The Group 21 of which I am a happy member has been meeting for the last 35 years or more, every 2nd thursday of the month. This time Ms Indu G.Vee and I co-hosted the session. We invited Dr Mona Patel to enlighten us on the current political scenario.

Dr.Mona Patel Shah is an eye surgeon.
Being involved with the poor and underprivileged section of society in the municipal hospital she has been inspired to reach out to help and support them by engaging in both political as well as apolitical agitations.
She is presently engaged with the India against corruption movement headed by Anna Hazare which involves all indians alike.
She has great dreams for our country which she believes can be realized only by the willing participation of all Indians, their contribution in strengthening our democracy.
Her belief is ...development of a country lies in the ability of it's citizens. All glory comes from daring to begin. The future is for those who have the soul of a hero!

Her so very simple request: One must vote. It is very very important and we owe it to our country. If possible meet on Sunday mornings at 8.30am at Priya Darshini Park for Dward meetings

Mona believes:
Each day is a new beginning.....the pendulum has been swinging from one extreme of hope to the other extreme of disappointment with regards this crusade against corruption between the govt and the govts people.....ironical isn't it? Who are we opposing?
In the midst of this confusion, the only thing that we can do is to keep our faith and resolve firm in seeking a India, free of corruption.
Towards this we will need to show our strength and support in large numbers.

It is our good fortune to have a leader like Anna from whom we can learn how deshbhakti can be done.
All of us are engaged in some form or the other of deshbhakti in a small or a big way.
The time has come now for us to UNITE !! And to magnify the scope of work that we can do together.
A platform where citizens can take charge is available to us in feb 2012 in the form of BMC elections.
I think we should work very hard towards this so that at least our local issues problems can see some solutions.
Our 1st step is to inform people of the coming elections....request them not to take a holiday on that day....be a good citizen and VOTE
We must also stand a citizens candidate like juju has done successfully like Adolf Dsouza
Our rough strategy could be to have 20-30 members forming a core group from different buildings.
Each member must affiliate another 4 members from neighboring buildings.
In this way we will have a corpus of 80-120 volunteers (20 -30 groups)
Each volunteer must rope in 100 voters from in and around his building
This will get us a mass of 8000-12000 voters
In ward 214 , Pramod Mandrekars won with 7000 votes .this ward is from Kamla Nehru park to Raj Bhavan and has around 40000 registered voters
In ward 213, yogita juikar won with 3113 votes. This ward has around 23000 registered voters and extends from PDP to gamdevi.
In my opinion this is doable if we come together and seriously want the change!
The BIG question is DO WE????
Please respond with a yes or no this message to set the ball rolling for indias richest , most educated and capable in every way ,constituencies local body election
We Will get the government we deserve
let us get together and make ourselves more DESERVING!!
The future lies in our hands.

Help line for citizens...100 and 103
Bmc anti encroachmentb...1916

With high expectations
Mona
drmona_shah@hotmail.com