How do citizens communicate their expectations to the governments?
Necessities are easier to communicate as they double up as campaign speeches and vote bank pleasers.
How would the government understand citizen's expectations for developmental needs?
How does the government get to know that the citizens need an better system to pay income tax?
What is the interface?
The elected representatives are too few and far between.
Again, a middle class, 20 something, educated, working in a Consulting company is not a "typical" Indian.
So, if I haven't ever been reached out to by the Government to understand what I "think" rather than what I "need", then it be just that I am not important enough or we aren't sizeable enough.
Every long-term decision made by the government needs to have an implicit understanding that "this is what the people want". How does the government get this idea?
One school of thought says that, "initiating new programs or massive changes to the governance structure is only possible through visionary leadership, by a leader who can think far enough, farther than the citizens. By that logic, citizen's expectations are limiting and short-sighted."
May be it is the size of the population in India, which makes, an outreach to gather public opionion, extremely difficult.
In a few European countries, citizen's participation in decision making is more organized. For example, Switzerland follows a system called "direct democracy", where it is possible to insist, by collecting a modest number of signatures, that any law proposed by the government must be submitted to a vote by the electorate.

The delays in decision-making in this progress would be debilitating in a democracy of India size with highly opinionated populace.

The question still remains, how can an educated, working citizen participate/ contribute to decision making in a democracy after electing a representative or a party to power?
When elected representatives are lambasted about the murkiness of politics, the usual refuge is that not enough educated, working citizens join politics.
They needn't.
Governance system should have points of interface where citizens can contribute to decision-making at various levels.
Other than experiments with electronic voting and using survey tools, the governance structures haven't evolved to incorporate the tools created from the Internet revolution to let citizens reach out to the Government.
How different is the communication
Citizen's expectations, can be looked at from 2 sides of the mirror.
1. How can the government fulfill my expectations of service delivery?
2. How can I communicate my expectations about decisions that the country makes? How can I contribute my knowledge and understanding in providing better service delivery for every body?
Other than the election, what is the other means by which a citizen can communicate with the Government? The Government of course, has the complete media machinery at its disposal to speak to its populace.
Citizens need more avenues and tools to communicate with the government not just once in 5 years but as frequently as possible.
Citizen groups and councils are doing a good job in their limited means. But more needs to be done.