Citizen group seeks active role for people in city governance

Amidst criticism that ward committees have been reduced to namesake entities, a group of active citizens in Bengaluru is quietly trying to push for people’s participation in governance. And their pilot project — a citizen-centric waste management system — will get financial and technical support from Harvard University.

This group, which has been active on WhatsApp and Slack groups, is drafting a plan to implement a citizen-centric solution to sanitation and waste management. The social innovation project is to be implemented within a year.

The initiative intends to find an alternative to the existing waste management system through innovative, tech-based, transparent and professional engagement. Though the initial plan was to choose an area with 10 lakh people in East Bengaluru, the group is yet to finalise the project location.


“We are deliberating whether to choose a couple of wards where waste management is already streamlined or a constituency where it could be possibly implemented. We want to create a system where waste segregation, composting, processing and the philosophy of zero waste becomes a reality,” said GR Chandran, e-governance and public procurement consultant who is a member of the group.

Around 50 members, who joined the group about two months ago, have already created a portal where information related to the project will be shared on a regular basis.

Another member of the group, Shankar IS Sharma, an IT professional, said that the group will strive to overcome technological challenges in citizens’ participation in the long run. “Take, for example, the functions of ward committees. It is not transparent at all. The group wants to address this issue by technology-enablement. We wish to build a unified portal to connect ward committees and people,” Sharma said.

While the waste management project will come first, the group intends to push for a citizens’ participatory bill too. “Bengaluru needs a participatory legislation to bring in transparency and accountability in governance. But before we push for the legislation, we need a test bed, a successful model of citizen participation. That is why the waste management project,” Chandran said.

Namma Bengaluru Foundation’s Sridhar Pabbishetty, who is also an active member, said that the beauty of the group is how diverse viewpoints are debated and discussed.