Time for a Citizen's Charter?
Democracy has been defined as a government by the people but rule of the majority.
Does that mean it has to be oppressive towards the minority? Does it have the rights to ignore the needs and wishes of the minority?
With all the governments you can think of which one has been so effective to keep all or most of its citizens happy? Then why do governments change?
What has a change in a government resulted in? Different but similar inefficient government?
Why do we need an opposition? Aren't all people supposed to work with the elected representatives? Why oppose the government if it is carrying out the wishes of all its people?
Who measures the effectiveness of a government? The wish list versus the results it achieved quarterly, yearly or during its term? Who rates a government's efficiency?
Aren't these all problems in any democracy today?
People protest against mis-governance. Take to the streets. Police comes. Because it is their duty to maintain law and order. Law and order takes a different definition on the day of a protest. Some unruly crowd does something beyond control, police beats a few and locks a few. Worst case a firing squad comes in to kill a few, all in the name of democracy.
In the industrial era, this used to be the common way a government functioned. An elected form of government was established to make sure the elected representatives spoke of people's wishes in a common forum known as the Parliaments and it was easier to control and communicate between a few people within four walls than a whole country speak of its voices and opinions. That gave way to media participation of covering events happening at these gatherings and add their own biases towards the news items. Media houses became the distributors of food for thought. And the people just kept on feeding themselves of the opinions which came out of a middle tier. Most of the media houses are biased. Do they help in a smooth functioning of a democracy? Questionable and debatable.
So if I have to summarize the root cause of all government inefficiencies, the number one cause will be information sharing or a communication breakdown between the government and the governed masses.
We are in the information age. We can tell the whole world what we ate for lunch today. But we can't just seem to be communicating with our government. There is no platform built yet which makes it easier for all people to form a government, to run a government, to measure its efficiency and to speak of their voices. A government similarly does not fully understand what its people want. It is always a heated debate on any issue. A lot of emotions pour in and that begets more emotions from the elected representatives. That gives way to politics and opinion battles and opinion wars and the government slacks on execution. When the time for next election comes, political parties will talk of all good things they are doing or intent to do and their oppositions will talk of all the bad things their opponents are doing. And this results in party biases based on factors that are not relevant. Why not have a balanced opinion? Why not an opponent political party put things objectively saying all the good things their opponents have done are all appreciable but they lacked a few things which are so and so and could be taken care of by introducing few policies and measures. It will help people to elect their representatives on objectivity.
Isn't it high time someone built a citizen's charter? Let the people speak to the government on their issues? Like minded people sharing same views on an issue can help to prioritize the list of executables for the government. Why do we need to protest on the streets? There are always lives at risk when a protest is carried out in the streets. Why not protest through a Citizen's charter? Get a lot more people around the world to support your cause. Breaking a few glass windows or burning a few tyres on the road won't make a government nervous. Opinions will.
When you search for Citizen's charter in google, here is a link that pops up. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen%27s_Charter Apparently John Major tried with the Citizen's charter initiative. Not sure why it failed to take off. Another interesting link to note is that of Government of India. https://goicharters.nic.in/ If you click on the links a lot of them don't work. That proves a Citizen's Charter created by a government does not work. Unfortunately.
So there has to be a platform. A Facebook like platform, but not Facebook. Reason? Obvious. It has to be a focused platform. Dedicated to smoothening the communication and hence relations between the government and the citizens.
Your thoughts?