The Pune Municipal Corporation has a scheme to include citizens suggestions in the budget for the year. Anybody who has an idea for work that can be carried out in their ward/locality can download a form, fill it out and submit it at their ward office / nearest multi-utility citizen kiosk location / citizen facilitation centre.

Only projects that pertain to a neighborhood or locality and do not involve city level infrastructure may be suggested; the suggested work has to be under ward office purview. The suggested project cost should preferably be within Rs. 5 Lakhs. Examples of kinds of work that you can suggest are: Pavements / Water Supply / Drainage / Bus stop (in consultation with PMT) / Parks and Gardens (only repair works) / Bhawan (only repair works) / Public Toilets / Lights (Road / Traffic) / Roads (only Resurfacing). Example of kinds of work that are NOT acceptable are: Pedestrian Bridge / Speed Breakers (prohibited by Supreme Court) / Garden (new provision) / constructions on the land not owned by PMC.

Deadline for the form / maps submission is 10th September 2008.

All citizens should take a copy of the submitted project form to the office and make sure to get a form ID and ‘receipt’ of the submission.

Obviously, not all the suggestions will be accepted. However, various groups and NGOs will be monitoring the process to try and ensure that at the very least, information about why projects were accepted or rejected will be made available to the public after the budgeting process is over.

For more information, see the entry for participatory budgeting in the Pune Government wiki. In general, the Pune Government wiki is a very interesting place to hang out. It is just a few weeks old, and there is already a lot of interesting information already uploaded there.

There is only partial “tech” content in this post, since technology is being used to disseminate the information (the wiki, and downloadable forms). There are also plans afoot to make some of the submitted proposals browseable on a map of Pune, with the help of Pune-based SadakMap. However, forms still have to be submitted in person – that process has not gone online yet. Hopefully, that can happen next year.

Please help make this initiative a success. Forward this article to people you know who might be interested.