Mahadevan lost by 1% votes.
By Deepak Chitnis
WASHINGTON, DC: Indian music legend Shankar Mahadevan lost out by only one percent of the votes polled at the 2014 Honesty Oscars – an award ceremony that “[honors] creativity in global anti-corruption campaigning,” – an Indian-origin filmmaker walked away with the Best Director prize.
Rakesh Rajani, a civil society leader based in Tanzania, took home the award for his work on the Twaweza campaign. The word “Twaweza” means “We can make it happen” in the African dialect of Swahili, and the campaign is “a ten year citizen-centered initiative, focusing on large-scale change in East Africa.” Best Director does not mean that Rajani made a film, but that he is leading the charge and has “a clear vision, [can] visualize the execution of that vision, and carry it out through the help of their talented crew. In this case, this vision is a world without corruption.”
Twaweza has a two-fold goal that it seeks to achieve over a ten-year timeframe. Firstly, it wants to enhance “citizen agency,” which it says is “the ability of men, women and young people to get better information more quickly, cheaply and reliably; monitor and discuss what’s going on; speak out; and act to make a difference.” The second prong of its plan is to enable as many people in Tanzania (and other impoverished African areas) to receive basic education, healthcare, and clean water.
The initiative was launched in 2009, and is currently in its fourth year. Rajani has been at the forefront of getting the movement off the ground, finding critical partnerships both within Africa and abroad, and helping to secure basic rights for more and more African citizens.
Rajani is no stranger to the fight for human rights. He holds a B.A. in philosophy and English literature from Brandeis University in Massachusetts, and a Masters of Theological Studies degree from Harvard University, which he earned in the field of Liberation Theology.
Upon graduating from Harvard in 1991, he co-founded the Kulena Centre for Children’s Rights in Mwanza, Tanzania, which is also his hometown. He served as the organization’s executive director until 1998. In 2001, he founded another human rights organization named HakiElimu, which strove to provide elementary and secondary schools for children. He was there until 2010.
Rajani has worked as a consultant with Hivos, Google.org, and the Hewlitt Foundation, among others. He was also a fellow at Harvard University’s Center for Population and Development Studies, and the Human Rights Program of the Harvard Law School, between 1998 and 2000. He has written and/or edited over 300 papers in both Swahili and English.
A total of 727 votes were cast for the five nominees in Rajani’s category, and Rajani ended up winning a staggering 54% of the votes (roughly equating to 392 votes). The other nominees were Kenyan activist/lawyer/blogger Ory Okolloh, Sunlight Foundation’s Ellen Miller, Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative’s Clare Short, and South African civil rights advocate Alice Brown.
The Honest Oscars had five categories: Best Visual Effects, Best Activist in a Leading Role, Best Activist Anthem, Best Director and Best Picture.
The Honesty Oscar’s Best Picture prize went to a video called “Open Development Explained,” which they credit as “[doing] a great job [to] explain the scope and importance of the global Open Development movement.” The video received 61% of the total 727 votes in its category. Best Activist in a Leading Role was awarded to Sely Martini, the Deputy Director of Indonesia Corruption Watch, who took 54% of the 6,700 votes cast.
More than 3,500 people voted in the Best Visual Effects category, but the International Budget Partnership’s “Open Budget Survey 2012″ infographics took 54 percent of the votes, to win it.
Best Activist Anthem, for which Shankar Mahadevan’s ballad “Mujhse Hogi Shuruuat” was nominated, was ultimately given to “Down by the Riverside”, by Cameroonian duo Dr. Sley and Da Green Soljas. They won 40% of the 80,000 total votes, with Mahadevan’s song following very closely at 39%.