 |
We, at the Research Foundation for Governance in India (RFGI), have always endeavoured to raise issues which seek to bring about a change in the way citizens look at the governance and the system.
One of the important aspects of the way our country is governed is the way the political parties of our country operate. Political parties play a very prominent role in shaping and evolving the democracy of our country. The policies and ideologies of the parties become crucial even in developing policies and their administration. However, in the present scheme of things, there is a large disconnect between the functioning of political parties and a common citizen.
In order to bridge this gap, RFGI now undertakes “A study on Inner-party Democracy in Political parties in India” with the basic objective of raising awareness amongst citizens on how political parties function in terms of democratic processes followed for its administrative and functional aspects. We would also look at the way parties outline a career growth for a party member in terms of opportunity and accessibility, while looking at the broader question of the attractiveness of ‘politics’ as a career.
Our message would be encapsulated in the premise of moving towards a more democratic and reformist model of political party functioning wherein party members get a bigger say in the functioning and decision making stages, making the party machinery reflect a complete inclusive system of all those involved.
Essentially, we are not looking at comparing parties or passing judgments on whether a political party is internally more democratic than the other, but rather setting up a benchmark for all stakeholders to move towards. The stakeholders involve the political parties, the governance mechanism and most importantly, the citizens. We would like to look at an evolved system with citizens having more faith in political parties, primarily driven out of our proposed new model of meritocracy and fairness in all aspects, be it office bearers, ticket distribution etc.
The project would involve getting hold of secondary data sources and collecting information on the major outline parameters like major roles/responsibilities of members of parties, structure of administration, policy of ticket distribution, ease and access to register as a member of a political party while creating a hypothesis and project methodology underlining these points. We would come out with questionnaires for citizens as well as politicians, and try to capture insights into inner-party democracy and the outlook citizens have towards the same. The work would also involve getting a first-hand feel of the process with interactions lined up with political parties, academicians, and other relevant personalities.
We would publish a White Paper on this research idea, taking it through a volley of round table discussions with prominent people and opinion makers and finally culminate with a grand seminar to raise awareness on this issue. We thereafter aim to create new benchmarks and present our recommendations to relevant stakeholders as well as to people of the nation.
We are confident that our research outline would be successfully explored through this initiative and that we would be able to bring about that visible difference – that tangible change.
In this regard, we would require volunteers to take up this challenging assignment which promises a lot of learning in the real sense. It is not about just churning out a report that you would be looking at, but rather an opportunity to gain a first-hand experience of how things work and the impetus to come out with newer insights.
We would urge you to join us on this path of raising awareness, bringing about a change and on a smaller level, moving the benchmark a notch higher so that we look towards a brighter future.
With Regards,
Team RFGI
| |
