The whole city

Towards an increasing number of conscientious citizens

I would like to suggest a plan to involve school children in solving the problems of the city in the following way. The city corporation (or each ward) must launch and publicise an initiative where it establishes a complaint registering mechanism (a phone line, email id, webpage etc.) just for school children to report on the city’s problems like garbage, water leakage, road condition, traffic navigation etc. Perhaps we could start with one problem at a time. All city schools must encourage its children to be sensitive to the issue and actively register complaints through the school. Registering a complaint needs to result in an acknowledgement of some sort for record purposes and a webpage should display the number of complaints on any particular problem. Now the school and the children who are most active need to be recognised on TV or at public ceremonies by the local government agency so that it becomes an incentive. Of course, we would hope this will put more pressure on the people in power to solve the problem. But most importantly, it will make children more responsible and sensitive to problems. In a further step, the school should also encourage its students to talk to the people in power by assembling in large groups and demand answers.

I believe this initiative will progressively increase the number of conscientious citizens in the city.