By Akash Sakaria
NASIK/MAHARASHTRA: With an aim to bring accountability into politics, Nashik MLC Satyajeet Tambe released his progress report after 100 days of his tenure. The report was compiled through a survey conducted on his website where 11,620 people participated in five days. Interestingly, 87.15 of participants voted as ‘excellent’ in appreciation for Tambe’s work while 6.25% voted in favour of ‘good’. Remaining 6.6% voters said there is ‘room for improvement’.
Recently, Tambe released a website to showcase the places he toured to address public grievances and present the work done. The survey link was kept open for five days between May 21 and May 25 on the website through which people were asked 10 questions pertaining to his constituency work, behaviour, and areas Tambe needs to put more attention to.
The survey is a sort-of foundation stone in the political arena considering that neither state governments nor the Central government publishes their report card to the public. However, this is for the first time a political leader is seeking feedback on whether people are happy with the work done by their leader in the first 100 days.
This is a rare phenomenon that the work of a leader is directly rated and vetted by his voters through ratings on his own website. There may have been instances of internal surveys by leaders to gauge the mood of the people or an internal study to know the requirements of the constituency, but seldom does a political leader publicly seek feedback on his work and put the data out publicly as well for better transparency.
“In corporate companies or any job, an employee’s performance is reviewed every three months. It manifests a lot of things such as where the employee is falling short or where exactly s/he needs to put more effort. Similarly, political leaders are people’s representatives and are accountable to them, which is why such surveys are required. I will adhere to the suggestions made by the people through the survey,” said Satyajeet Tambe.
Tambe informed that he will continue sharing his progress report and seek feedback from the constituency every 100 days. “It is easy to seek votes once every five years. The efforts should be to constantly work towards making people’s lives better. This is why they get their leaders elected. It is our responsibility. Such surveys will improve transparency and communication between the leader and people.”
Throughout his tenure, Tambe has extensively worked and acquired funds from the government in his constituency after regular and aggressive follow-ups with the administration. To name a few, the Maharashtra Government recently sanctioned funds of Rs. 1.5 crore for the Nashik district. He also acquired Rs 55 lakh from the government to revive the closed examination centre at Professor Colony in Ahmednagar. Courtesy of his follow-ups, the government also sanctioned Rs 20 lakhs for the construction of a modern library and quality books from the funds received.
Moreover, he coined the concept of setting up a ‘Youth Information Centre’ which is set to launch soon. The government also responded positively and approved funds of Rs 1 crore each for setting up youth information centres in three districts of Dhule, Nandurbar and Jalgaon in Nashik Graduate Constituency. In the information centres, the youth will get solutions regarding important things in terms of their careers such as jobs, education, and higher education.
Voter expectations
Upon seeking feedback on what could be the issues Tambe should focus more on, around 54.87% people voted for youth issues while 15.08% people voted for women issues. Moreover, 14.81% put their vote to urban development issues and remaining 15.25 percent voted for ‘other’ issues.
· New measures required on unemployment, old pension schemes, youth issues
· Competitive examination and teacher recruitment should be done on time
· Ensuring the contract teachers’ voices reach the government
“There is no assessment tool of an elected representative which determines his/her performance. The approach of using surveys to seek feedback from voters is beneficial. It is good practice for an MLA to continuously evaluate his performance from the electorate after a certain period of time. Politicians have always taken people for granted. Once elected, they hardly face voters in their five years term. The initiative by MLC Satyajit Tambe is commendable. We hope and expect that he will continue the campaign in the future as well.”- Shailendra Khadke, Graduate Voter, Jalgaon
