About the Basti Vikas Manch

Basti vikas manch (BVM), a platform of advocacy and lobbying for poor household areas, is established at the local as well as city level. However in order to be effective at city level, these institutions need to increase their outreach in the city. It operates as vibrant platform which can monitor water sanitation and hygiene situation on its own and interface with the government to resolve their issues. To ensure the rights of people and enable sustainable livelihoods through the initiation of citizen's first for water and sanitation accountability.

The Basti Vikas Manch, a non-affiliated city wide platform of Citizens, was formally launched in March 2011 for working towards the betterment of conditions in slums of Hyderabad primarily on issues of drinking Water and Sanitation not only these issues it prioritizes all the issues accordingly that benefit the community lives which can be resolved by its interface through governance body. The objective was to create a citizen's platform to bring in greater transparency and public participation in government decision-making processes. This would enable the slum dwellers on demanding their rights and resolving their issues without any external intervention. In order to increase collective strength of the communities regular dialogues and capacity building on WASH issues was initiated so that reach of this platform can increase. With the grounding of Basthi Vikas Manch the community witnessed its strength in identifying the problem and a pathway of resolving the issues by an interface with the government officials directly.

Evolving a Knowledge base: A knowledge base in created amongst the community where tools like RTI, Training programme on government schemes on WATSAN for the Urban poor, Capacity building and field research in conducted.

Demand for Rights: Demand for Right is initiated by developing representations and submitting them at the respective government offices. Regular follow ups are conducted to check the status.

Regulate community: BVM is responsible for the community behavior and knowledge development. Hence, regular information on the issues resolved and issues pending are updated at the community level.