India (or even USA). Since AAP is fightting for common citizen, we should also encourage our spouses to participate.

Finally meeting ended with a resolve to meet again.
Jai Hind!!