Parivartan and Kabir In December 1999, while still in service with the Income Tax Department, Kejriwal,
Manish Sisodia and others founded a movement named
Parivartan (which means "change"), in the Sundar Nagar area of Delhi. A month later, in January 2000, Kejriwal took a sabbatical from work to focus on Parivartan. Parivartan addressed citizens' grievances related to
Public Distribution System (PDS), public works, social welfare schemes, income tax and electricity. It was not a registered
NGO - it ran on individual donations, and was characterised as a
jan andolan ("people's movement") by its members. Later, in 2005, Kejriwal and Manish Sisodia launched Kabir, a registered NGO named after the medieval philosopher
Kabir. Like Parivartan, Kabir was also focused on RTI and participatory governance. However, unlike Parivartan, it accepted institutional donations. According to Kejriwal, Kabir was mainly run by Sisodia. In 2000, Parivartan filed a
public interest litigation (PIL) demanding transparency in public dealings of the Income Tax department, and also organised a
satyagraha outside the Chief Commissioner's office. Kejriwal and other activists also stationed themselves outside the electricity department, asking visitors not to pay bribes and offered to help them in getting work done for free. In 2001, the Delhi government enacted a state-level Right To Information (RTI) Act, which allowed the citizens to access government records for a small fee. Parivartan used RTI to help people get their work done in government departments without paying a bribe. In 2002, the group obtained official reports on 68 public works projects in the area, and performed a community-led audit to expose misappropriations worth 7 million in 64 of the projects. In 2003 (and again in 2008), Parivartan exposed a PDS scam, in which
ration shop dealers were siphoning off subsidised foodgrains in collusion with civic officials. In 2004, Parivartan used RTI applications to access communication between government agencies and the
World Bank, regarding a project for
privatisation of water supply. Kejriwal and other activists questioned the huge expenditure on the project and argued that it would hike water tariffs ten-fold, thus effectively cutting off the water supply to the city's poor. The project was stalled as a result of Parivartan's activism. Another campaign by Parivartan led to a court order that required private schools, which had received public land at discounted prices, to admit more than 700 poor kids without a fee. The award recognised him for activating the RTI movement at the grassroots and empowering New Delhi's poor citizens to fight corruption.
Public Cause Research Foundation In December 2006, Kejriwal established the Public Cause Research Foundation in December 2006, together with
Manish Sisodia and Abhinandan Sekhri. He donated his Ramon Magsaysay Award prize money as a
seed fund. Besides the three founders,
Prashant Bhushan and
Kiran Bedi served as the Foundation's trustees. This new body paid the employees of Parivartan. In 2011, Kejriwal joined several other activists, including
Anna Hazare and
Kiran Bedi, to form the
India Against Corruption (IAC) group. The IAC demanded enactment of the
Jan Lokpal Bill, which would result in a strong ombudsman. The campaign evolved into the
2011 Indian anti-corruption movement. In response to the campaign, the government's advisory body - the
National Advisory Council - drafted a Lokpal Bill. However, the NAC's Bill was criticised by Kejriwal and other activists on the grounds that it did not have enough powers to take action against the prime minister, other corrupt officeholders, and the judiciary. The activists also criticised the procedure for the selection of Lokpal, the transparency clauses and the proposal to disallow the Lokpal from taking cognizance of public grievances. Amid continuing protests, the Government constituted a committee to Draft a
Jan Lokpal Bill. Kejriwal was one of the
civil society representative members of this committee. However, he alleged that the IAC activists had an unequal position in the committee, and the government appointees kept ignoring their recommendations. The Government argued that the activists could not be allowed to blackmail the elected representatives through protests. Kejriwal retorted that democratically elected representatives could not be allowed to function like dictators, and asked for a public debate on the contentious issues. The IAC activists intensified their protests, and
Anna Hazare organised a
hunger strike. Kejriwal and other activists were arrested for defying a police directive to give a written undertaking that they will not go to JP Park. Kejriwal attacked the government on this and said there was a need for a debate over police power to detain and release people at will. In August 2011, a settlement was reached between the Government and the activists. Besides the government, the
Jan Lokpal movement was also criticised by some citizens as 'undemocratic' on the grounds that the ombudsman had powers over elected representatives.
Arundhati Roy claimed that the movement was not a people's movement; instead, it was funded by foreigners to influence policymaking in India. She pointed out that the
Ford Foundation had funded the Emergent Leadership category of the Ramon Magsaysay Award, and also donated $397,000 to Kejriwal's
NGO Kabir. Both Kejriwal and Ford Foundation termed the allegations as baseless, stating that the donations were made to support the RTI campaigns. Besides, several other Indian organisations had also received grants from the Ford Foundation. Kejriwal also denied the allegations that the movement was a plot against the ruling Congress by the
RSS, or that it was an upper-caste conspiracy against the
Dalits. By mid-2012, Kejriwal had replaced Anna Hazare as the face of the remaining protestors. In January 2014, Kejriwal said that he will quit from the government if Jan Lokpal Bill is not passed. In 2015, during the second term of the AAP government in Delhi, the
Jan Lokpal Bill was passed by the assembly awaiting the president's approval. == National Convener of AAP ==