CHENNAI: Celebrating its 10th anniversary, Arappor Iyakkam launched the campaign ‘My Vote is Not for Sale’, aiming to reach households across all 234 constituencies in Tamil Nadu, urging citizens not to accept money for votes, at the Sir PT Thiyagaraya Hall, T Nagar, on Sunday.
Founded in 2015 to fight corruption and promote transparency, Arappor showcased its decade-long journey of exposing corruption, restoring water bodies, securing land rights for tribal communities, and conducting RTI awareness programmes, through a video at the event.
A panel discussion on ‘Arappor’s role in social change over the last 10 years and their road ahead’ featured Singer and writer TM Krishna, lawyer and activist Sudha Ramalingam, Henri Tiphagne from People’s Watch, Kalpana Karunakaran (IIT-M professor), Siddharth Prabhakar (journalist), and Raju Murugan (filmmaker), moderated by PUCL national secretary Suresh.
Speakers urged Arappor to tackle the tacit acceptance of corruption, protect individual activists who often face threat for voicing up, provide mentorship for other activist groups, resist privatisation, and build digital tools such as ‘Arappor Watchers’ app for citizen reporting. Krishna stressed the need to document frameworks and noted that corruption today is moral, involving caste/religion.