I am based out of Bangalore & having a background in tech and was tracking global and local issues as a common citizen, I was exposed to online petitions as a tool to provide information about social and environmental issues and garner public support.
When I became an environmental activist full time in late 2019, I was very happy to know we have Jhatkaa.org in my own city ! Other than the online petitions itself, I was happy to interact with the team who engaged with citizens & communities to go further & enable them with data and also act as a bridge between the Government bodies and people to solve the issue itself.
Hence, in early 2020, when I wanted to launch a petition with others, I naturally contacted the team at Jhatkaa.org. I was very happy to work with Nimisha, the Senior Campaigner from Jhatkaa who was not only helpful but also went beyond the technicalities of creating the campaign web page by taking deep interest in the issue. She did her own research, collaborated with a larger group of citizens, collated more data regarding the issue,also tried to organise meetings with the government officers who were the Decision Makers to hear the voice of citizens.
Later on by sharing their experience with RTIs and even going to the extent of training citizens, Jhatkaa's campaigners put on-ground effort to keep the interest in the campaign & see that justice is delivered to the affected party (in this case environment !)
Rajani Rao Santosh,