Vote for change... All the time

The current political logjam in the monsoon session of the Indian parliament has resulted in a delay to pass the GST. There was a petition raised in change.org that urged the politicians to debate instead of just raising slogans. At the time of my signing the petition, 15K+  people had signed it.  The last I checked 25K+ people had signed it. That is .002% of India's population. Statistically that is insignificant and doesn't trigger  our politicians to care.  Now imagine a situation where say 30% or 20% or even 10% of the population had voted. Would the parliament have ignored the verdict ? 

Probably not. Our politicians have gotten used to getting performance reviews only once every 5 years. What if their performance was constantly being monitored and more importantly we as citizens are more actively engaged. They probably wouldn't be as lackadaisical in their approach or use the "holier than thou" argument.

To me, a government is like a business venture and citizens are its customers. A government often ends up developing a broken product ( think of shabby governance) only to end up spending all it can on "marketing" to sell to the citizens ( customers). Anyone recall the 250+ Crore that the AAP government has budgeted for marketing ? What are they trying to sell when they have hardly been governing Delhi for a few months now ?

An incapable government often believes that selling to the public is important to shape their opinion and survive elections.  This works only when the citizens are not well informed and remain in the dark on issues of national interest.  

As citizens we have to constantly let the government know that we are watching and judging them. And that "we do not forget bad decisions". The petition started by India Inc was touted as a first of its kind. This made me wonder as to what is stopping us to voice our opinions on a regular basis. Petitions such as the one raised by India Inc need to be raised on a more regular basis and citizens need to be actively engaged in voicing their opinions. And this time we don't even have to worry our names missing from the election rolls.