LAST week's article showed how ordinary folk fought corruption by monitoring their infrastructure. The Concerned Citizens of Abra for Good Governance (CCAGG) has jailed crooked engineers and has prevented more graft. As active Namfrel members, the men and women of CCAGG inspire fear among sleazy politicians, in and out of election season. CCAGG is led by Pura Sumangil.

Children with checklists
Now, even the youth can get into the act. Look at the example of Bangalore, India: a survey by school children armed with checklists has probed the quality of its city roads.

The survey helped the citizens hold their public officials accountable. More importantly, it gave the kids their first taste of civic empowerment.

Running the road research was the Children's Movement for Civic Awareness (CMCA). It was conducted as part of its civic awareness summer camps held in April-May 2000. Fully 28 schools in the city joined the activity.
The CMCA was created in 2000 by two institutes, The Public Affairs Center and Swabhimana. They realized that nurturing civic values at an early age was less daunting than changing the attitudes of adults. So they set up special training for the youth: it swept lectures, quizzes, demonstration models, role-plays, field visits, and practicum work.

"Imparting civic knowledge, civic skills and civic dispositions form the core of civic education," says the CMCA.

Probing road quality
The children, aged 12 to 14 years old, were told that standing water ruined the roads. It had to be drained. The lecturers explained the critical factors: the drainage system, impediments to road safety, and the quality of the riding surface.

The children were then sent to examine 23 roads and to fill out their checklist. Some of the items covered were:

• Presence of side drains
• Evenness of the surface of the footpath
• Obstructions to pedestrians
• Number of potholes
• Number of cracked areas
• Presence of signs or painted lines to indicate a road hump
• Unfilled or uncompacted diggings for electrical or telephone cables

The checklist included instructions like, "Look for spots where the opening of the shoulder drain is at a higher level then the road surface (i.e. water cannot freely flow to the drain)."

The municipal commissioner ordered his officials to take immediate steps to upgrade the roads. And yes, citizens saw the improvements later on.

The impact of the kids' work did not end there. Once, the commissioner visited a district where he spoke with CMCA children. The members from the different schools reported to him on the absence and poor conditions of their toilets. The commissioner quickly ordered their renovation.

In 2001-2002, the CMCA children ran a survey on people's awareness of the environmental hazards caused by polythene bags. They interviewed 800 firms and 1,200 households. The survey got much media attention. It pushed the Karnataka State Pollution Control Board to hurry up on enforcing the ban against polythene bags less than 20 microns thick.

Filipino schools and activist groups should learn from the example of the Bangalore children.

Lessons for Filipinos
One lesson is that monitoring infrastructure does not have to be complex. The indicators can be simple enough to be used by 12-year-olds.

For example, boy scouts and girl scouts can handle the work coordinated by Government Watch, an NGO based at the Ateneo Professional Schools at Rockwell, Makati. The group uncovers corruption by comparing infrastructure plans on paper (e.g. a 100-meter cemented farm-to-market road) to what was actually built (e.g. 80 meters of asphalt leading to the mayor's house).

Government Watch sends monitors with cameras and photocopies of contracts. The scouts can do the same in their respective provinces. A second lesson is that the monitoring will draw media attention. The presentations are dramatic: after all, rarely do kids get the chance to speak truth to power. "The Emperor has no clothes" becomes "The Congressman cheated on our roads."

Finally, it is important to start the young on civic empowerment. "Students who are given early responsibility often develop a greater sense of responsibility later on in life," says the CMCA.

< Back to Citizen Action main page