Resource Institute for Human Rights S-6 flat No.-10, Ankur Apartment Jyoti Nagar Ext. Jaipur-302005 Jaipur Rajasthan India +919460387130 rihr.rajasthan[AT]gmail.com While working with people, on rights – based development, many NGOs and activists, have faced, and experienced that the laws and policies of the country affect people, especially the poor, in slums and in villages.
In recent years NGOs who work with the poor, are apprehensive that the government policies of privatization would cause hardship when government pulled back from health, education, food security, environmental protection etc. ‘Liberalisation, Privatisation, and Globalisation’ policies, it was feared, would cause inflation, affect culture, make the rich richer and the poor poorer.
Many Social Activists and Economists do not subscribe to this analysis, they say that the hardships that the poor are facing would have happened anyway – how does one know that these are caused by government economic policies? And it is at this point that study of the State and Central Schemes, Policies and Budget Analysis become extremely important and relevant.
With this as our preamble the Resource Institute for Human rights intends to study the Rajasthan State Schemes, Policies and Budget on interact with the youth, NGO’s, activists, people’s groups and people’s representatives who are working in the field. We, believe that when data is analyzed by the Institute it would be combined with the field data about employment, food security, health facilities, and other “life and death” matters, when combined with people’s voices, reaching voters and elected representatives in our democratic process – then these Analyses would strengthen People’s Action and people participation in process of governance.

The Vision
The Vision of the Institute is to inculcate greater confidence among Social activist, NGOs Activist’s, People’s organizations, People’s representatives and others, this will be of immense help in sorting out what all the big numbers in the budgets mean. The “watch dog” role of NGOs, the press, and others will mean that there is more effective and accountable spending of public money. It is also hoped that with stronger lobbying work after the inclusion of budget analysis data, decision-makers will be convinced, and policies will change to bring about a better situation for the Poor in Rajasthan, and in India as well.

Operationalisation of the Institute
The Institute will have a team of analysts and support staff with a research background of public finance as well some experience to work with NGO’s and activists in Rajasthan. The Institute will take help from academicians and economists who are already working in people’s perspective.

Working Strategy
Along with the research work and other task outlined in the objectives, the RIHR will serve with following strategy:

• Assembly watch
Assembly watch is an important medium to generate awareness on issues with the respective regional MLA’s and peoples representative. To make the assembly sessions more meaningful and worthy it is important to disseminate information during and before the assembly sessions. This work will be taken by the centre so that “assembly watch” is a power full tool to develop awareness in people and people’s representatives.

• District level Information Center
There will be another group at districts which will be called “District level User Group”.
This Group will be made up of selected NGOs, Advocacy Activists, Institutes, People’s Organizations, Social Movements who are working on advocacy issues and can and want to use the data analyzed. This Group is one of the ways to insure that the Analysis Data gets used with the help of local MLA and MLC.

• Commissioned Assignments
Work on drawing out data from the budget in response to requests for information by activist-NGO, activist-networks, activist-organisations, activist-writer/researcher – or persons concerned who will use the material to bring about change with the interest of ‘The Poor’ in mind.

• Form and Nature the “Analysis User’s Group”
Effective ways to use the data generated are shared and built upon. Once the budget analysis materials strengthen the lobbying and advocacy work, the desire to use the materials is anticipated to will increase.

• Take Suggestions from the Advisory Group.
If no activist-organization is commissioning work on a certain subject, and from other organisations, a piece of work is suggested the RIHR might take it up, and promote it amongst the selected networks in Rajasthan.

• Meetings to Stimulate Activist Organizations to use material generated.
Sometimes the material will have been generated on the request of one activist organization, but the issue will be the one that is widely felt. RIHR can call a meeting to broad base the advocacy work (of course, along with the organization that originally wanted that data). Sometimes the material would be generated on the suggestion of the Advisory Committee members. In this way, there is scope for the RIHR to be “re-active, or responsive to requests” as well as “pro-active” or initiating use of material.
The Objectives
To analyse the policies, schemes and budgets and illustrate pertinent data in the areas of struggle and efforts of the People’s Organizations in Rajasthan.
We shall focus particularly on following areas:
• To establish a data bank of all the relevant programmes/schemes with a facility of regular update.
• To conduct regular capacity building trainings programmes at all levels.
• To promote and deepen awareness among citizens by using possible channels of communication.
• To promote a wide network of individuals and institutions for rights related to food & Social security.
• To undertake, guide and/or sponsor investigations, enquiries, public hearings, social audits etc.
• Provide feedback to appropriate governments in order to improve the efficiency of the programmes/schemes.
• To undertake researches including action researches and evaluation studies.
• To disseminate information related to the various schemes and different aspects, etc.
• To build a library – books, and supplementary books of data related to Human rights.
• To act as an Information Center with up-to-date database of information on Rajasthan MLA’s, Secretaries, Ministers.
• To act as a contact organization for Rajasthan, for common initiatives with others in the country.
• To work with activists of selected organizations in providing strategic information
• To work with MLA’s & MP’s for capacity building related to assembly and their respective area. Also watching there work.
• To analyze party manifestos and disseminate the information during the election to parties and people.

Over Intervention
• RIHR provided Resource material to the newly elected MLAs during the opening session of the twelfth and thirteenth Vidhan Sabha. Information about expenditures incurred by the MLAs of Twelfth Vidhan Sabha were collected and analysed to evaluate their performance as a people’s representative. This information and analysis was disseminated through media and civil society groups.
• Information about Budget and Welfare scheme for rural poor were analysed, simplified and disseminated in the villages.
• RIHR, in association with various NGOs, conducted studies on Mid day Meals scheme, Public Distribution System and Integrated Child Development Secheme.
• RIHR joins various organization and civil society groups in their rights based initiatives.
At that time we are doing some small studies related ICDS, MID Day Meal, NREGA with the Support of Allraupu Organization. In state level at list 40 orgnisation are used over data and reports for advocacy
propose.