Democracy in Digital Age

As Abraham Lincoln says “Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.” and many of us believe this statement to be the defining character of a Democracy. But has this been realized? Whether it is India or USA or U.K we have seen the governments, bureaucrats, and politicians acting against the interest of people. Whether it is Jallikattu, or NAFTA or Brixit, we have seen governments deviating from the people’ wishes & mandate. Whether it is the Animal welfare board of India, BCCI or Sports Authority of India, we have seen them being hijacked by vested interest groups who were found wanting in commitment for the cause, real-life experience or expertise in their area.

Failed Institutions & Failed Representatives

Vested interests by-pass people, by hijacking institutions. Faith & respect for an institution stems from its ability to champion truth, fight for the stakeholders they serve, non-interference in their functioning, autonomy, and their expertise. Slowly the people representatives across the world have allowed most institutions to wither away — whether it is American intelligence agency or Central bureau of investigation in India. Constant interference in their functioning by so-called “People representatives” have weakened and destroyed them. Occasionally some of these institutions have shone brilliantly under heroic people with a strong character like Honorable People’ president A.P.J. Abdul Kalam. This made us look up in the sky for Messiahs from heaven or from political moments or from reel life. But we were disappointed when reel life hero & real-life politicians turned into real-life comedians. Some can argue that comedy is not such a bad thing and we need it :-)

Failed Media and Fifth Estate

Next, we turned to so-called fifth estate/pillar of democracy, the mainstream media. Across the world, the trust in MSM is at an all-time low. They are being called names by people, by politicians and many others. Some of them still fight for truth and justice. But their efforts have been hijacked by vested interests. When 1% of the world controls 40% of its income, you end up paying a high price for speaking truth.

The current form of democracy was invented in days with very slow communication, where the subjects were not educated, they were not expected to understand complex policies, subjects, trade-laws etc. Because of which people were asked to choose their “representatives” once in 4 or 5 years. The representatives are supposed to “represent” the people. Supposed to have knowledge, energy, commitment, and character to work for the interest of the people\subjects whom they represent. Have we seen such representative — e.g: educated education ministers, healthy health ministers or wealthy finance ministers ( we may have seen the last one quite frequently :-) ). This mechanism of representation was created for an age where communicating across distances took time and great effort. Genghis Khan’ invention of horse-ride courier allowed him to build one of the largest empires in history. But the recent communication revolution has helped people to voice their opinion immediately and we can educate a large section of people in a short time on complex concepts. We have educated millions of people across the world about what A1 and A2 milk means, why native Indian breeds need to be saved, how they play a key role in agriculture etc. Many people in cities who didn’t have the opportunity to learn this, have done so in about a weeks time. One of the largest debates, awareness sessions, political mobilization, cultural awareness initiatives has happened without political initiative, main streamwithout government funding, mainstream media support- though some played a part from the start and more have joined now. The suppressed voices, whether in America or Alanganallur have found a platform to voice their opinion — louder than what a political platform or MSM would have provided them. This happened through social media- facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter. Isn’t time for us to re-look at the current mechanisms of governance? Shouldn’t we leverage the new age communication technology and Digital tools to reform our governance systems? When we trust our money to digital medium why not governance activities — like policy formulation, feedback from stakeholders, monitoring & administration. Should we stop with just Aadhaar and BHIM? Shouldn’t we progress to the C, D, E, F and till Z — into a new Digital world — where people’ opinion matters, where people's voices are heard, where half-truths don’t become full by repetition, where differences are reconciled peacefully by debates, likes & dislikes rather than by arson and anarchy.

The longest living democracy has made a choice, whether some may like it or not. Some may wonder it may turn out to be a self-defeating choice. But we Indians have to make a choice now. Are we going to build a better democracy for the future, of which our children and future generation will be proud of ? Like the way, we are proud of the “Kuda Olai Murai” practiced in Tamilnadu many centuries back.

Let us embrace the social tools and rebuild our governance platform for the future. Here are some suggestions,

New Age Village Self-Governance

1. Each residential colony, street or any base unit should have a social group (imagine facebook\whatsapp for now).
2. Membership to this group should be based on validated personal and residence data -E.g Aadhaar or ration card etc.
3. Each of this unit can select a president or chairman to represent them. This can be an interim measure for next 3–5 years. After which this post can be abolished.
4. All members of the residential units within a ward will become voting members of the ward level group.
5. Along similar lines, we can build this structure up to Taluk\County, District, State. and Nation.
6. Proposals\issues to a village council can be brought forward only if a certain % of voting members (e.g 15%) in a village approve that proposal\issue.
7. Instead of Village Councillors voting on a resolution, all the voting members of a village can vote and only if 50% of members approve a resolution, it will be taken up for implementation.
8. The current bureaucracy can exist for now. They will support in elaborating a proposal\program, implementation, and oversight. Slowly these responsibilities can be automated or delegated to self-governing groups.
9. Any resident should have full visibility into the progress of programs in a village. The social platform should have a photo, video, and other document sharing mechanisms to share the progress. By default, the system should allow full viewing rights to all program documents related to a village. The right to information should be built in, not based on requests. The budget for a road not laid or a building not build should become history and hopefully the CVC, CAG should become history as well, as people self-audit their government.
10. Residents should appraise the bureaucrats after every quarter or suitable time-frame, based on program progress and meeting of outcome targets.

Expert Groups

1. Each village or taluk or district (at a suitable level such that we are able to get sufficient experts to discuss, debate and educate people in respective specialization) should have expert groups for areas like health, agriculture, sports etc.
2. Members of this group have to be selected by the village voters based on their credentials, commitment, and service to their community.
3. These groups should debate policy initiatives for their respective units and present them to village units. All eligible village voters can vote and approve\reject\propose changes to the policies.
4. Once a particular policy has been finalized at this level. The same policy has to be debate and agreed-upon state level. Again all eligible voters should vote and decide.
5. Based on the above experience more powers can be devolved to district or lower level governance units.
6. Performance review of these expert committees will again be carried out by village voters on a periodic time-frame. They will also have the right to recall these members at any time of the year if 50% or more members support such a recall.

Potential Challenges

1. Very slow decision making, or policies without sufficient insights\research — These issues happen even in the current setup, there are laws which are being debated for decades. There are departments which make decisions based on ministers constituency. We can try the above recommendations as a pilot in a state or district level and based on learning we can fine-tune them.
2. Too much transparency — I believe there is nothing called too much transparency. We have been in the dark about health, wealth, and qualification of our government leaders for so long. Swinging the pendulum in the other direction for a period of time and for areas other than defense, foreign relations etc shouldn’t cause much damage.
3. We can’t trust facebook or google with our data — What is preventing us from building an indigenous best-in-class social governance platform? When we can build India-stack the bright minds of Indian IT and social activists can collaborate and build another Aadhaar or UPI or BHIP for this purpose.
4. Security & Hacking — We have entrusted billions of rupees to banks which transact most business electronically. We have implemented electronic voting and trust machines to track and tally our votes. Why can’t we trust them to capture and air our voices and opinions?
5. Digital awareness & infrastructure — Not everyone has a smartphone or the digital awareness. The last few weeks and months have shown that this is not really a big impediment to the changes proposed. There are proposals to give smartphones free. Technology companies are working to reduce the prices point of smartphones. With the arrival of real-time translation and mobile data infrastructure, this issue can be addressed very soon.

The above ideas need to be thought through before we get into implementation. There can be many practical issues. But radical times call for radical solutions, where we take uncharted paths, which can lead to opportunities to give voice to the weak, strengthen individual identities and at the same unify the nation & world.