Moving From Agitation to Construction

Guest blog by Antaraa Vasudev, Founder — Civis Vote

As we think of the institutions upon which modern society is built — we may likely visualise them as stoic and unchanged. However, the success of lasting institutions may well be continuous change and responsiveness to the external environment.

One such institution is democracy. In a report titled ‘Effective Consultation Processes: In India and Globally,’ the authors Shradhanjali Sarma and Utkarsh Kumar — trace the evolution of democracy. From the first wave of moving from non-democratic to democratic regimes; to the reverse democratisation of the second wave; we now find ourselves in the third wave of democracies where there has been a fundamental shift in the idea of democracy.

This shift is evinced in the rise of citizen’s engagement and participatory policy formation. In their report, Sarma and Kumar take a critical look at the frameworks of participatory governance. From digital activism and participatory budgeting to legislative consultation — this report looks at the emergence of and challenges of participatory democracy in theory and practice.

..participatory governance is an essence of deliberative democracy and includes processes, such as civic engagement and pre-legislative consultation among others.

For example, in the United States of America, all government agencies are required to publish a public notice seeking comments from the public before issuing or revising any subordinate legislation. Similarly, in Brazil, by digitally authenticating citizen petitions, Mudamos — an online tool has helped citizen’s concerns reach the lower house of Brazil’s legislature.

Meanwhile, in India, a Citizen’s Engagement framework by the National e‐Governance Plan suggested four broad ways of increasing citizen engagement:

• Regular meetings, mobile-based voice and text messages can be used as additional modes of sharing information.
• Stakeholder consultation meetings should be carried out at every stage of a project. There should be discussions with citizens, civil society groups, elected representatives etc., to understand their perspectives.
• Participatory assessment and monitoring should be carried out with the stakeholders, and discussions should be held with elected representatives to understand the results of the findings.
• Participatory urban planning should be carried out at the ward level.

This framework, published in 2011, was quickly followed by the Pre-Legislative Consultation Policy in 2014. This policy mandated that all ministries and departments open their legislative proposals for public consultation and feedback.

While challenges in the consultation process prevail, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and organisations such as GovLab, New York University (NYU) have devised best practices to overcome common challenges in the process. Some of these best practices include:

• Identifying stakeholders clearly.
• Developing strong leadership and commitment for the process within Government.
• Ensuring that stakeholders who have participated in consultations are cognisant about whether their feedback has been incorporated or not.
• Granting a citizen’s right to information, consultation, and participation in law as well as policy.
• Adequate time must be available for consultation and implementation.
• Citizens should have equal opportunity for participation and should also have access to all channels of information.
• Adequate financial, human and technical resources are important for successful consultation processes.

One may wonder why such participation in a fairly technical subject such as law is important at all, in the words of democracy activist Pia Mancini:

“It seems like the 18th-century slogan that was the basis for the formation of our modern democracies, “No taxation without representation,” can now be updated to “No representation without a conversation.” We want our seat at the table. And rightly so. But in order to be part of this conversation, we need to know what we want to do next, because political action is being able to move from agitation to construction.”

You can read the report ‘Effective Consultation Processes In India and Globally’ by Shradhanjali Sarma and Utkarsh Kumar here: https://bit.ly/2YxBBde.

This report is supported by Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies and published at Civis.

About the authors:

Shradhanjali Sarma recently completed Daksha Fellowship, Chennai, with Technology Law and Policy as her dedicated pathway. She graduated from National Law University and Judicial Academy, Assam in 2017, and worked as a Research Associate at Studio Nilima on a project studying the interface of constitutional law and conflicts in Assam. Before joining Daksha Fellowship, she worked in a Mumbai-based boutique firm dealing with indirect tax litigation and advisory.

Utkarsh Kumar recently completed Daksha Fellowship, Chennai, with Technology Law and Policy as his dedicated pathway. He is an engineering graduate from Delhi School of Engineering. After working for a few years in various multinationals, he pursued LLB from Chaudhary Charan Singh University, Meerut. As a lawyer interested in public policy, he has worked as an intern for the Aam Aadmi Party.

Civis is a non-profit platform that works to enable effective dialogue between Governments and citizens on draft laws and policies — using technology to bridge the two. If you would like to partner with Civis, or gather feedback from your beneficiaries — reach out to them at: info [at] civis [dot] vote.

This is a guest blog and views are personal.