Institutionalising Online Citizen Consultations for Public Policymaking in India

TARGET GROUP: PUBLIC

OBJECTIVES

·        To invoke participation of several representatives from the civil society groups, academic institutions, think tanks and social enterprises involved in using information technology for facilitating participatory development and governance.

SUMMARY

Citizen participation in policymaking is the cornerstone of a mature and consolidated democracy. With growing citizen aspirations, public policymaking that affects millions of citizens cannot rely only on the representative and procedural democratic mechanisms but must embrace participatory and substantive democratic mechanisms and practices. India, despite being the largest democracy in the world, has often relied on procedural democracy and created very little space for direct citizen consultation in the national and sub-national policymaking at a substantive scale. The emergence of local governance institutions in the early 90’s created some significant spaces for citizen participation in decision making related to local development. Nevertheless, such spaces proved to be more meaningful in rural areas (through Gram Sabhas) as compared to urban areas. In the last decade, many public programmes have emphasised the importance of citizen participation in the effective implementation and monitoring of these programmes.

REFERENCE

https://pria.org/knowledge_resource/1642132844_Report%20-%20Online%20Citizen%20Consultation%20FINAL.pdf