Overview
Civic engagement includes both paid and unpaid forms of political activism, environmentalism, and community and national service. Volunteering, national service, and service learning are all forms of civic engagement
Civic engagement is participation in activities that improve one’s community or address wider social issues. Create awareness of civic policies as well as other opportunities for civic engagement
Civic Engagement in Indian Context
India has very low civic engagement. A lot of it has to do with a lack of awareness about the present conditions or negative perception.
In India, the problem is compounded by
High Rural Population – making outreach and determination of service access point difficult
Low Literacy Rates – necessitating Assisted Access model of service delivery
Low Rural Tele-density – lowering the outreach of services in rural areas
Multilingual Population – necessitating delivery of services in local languages
There are various sites like OpenGov or PRS India which provide government assembly data. The Digital India initiative by the government of India also aims to tackle similar issues.
A lot can be done in improving the existing systems or bringing in new technologies to engage Indian citizens in policymaking, decision making and other activities.
Technology and Civic Engagement
Organizations like Civis.vote is working to create awareness about various policies by the Government while Haqdarshak runs an app that gives details of various government benefits citizens are eligible for.
Digital marketing can be used to improve awareness about various programs of civic engagement.
Technology can be used to bring together communities to work towards specific goals at the same time good technological projects can be crowdfunded and then implemented and used by the community to achieve better civic engagement
Suggest a Problem Statement
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Join us and together we shall work for the betterment of society