Portal based on Parliamentary constituency launched
by Pritam Sinha, Research Associate at DEF (pritam@defindia.net)

India's first local area portal based exclusively on one parliamentary constituency has been launched. http://localareaportal.org is a futuristic project of Digital Empowerment Foundation where the plan is to represent every such cluster from where people’s representative is chosen right from parliamentary to assembly up to district, block and panchayat level representative. There are many portals where a local area is represented on the web each one an entity in itself separately. DEF’s LAP project puts together all the local areas in one single webpage that is http://localareaportal.org.

All the data put on the site is first hand and authentic. DEF had send one of its high level fact finding mission team to the Dausa parliamentary constituency and collected and collated the entire data. The idea is to put together before any visitor a web picture of Dausa where every minutest detail of the parliamentary constituency is made readily available at one glance. No important aspect of public life is left unattended or unaccounted be it historical, cultural, economical etc. Any data related to the constituency is there in the web page.

The idea is to encourage any person to have a feel of the place and may be make him/her interested enough to plan a visit to that place be it Dausa or any place about which we have a web page. People’s representative can use the interface for any feedback from the janata back home. Any announcement from the MP’s or the MLA’s concerned are to be posted on the website for easy public access. The possibilities of such a public utility forum are seemingly endless. For example, this way the e-government of the area can also be hastened.

India is the world’s largest democracy and with a number of constituencies at different levels. With the spread of the Internet percolating down to the ‘last mile’ or the ‘first mile’ whatever you term them, its high time at least every parliamentary constituency has its own unique identity on the web a Local Area Portal (LAP).  The LAP would serve as the window on the web for that constituency. As the MP might not be available for every citizen all the time, the LAP would serve as an easy interactive medium by which (s)he can keep rapport / interacting with each other. This way the representative also will be kept on his toes and the public would feel that the elected member is just a click away from him/her. So, it’s a wonderful initiative by the Digital Empowerment Foundation (DEF) to launch such a web portal on Dausa Parliamentary constituency during the Manthan Award Gala 2007. That the MP from a tiny Lakshdweep Parliamentary constituency inaugurated the site pressing the ‘Go’ button, the chapter itself marked a small step in the larger scheme of things of the parliamentary democratization on the web. You can read its contents both in English as well in Hindi.