Meri Bhi Awaaz Suno – A Gram Vaani and Nyaaya Campaign

As the Covid pandemic hit, the world soon realised that its effects were not limited to medical ailments, but went beyond to legal issues as well. Be it in terms of understanding your right to receive dignified healthcare to matters of probating a will on the death of a loved one or even your rights and eligibility for Covid death compensation. In times like these, navigating through the legal and administrative process became an extremely daunting task.

To assist people in these crucial times, we, at Nyaaya, launched and associated ourselves with many initiatives. Through these initiatives, our main goal was to make people aware of their rights and provide them the correct information on processes allowing them to seek and demand justice.

One of the most successful initiatives was the ‘Meri Bhi Awaaz Suno’ campaign organised by our long standing partners at Graam Vaani – a social tech company that uses simple technologies and social context to design tools to impact communities.

Through our combined efforts in Covid response, we realised that there were some legal issues and questions that came up more often. The information available online on these issues was either not sufficient or reliable, and most definitely not accessible to those without a smartphone. To address this problem and pre-emptively provide solutions, the Meri Bhi Awaaz Suno campaign was born.

Through this campaign, a series of 8 audio episodes of 3 minutes each were launched on Mobile Vaani (Gram Vaani’s federated network of community media platforms). For these episodes, Nyaaya provided simple, actionable and reliable legal content on rights and entitlements, health laws and employment laws.

Listen to the promo audio clip from this campaign here.

These episodes were a huge success. They had 13,929 unique users, 1,09,756 minutes cumulative listening duration and received 991 comments and additional 473 questions. It helped people understand that everyone is a right bearer with the ability to demand enforcement of their rights. They can have their voice heard and ask questions without fear of reprisal.

Listen to what the beneficiaries of the the campaign have to say here.

For over 2 years, Rajkumar Chaurasia, a resident of Samastipur, Bihar  was unable to get his ailing mother treated at a proper medical facility due to the dearth of funds. He hadn’t received any amount entitled to his mother under the Widow Pension scheme for 2 years.  Upon registering his grievance with Mobile Vaani, he not only received actionable information and guidance but also the much needed assurance to approach the manager of the concerned bank. Simple legal information finally got him the pending pension amount of Rs 5000. (“खबर का हुआ असर मोबाइल वाणी पर मिली विधवा पेंशन की जानकारी” — सुनने के लिए क्लिक करें) LISTEN TO THE AUDIO 🔉

Rohit Samacha was unaware of the the ‘One Nation, One Ration Card’ scheme and always believed that their ration cards were limited to their respective states. Mobile Vaan’s ‘Meri Bhi Awaaz Suno’ informed him that his current ration card is valid even outside his own state and was of immense value to him and his community members.  खबर का असर- एक देश एक राशन कार्ड के बारे में मिली जानकारी  LISTEN TO THE AUDIO 🔉  

e-Shram card entitles workers from the unorganised sector to access various  social security benefits. Sankartao Sadhan  from Jharkhand was able to create his e-Shram card with the help of the step by step guidance provided by Mobile Vaani. He was able to fill in the necessary applications on his phone and get the printout of the digital card from a local shop. Since then, he has been encouraging others to follow Mobile Vaani’s guidance and sign up for e-Shram card as well.  LISTEN TO THE AUDIO 🔉

Four months after the demise of her father, Samastipur’s Neha Kumari was clueless about her entitlements and had not received any installment of the Widow pension. Mobile Vaani directed her to the rightful government authorities and informed her of the documents required and the process to follow  to claim the pension.  (“मोबाइल वाणी का असर – वर्षों से रुका पेंशन मिला” — सुनने के लिए क्लिक करें LISTEN TO THE AUDIO 🔉

Usha Kumari had not received her dues under the disability pension for over four months. Mobile Vaani helped her identify the bottlenecks and connected her with the local ‘Vikas Mitra’ who then assisted her in completing the necessary paperwork and expediting the disbursal of her pensions. LISTEN TO THE AUDIO 🔉  

You can listen to  the Audio Episodes here:

Episode 1

Episode 2

Episode 3

Episode 4:

Episode 5:

Episode 6:

Have an idea for a campaign like this? Reach out to us on contact@nyaaya.in