New Punjab Government: What do citizens expect to be solved in priority

Schemes and Local Policies
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One of the things that will strengthen our democracy is to make voices and dialogues of citizens be heard out loud in Public. It is easier to be said than done.

However, efforts needs to be taken to first gain the trust of citizens who feel getting something solved through government or local authorities is a challenging task. But, with technology as an enabler we will be able to reach out to those citizens and get their voices heard like ever before.

One such recent effort, mobilising citizens of Punjab to share the top 2 priorities for their newly formed government to address in the state. We have used our whatsapp based chatbot, to make this process comfortable, convenient, safe and low-friction for citizens.

In a short span of 2-4 days we were able to get close to responses from 800 unique residents of Punjab.

Punjab Survey Results
Punjab Survey Results1081Ă—470 39.9 KB

46% of citizens expect Livelihood and Employment to improve
25% of citizens expect Quality of Education to improve

There were around 80 people dropped off by selecting NO in the beginning indicating they don’t want to continue.

Questions to think about:

  • Why do you think the 80 people don’t want to participate?
  • What do you think about the top 2 priorities? Are they important?
  • Has any of the new announcements from government address the above two priorities?
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Tagging some folks punjab to get us started: @Nippu @Bharath

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  1. There might be many reasons for not participating. One could be that these issues were there since many years but no one addressed. So, lack of trust on Government.
  2. These are very important issues. Employment being on top. As many youth from Punjab are moving abroad to settle there because they are not seeing any opportunities for them. There are no industries and if we talk about education, there is a huge gap in what students learn at educational institute and what they experience while they enter professional world. There are lack of skill building spaces in education.
  3. Government of Punjab has recently announced 25,000 new jobs for youth. It is a good initiative but still it does not address the situation which is critical at this time. But going forward, we are hoping more such announcements and implementations from newly formed Government.
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Excellent points @Nippu.

Some followup questions:

  1. What do you think will help gain trust on government? How this problem solvers community can help?
  2. What was the announcement? Could you share details about it?