City govt begins crowdsourcing of Budget

Jamuna Prasad Shukla, a newsvendor from West Vinod Nagar, wants roads in his colony to be relaid. Chamanlal Sharma of Mandawali wants the drains in his colony to be repaired and cleaned before monsoon to avoid waterlogging.

The two were among hundreds of residents of the Patparganj Assembly constituency, represented by Finance Minister Manish Sisodia, who on Sunday expressed their voice at the ‘Janata ka Budget’ (People’s Budget) initiative launched by the Arvind Kejriwal government to involve voters in budget making.

The brainchild of Kejriwal, the ‘Janata ka Budget’ scheme takes budget making to the doorsteps of the people and encourages them to decide where the development funds should be spent. Apart from Patparganj, 11 other constituencies will also witness such an exercise.

Encouraging people to participate in large numbers, Kejriwal said: “This is residents’ government. Humare mohalle mai hamari sarkar (we will govern our own colony),”
“We are doing something which has traditionally been practised in village. Collective decision making at the colony level is the new face of democracy,” he said. 

The first meeting under the exercise was held for the residents of West Vinod Nagar Block ‘E’. But there were many residents other colonies who could not stop themselves from coming to the event to get an experience.

Sharma, a retired private firm worker, was one of them. “I was curious so I came. The officials listened to me patiently even though my colony’s residents were not formally invited.”

Sharma and Shukla penned down their development demands for their area on a paper and handed over to the volunteers present at the venue.

During the proceedings, Kejriwal interacted freely with people.
Sisodia said people will now not need to run after their elected representatives for five years to get their work done.

“They will themselves take the decisions for their areas’ development,” he said.
Sisodia also hinted at the government’s commitment to cut down wasteful expenditure and allocate optimum funds for development.

After all the suggestions were collected from residents of Vinod Nagar, the top 11 issues raised by them were put to vote at the venue for spending Rs 50 lakh in Block ‘E’.
A final list of top priority areas were selected on the basis of voting.

The demand for a library got 230 votes, dispensary request got 226, road repair got 210 and a CCTV network got 197 votes. The top four demands were approved for action.

An AAP volunteer who was helping the voters understand the process admitted there was some confusion as the residents started raising their hands for all the 11 demands and it was difficult to narrow down to the top four demands for spending Rs 50 lakh.