With the increasingly politicised world and frequent political process, questions of polity has become a day to day affair. A large part of population is affected everyday by this, and thanks to social media, much more actively participating than previous generations. Active participation for previous generation as citizen was limited to voting in elections, and participating in a few rallies, if they intended from time to time. Activism was reserved for a few, mostly those who were actually involved closer with active politics.
But with our generation, activism is reaching every doorstep. Everyone has means to raise their voice and be heard. Every news of politics, be it international or small regional ones reaches us. Regional elections are matter of national discussion, and affect national politics many a times. While this easiness of information exchange has strengthened democracy, it has also put it at risk. Inflammatory articles reach you as quickly and in much larger volume than before. Masses are more polarised, as their convictions are reinforced through fake news, which masquerades as genuine sources of information.
With all this, the task of being an effective citizen has become tougher. Vetting correct information from barrage of false ones is a critical skill to gain itself. And it’s not just about the fake news, even the genuine ones at times are not straight facts, but opinions based on events. Opinions, which may carry biases of the ones sharing them. How they sound to you depends on which set of ideas you carry. When those comes from people of authority, they carry a different weight. You may immediately feel accepting, or critical about it depending on which camp that information originated from. And that’s where the effectiveness of a Meticulous Citizen comes in play.
Being a good citizen means you do your homework before acting on any information. You vote after understanding the policy, not because you’ve always voted for them. You listen to both sides, and then do activism not based on ideology but on logic. And to apply logic, you need to be critical, not just of the camp you disagree with, but the ones you support too. In fact, a good citizen doesn’t need to stay in a camp, fealty is a thing of feudal societies. We live in democracies where every vote counts. We may take it for granted, but having ability to elect our officials is a great privilege. The only loyalty we need to worry about is to our society as a whole. To excercise privileges of citizenship is what it is, an excercise.
What do you think about it?
Think It Yourself 