Call for participation - India's first Janta Parliament

[Amit Bansal]

Dear Data{Meet} community,

Maadhyam in association with NextElection is running a unique Janta Parliament (JP) from today till 8th Aug with a special focus on urgent Covid related policy issues. With the Indian Parliament not being in session, the absence of the most important platform to seek representative accountability during the Covid pandemic has created a crisis of its own!

All the details are here: https://www.nextelection.com/featured/indias-first-ever-janta-parliament

Since this group is made of folks who are particularly interested in democracy, accountability and elections, I thought members of this group might find this initiative relevant.

It would be fantastic if folks from here participate in the 10 themes on the platform. Especially if the community can bring in policy proposals, articles, submissions based on data and evidence rather than anecdotes. If we do this well, it would be quite a torch bearer for the future and the model can be replicated down to the ward level.

Happy to answer any questions.

On a separate note, if anyone is interested in volunteering or lending a helping hand for this immense endeavour, please do get in touch.

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In brief:

1. The special session of Janta Parliament has started with citizen engagement across 10 themes on the NextElection platform, followed by 10 live sittings in August to simulate real Parliament proceedings.
2. Citizens can contribute suggestions, policy inputs, grievances and structured thoughts in each of the themes. With a chance to get invited to the live sittings as Citizen Experts
3. The live sittings will be simulated virtual Parliament sittings with a presiding officer running the House as per rules and procedures, with politicians, journos, experts, civil society etc

Outcome:

1. Policy proposals will be prepared along with suggestions and interventions presented by participants on the floor of the House
2. A citizen engagement exercise will be undertaken post the discussions - the policy proposals will be taken to people, for the purpose of eliciting even wider suggestions and opinions
3. Final proposals will be submitted to Members of Parliament so that they may table the same in Parliament, refer to those in discussions during Monsoon Session, submit those as memorandum to the Government

Thanks,
amit / for NextElection.com