| Date 11-Mar-2013 to 12-Mar-2013 |
Location Sahbhagi Sikshan Kendra, Lucknow |
Format National |
The vitality of discourse on participation is of critical importance to practitioners and advocates of citizen participation for a variety of reasons. First, citizens are increasingly getting disillusioned with institutions of representative democracy, particularly those which are represented by political parties. Second, in recent times, there has been an upsurge of ‘eruptions’ of citizen movements, often supported by civil society. Third, a considerable number of citizens and civil society, equipped with new information and awareness, are increasingly becoming vigilant of the state and private corporations. Democracy, according to them, is not only casting the ballot once in five years, but is a 24x7 project.
PRIA (Society for Participatory Research in Asia), along with Sahbhagi Shikshan Kendra (SSK) and Logo Link, organised a national consultation on ‘Citizen Participation in Local Democracy’ on 11-12 March 2013 at SSK, Lucknow. The consultation was organised in order to provide a platform to civil society, activists and citizen leaders to share their experiences and insights on the critical issues and challenges of citizen participation in local democracy.
The consultation sought to explore answers to various complex issues and questions including:
The consultation began with a welcome address by Sh Ashok Singh, Director, SSK, followed by an introduction and objective sharing by Dr Kaustuv K. Bandyopadhyay, Director, PRIA.
To kickstart the discussions, a presentation was made by PRIA elaborating the meaning of ‘citizenship’ and spaces available in local democracy for citizen participation and action. The presentation also elaborated PRIA’s experiences with citizen participation in deepening democracy.
 |
 |
The presentation resulted in issues being raised and questions being framed, creating the ground for further discussions and deliberations. Participatory methodologies were adopted for the discussions around these questions and issues. The rich experience of citizen mobilisation and engagement among the participants added great value to the discussions.
The discussions centred around whose participation we must ensure in our programmes, how to ensure participation and where such participation could be ensured and was able to identify various stakeholders, spaces and processes for ensuring citizen participation.
The discussion question on what values and principles we promote through our own interventions and programmes to ensure participation threw up answers and relevant strategies for ensuring citizen participation through an enabling environment for the participation of the marginalised, continuous facilitation and support, awareness, enabling leadership from within, etc.
On the second day of the consultation, a group exercise (Force field Analysis) was conducted to identify and understand the push and pull factors for effective citizen participation. Three groups were formed to discuss:
The group work identified various inhibiting (push) and enabling (pull) factors for citizen participation among various sections of society. The findings of the discussions revealed that, among other factors, constitutional and programmatic provisions under various schemes and programmes, spaces to form associations and freedom to protest enable citizen participation. Socio-political setup and mindset, inefficient planning, low awareness regarding rights and entitlements, etc, on the other hand, inhibit citizen participation.
The last session of the two-day consultation was a group discussion to identify the objective, strategy and stakeholders for the campaign on ‘Right to Participation in Local Democracy’. The participants agreed that there is a strong need for the said campaign. Although the constitution as well as the government have ensured participation of the common man in local democracy in many ways, there is still a long way to go. Civil society must come together to take this agenda forward. It was also agreed that before rolling out such a campaign, it was essential to conduct some analytical studies on the current state and status of citizen participation in the democratic process as well as across various thematic areas like education, health, etc. A consensus was arrived at on the need for a common platform for various CSOs and citizen action groups working towards promotion of citizen participation. The participants strongly advocated for a ‘National Policy on Citizen Participation’ as an overarching and guiding policy for all government programmes and actions.
At the end of consultation, the following questions have been identified for further discussion and deliberation over time:
The consultation was successful in consolidating experiences of CSOs working around various issues with the overarching mission of promoting citizen participation.
The consultation is a precursor to various activities around the Logo Link initiative onGlobal Charter on Right to Participation in Local Democracy. Logo Link (www.logolink.org) is a global network of practitioners from civil society organisations, research institutions and governments created to stimulate and support civil society organisations and networks to engage in citizen participation and social control of public policies at the local level. It is envisaged that the Global Charter will enable deepening of citizen participation in local democracy by scaling-up, mainstreaming and institutionalising citizen participation in all spheres of democratic governance. Preparation of the Global Charter will catalyse numerous deliberations involving a range of stakeholders – citizen leaders, practitioners, civil society organisations, policy makers, elected representatives, media and academia. The Charter will act as a bridging initiative between civil society; local, sub-national and national governments; political society; private sector; and bilateral and multilateral institutions.