Jayaprakash Narayan left the civil service a few months short of pension eligibility to start the Loksatta movement. He left the civil service without pension because he wanted to work towards changing the system and he felt that he could not in all conscience change the system while still benefiting from it.

Loksatta’s objective is to make our democracy as vibrant and as accountable as the democracies of the west – especially UK or USA. To achieve this a broad platform of changes need to be made in politics, the judiciary and the civil services. Loksatta works at both the macro and the micro levels.

At the macro level, it has enabled policy-level changes through pressuring parties to push through the disclosure of assets and criminal record of electoral candidates. When this failed, it moved the Supreme Court and got the disclosure of criminal record ruling in its favor. Today if candidates across the country declare their education, assets and criminal record, it is largely due to Loksatta.

At the micro level, in Andhra Pradesh, it has succeeded in getting the local government to agree to publish and hold itself accountable for service delivery norms and standards. For example, the RTO publishes how long it should take for delivery of a driving license. In addition, Loksatta organizes and trains citizen groups on their rights. Most corruption takes place because we as citizens don’t know what our rights are and how to demand them. Therefore working on the principle of Collective Informed Assertion and transparency, Loksatta groups get the bureaucracy to deliver what’s expected of them – without a bribe.

Further, in Andhra Pradesh, Loksatta’s campaign for clean elections has arrested and is beginning to reverse criminalization in politics.