Term Report Cards: Why MPs Need Civic Accountability Platforms
In most functioning democracies, elected representatives publish regular constituency reports: what they did, what they spent, what was resolved. In India, this norm barely exists. PRS Legislative Research and the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) have attempted to fill this gap with data-driven MP profiles — but the data is fragmented across multiple government websites and inaccessible to most voters.
What a Genuine MP Report Card Contains
- Parliamentary attendance: Sessions attended as a percentage of total
- Questions asked: Total starred and unstarred questions per session
- Debates participated: Number and quality of contributions to legislative debates
- MPLADS utilisation: Crore spent vs ₹5 crore annual allocation
- Constituency feedback response rate: Feedback acknowledged and resolved within 30/60 days
- Private Member Bills: Any legislation introduced
Why MPs Don't Publish Report Cards
The honest answer: transparency reveals underperformance. An MP who attended 40% of Parliament sessions and spent 60% of their MPLADS allocation has strong incentives to keep those numbers obscure. The current system enables this obscurity because no single platform aggregates all the relevant data.
How Citizens Can Build Independent Report Cards
Using publicly available data from Lok Sabha website, PRS Legislative Research, MoSPI's MPLADS portal, and feedback platforms like Seedhi Baat, citizens can build de facto report cards for their MPs. When this data is aggregated and shared in local WhatsApp groups, it changes the political conversation in a constituency.
Join Seedhi Baat and help us build the public MP report card system India has needed for 75 years.
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