Over 1.2 billion inhabitants of India are inquired by the state committee about the ways of spending money received from taxpaying public. The question is raised on Facebook.
This government panel that is known as India Planning Commission has called its Facebook page “Twelfth Plan”. It concerns expenses from 2012 to 2017. Both the page and relevant website were created by Montek Singh Ahluwalia. He explains the choice of Facebook as a way to gather input as an intension to involve small villages along with business groups into expression of opinion.
The importance of the input becomes clearer if we take into account the amount of money involved. There is about $1 trillion saved for fixing potholes and eliminating power shortages, for example. It was claimed by Reuters which reported Ahluwalia as saying:
The intention is not that we are going to necessarily respond to every suggestion. But very often I hear people say that you fellows in the Planning Commission just set up steering groups with your own buddies and people you’ve known, and you’re all over sixty years old and you have people of the same age and most of them don’t have a clue what’s really going on… We must have some mechanism of connecting… If you want to criticize this as gimmicky, please do so.
The idea of asking people on Facebook to express their opinion seems to be very simple. But it is valuable in the sense that it is pioneer. State authorities did not consider opinion of country residents before whilst drawing up an infrastructure budget for five years. Will the innovation prove its value and spread to other countries? Or was it not worth while?
What is your attitude towards India’s effort to get public input via Facebook?
