Making Citizen Engagement and Participative ...

Making Citizen Engagement and Participative Democracy the Norm for New India

Author Name : Dr Kishor Kumar Dash

DOI: https://doi.org/10.56025/IJARESM.2024.121124796

INTRODUCTION India, being largest democracy of the world, is at crossroads where proactive participation of its citizens can remake governance. Given a dynamic socio-political context and constantly growing young population with easy access to digital technology, there is an acute need to place participative democracy at the core of India’s development. Nonetheless, India has set itself democratically where civil liberties allow citizens not only to vote for representatives but there is a huge hole in direct citizen participation in the policy making and other local governance matters. This gap undermines democracy inputs by omitting various voices out of the loop, and also restricting integrity and responsibility. The major challenges of civic participation in the current society include social and economic status, lack of access to technology and limited understanding of the role of participation in governance. However, the reality remains, examples like participatory budgeting in Brazil and digital governance in South Korea show that active and engaged citizens can benefit governments and others make better policies, citizens will have trust in their governments. This research proposes to analyse the possibilities of how such practices could be introduced and implemented in the context of India with the eventual vision to evolve participative democracy as the rule not the exception. Through emphasizing on broadly participatory, inclusive, and scalable forms of engagement, this research will present recommendations for policy makers on how to implement a more effective model of democratic engagement for the creation of a ‘New India.’