Now, a website to rate government services, MLAs, MPs

Starting today citizens across all constituencies of the country can rate services provided by the government and judge the performance of local MLAs and MPs on a digital platform establishing a new medium of connection between the voters and the voted. “Through this initiative, Indian citizens can rate services such as roads, electricity, clean drinking water, law and order, security and issues such as corruption and statements in public among others, specific to their area. Since these issues are the responsibility of an MLA, MP, CM and ultimately the PM, these ratings are used to generate report cards for each of these elected officials,” a release from iForIndia.org, which pioneered the platform, said.[caption id=“attachment_1038745” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Think and vote. Reuters[/caption] The report card of the collective rating of each constituency will be placed in the public domain and shared with the local elected representatives. “Report cards in the public domain will encourage like-minded people to come together to engage with the government in a positive discussion about accountability into governance, thus pushing the democratic process in the right direction,” the release said. “This is a unique opportunity for a meaningful engagement between the common man and the elected officials and will hopefully prove to be a catalyst in the evolution of democracy in our country,” said iForIndia.org founder Ankur Garg. Agreeing that the system is a boost to democracy, co-founder, Tarun Jain said, “Informed citizens can make intelligent decision while going to polls and can hold politicians accountable for their performance and promises made at the time of elections. iForIndia.org is an attempt to bring that accountability in the public sphere by driving data based discussions of political issues.” Security measures allowing a confidential way to rate services using a password protected account has been incorporated in the service. Other measures like mobile number authentication and fraud check algorithms guard against any kind of fraud. The system remains defensible against fake users and multiple account holders, the release said.