Nyaaya: A digital guide to complex justice system
Legal processes are often tiresome, frustrating, lengthy and bureaucratic. Awareness and knowledge of law is still not an integral part of people’s consciousness. The barriers of language, education and technological reach add to the absence of legal understanding in our society.
By creating a free online resource, Nyaaya is trying to simplify the heavily jargonized legal language, facts and practice for common people, and build a knowledge reserve about law that is more accessible to non-experts through simple interpretation. Nyaaya is a searchable repository of every central and state law in the country that provides information on laws in simple English and Hindi, and is managed in a way that users find answers with little effort.
Nyaaya was the winner of the SM4E awards, organized by the Digital Empowerment Foundation in 2017, in the category of communication, advocacy and development activism for creating an online and easy-to-comprehend repository of Indian laws.
“Nyaaya is based on a very simple idea. Laws were not written to be an exclusive, niche product meant for experts. They concern everyone in India and are applicable to almost everything. Hence, it’s very important for laws to be accessible, simple and coherent,” says Sumeysh Srivastava, outreach lead at Nyaaya.
The law portal has been active since 26 January 2017 and has had more than 400,000 users. The portal was revamped on 16 February 2018, with design and product updates intended to make it easier to use and to access relevant information.
Nyaaya was originally conceived by philanthropist and chairperson of charitable foundation Arghyam, Rohini Nilekani, who approached the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, a non-profit legal think tank, with the idea of creating a legal portal like the water portal that Arghyam has set up. “Rohini was keen on financing an open access platform that would help citizens better equip themselves with knowledge of the justice system, and enable society and the law to be more in sync. This idea fell right into Vidhi’s line of thinking and the Nyaaya website is an outcome of this discussion,” says Srivastava.
…………………………………………………………………………
The mantra of 3R – Reduce, Reuse and Recycle – Is at the heart of any vision towards the sustainable development of mankind
The Eighth Regional 3R Forum in Asia and the Pacific is all set to commence in Indore from 9 to 12 April 2018 with an overall theme of “Achieving Clean Water, Clean Land and Clean Air through 3R and Resource Efficiency – A 21st Century Vision for Asia-Pacific Communities”.
The forum will kick start on 9th April with a pre event ceremony welcoming more than 500 delegates from across India and the world. The event will be inaugurated by Smt. Sumitra Mahajan, Speaker of the Lok Sabha and Sh. Hardeep S. Puri, Minister of State (I/C), Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs on 10th April 2018. Sh.Tadahiko Ito, State Minister, Ministry of the Environment, Japan will also be present at the event.
The Eighth Regional 3R Forum will see participation of around 40 mayors of cities around the world and mayors of more than 100 cities across India.The highlight of the event will be a series of sessions with mayors focusing on sustainable urban development and forging of inter-municipal partnerships and cooperation at the national and international level.The signing and subsequent adoption of the ‘Indore 3R Declaration on Achieving Clean Water, Clean Land and Clean Air’ in cities by mayors and city authorities is the major expected outcome of the event.
Apart from a series of plenary sessions to be spread over three days, the Forum will also host the International 3R Exhibition and various technical cum cultural field visits for its delegates. The Forum will also recognise and reward industries and civil society organisations carrying out exceptional work in the area of 3R for waste management through the 3R Awards scheduled for April 12.
3R FORUM : Aims and Objectives
The Forum aims to address how 3R and resource efficiency measures can provide complementary benefits in making cities and countries clean, smart, liveable and resilient. The Forum also aims to generate policy-level, institutional level and technological insights towards effective implementation of 3R and resource efficiency to foster circular economic development, sustainable change in current use of natural resources and ultimately achieve a zero waste society.
In addition, the Forum seeks to engage the public and private sector to explore various partnership opportunities in areas of 3R and waste management for moving towards a zero waste society. The Forum further provides an opportunity to establish insightful linkages between the principles of 3R and resource efficiency and the objectives of Swachh Bharat Mission (Clean India Mission). Through this Forum, India aims to strengthen this focus through its ‘Mission Zero Waste’ approach thereby encouraging cities, industries and other diverse stakeholders to see look at waste as a resource.
The Eighth Regional 3R Forum in Asia and the Pacific is hosted by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, Government of India, and co-organized by the Ministry of the Environment, Government of Japan, and the United Nations Centre for Regional Development of the Division for Sustainable Development /United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. The Indore Municipal Corporation, Government of Madhya Pradesh, and Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) have been designated as the City Partner, Organizing State Partner and Industry Partner respectively.