Janaagraha, US varsity to work on citizen index

Janaagraha and Brown University, an Ivy League university at Rhode Island in the US, have tied up to work on developing an index to measure the quality of citizenship.

Janaagraha-Brown Citizen Index can be used to compare different cities in the country for their level of citizenship; and also see how these levels of citizenship have changed over time. Janaagraha is a not-for-profit organisation that aims to strengthen democracy in the country by working for citizen participation in urban local government.

As societies urbanise, it’s been observed that a new form of consciousness emerges. Hence, people stop seeing themselves as “subjects”, but view themselves as citizens. Subjects receive services from the state, be it a birth certificate, a ration card, a driving licence and or others — as an act of government kindness; whereas citizens receive these services as a matter of right.

 

As of now, cities are not where bulk of India’s voters live. Rural India, still 68 per cent of nation’s population, determines who rules.

“A paradox has thus emerged,” said Swati Ramanathan, co-founder, Janaagraha, adding “while urban India is the primary source of India’s economic growth, rural India is the primary site of political power.”

While villages of India have been studied a lot, the Janaagraha-Brown Citizenship Index will the first study of such questions about urban India.

The initiative aims to systematically investigate how urban Indians experience the state in their lives and their own role as civic and political actors in their communities and neighbourhoods. It will be based on three parameters: vote; civicness and exclusion.

Said Ashutosh Varshney, Sol Goldman Professor of International Studies & Social Sciences, director, India Initiative, of Brown University: “The index gives us a measure of the quality of citizenship, which we can use to do many things — compare different cities in the country for their level of citizenship.”