Citizen management in governance

Abstract

The Citizen Engagement Framework, a part of the National e-Governance Plan, addresses the engagement model in which the people of India can engage with the government or its representatives. Presently, there are certain websites (mygov.in and other similar sites) which facilitate engagement between people and the government. However though these sites have close to 70 million registrations, the amount of usage has not matched the same. Also, the idea of participatory governance is still not a relevant concept in India. Some of the policies, like Startup India Standup India, Swachh Bharat Abhiyaan and Make in India, were not made in consultation with the sector experts, practitioners and the start-ups in India. An example is, inspite of the good intention, Startup India Stand India, thanks to its fund component has aided in mushrooming of Start-ups, most of whom had opened stores just to get the a fund and have a quick try of some idea. Rather the policy should have given more importance to handholding truly worthy start-ups which would grow. Such a miss in the policy could have been avoided if there were relevant discussion with sector people and other community folks. Also initially, the Startup India policy’s benefits were made non-accessible to service based ventures. This could have also been avoided if the community was engaged during the policy making process of this policy. Similarly, the Make in India policy and mission, should have succeeded the Skill India mission, because without a skilled labour force, you cannot dream of going big in manufacturing space. All these indicate that Citizen Engagement, in the form of community participation or people [participation becomes essential in the various stages of most of the policies that are formulated. This policy paper addresses the problem of the present policy, the new policy proposal and its drivers and other factors like the benefits, challenges, the technology component that can help in this policy and the implementation of this policy.