Missing Communal Groups

I’ve been living in a Delhi Development Authority (DDA) neighbourhood for nearly 20 years now. Yet, apart from small groups there is hardly any “community” feeling among most residents. One of the key issue is that people do no know each other. There are few communal platforms for them to gather under. Such platforms are often restricted to a few festivals, which are also often limited to different religious or regional communities.

Politicizing of the Resident Welfare Associations

As with most of the country, the dirty politics has even vitiated the welfare associations. And voting is limited to a very small margin of members, and just like at the national level, inept and incompetent people get elected. And most often they have little / no community agenda but rather their own one-up-man-ship.

Decisions are often taken by suppose elected members of these RWAs which are often not aligned with the priorities of the community. Several such agenda is decided by the narrow viewpoints of the elected repsresentatives themselves.

Unlike the large number of populations at the national level, there is no reason why in communities of 500-5000 houses, in cities like Delhi, an online hosted software platform cannot be used for further community voices through direct suggestion and voting of the agenda that people wish to follow.

This software platform is inspired by this motive.

Features

Here are some features that this platform should have:

1. Allow  members / elected representatives to raise “issues”
2. Allow members to vote on issues raised by members / elected representatives
3. Enable discussions around each “issue” under the same thread
4. Log of expenditure under various heads for increasing transparency
5. Issues being “worked upon” – conversion of up-for-voting issues to be converted to “Issues Undertaken”
6. A profile of each resident, if they choose to disclose – for community development and engagement
7. Allow residents to login using their Social Profiles such as LinkedIn or Facebook; and create their community profiles with specific talents or/and interests they feel they could offer their community members