Real Governance and Democracy

One of the days, at SOFA, we could observe a workshop that was conducted for the village men and women (I think farmers mainly). About 20-25 people were part of the workshop. This was one of the workshops that THI has been doing since a while in order to improve the awareness on Gram sabha structure, functions, democracy, governance and how they can participate in it. This was conducted through members from the Barefoot Academy of Governance. When we joined in the middle of the workshop as observers, we saw that the participants had badgets with their names written in Tamil on their chest. They were split into 4-5 teams and 2 people from each team came up and spoke about the problems that they think are faced by Sittilingi should be prioritised as well as the solutions that they could think of. They had charts in which they had even listed these. Toilets are constructed but most are not working..wild animals destroying their farm, they need a bank in Sittilingi, water, etc

I found this fascinating and very engaging and isn't this what democracy should aim for? I hope their meeting in actual Gram Sabha goes well!