I received this email from Change.org – it was Women and Child Minister for India – Maneka Gandhi petitioning for policy ideas! Whacky, but this is a government for the absurd. I delted the email and forgot about it, till Swarna Rajgopalan asked about it on Twitter. Someone had forwarded the email to her. She couldn’t find the link to the petition. So I dug it out of the trash, and went through the email. This is it. As it is. There is no petition it is a carefully crafted promotion of a government form that looks like a notification for a new petition. Additionally, the sender for the change.org email is “Maneka Gandhi” and not “Change.org” as for usual petitions.
change.org email notification from Maneka Gandhi
As a bonus, thelink to the privacy policy from their email gives a 404 error – page not found. Obviously it is a broken link, but what a poetic metaphor for their actions contained in their own email!
Dear Vidyut,
I am writing to you to see if you have a new idea for women safety and empowerment.
We at the Ministry of Women & Child Development have formulated the National Policy for Women. It has been a 2 year process with several stakeholder consultations.
This transformative policy will address the needs of women in the New India and also guide the functioning of the Government in decades to come.
We have a draft ready and before we conclude it, I am seeking some out-of-the-box ideas and suggestions from you that could be incorporated into the policy.
Vidyut, I have been happy to take action on Change.org petitions supported by you. We have taken steps to ease the passport rules for children of single parents and control the alarming rates of caesarean section births.
I would now like to hear your suggestions for this policy by the 15th May 2017. Click on this link to submit your suggestion.
You can also send your suggestions on Twitter and on the Facebook page of the Ministry. Don’t forget to add#NationalPolicy4Women on all your suggestions.
Thank you for participating in developing this Policy for Women.
The person (or organisation) who started this petition is not affiliated with Change.org. Change.org did not create this petition and is not responsible for the petition content.
Change.org · 548 Market St #29993, San Francisco, CA 94104-5401, USA
So I made a suggestion:
Misuse of subscription lists by Indian government
This is the end of the road for supporting causes on Change.org for me. I had never figured out why anyone needs a special website to create petitions, but given that a majority of petitions are made to the government, a site that gives the government access to its most loyal readers is clearly not one that can be trusted.
