Month: October 2011

Today, representatives and citizens are seen as two separate entities, creating an “us versus them” feeling. This needs to change. One way to do this is to create the equivalent of a “Social Causes for India” project. These 5-10 hours from each of us can make a huge difference in bridging the chasm that exists and also make for a much more integrated, wholesome and happier society.

We can think of many other ideas to improve trust and foster engagement between the twin pillars of our democracy – citizens and elected representatives.  It would be good to hear from you as to what you think can be done. Our individual passion combined with the collective power of political class can help create a better nation.

Fifth, political parties must explore the concept of primaries to foster inner-party democracy. At one time, Indian political parties used to have this. But this has slowly disappeared. By bringing primaries, we will ensure that local issues have importance, and it will also give importance to local leaders, who in turn will be more accountable to their constituents.

Finally, we need to discuss more about the role that we citizens can play. From what we have discussed above, the role of citizens seems quite narrow — confined to debate, sharing issues with elected representatives and voting. This cannot be all. Citizens need to help their elected representatives and do some volunteer work during their spare time. Involvement in actual work builds up trust and improves bonding between elected representatives and citizens.

Continued tomorrow.

Third, technology can help complement the face-to-face interactions. All elected representatives must have web pages, email IDs and mobile keywords wherein citizens can send feedback, suggestions and grievances to them. A time-based response mechanism must be set up. Companies do this, so why not the political class? The need is for a citizen relationship management system, which I am sure our technology companies can help create.

Fourth, citizens have a very important responsibility in a democracy – to vote. Only half of our eligible base actually votes. This needs to change. Innovations like e-voting have to be deployed to ensure we can get as close to maximum voting as possible. This will also reduce the influence that special interest groups have. For this, citizens need to ensure they are registered as voters.

Continued tomorrow.

First, there need to be forums where citizens can debate issues amongst themselves. The problem today is that there are too many claimants for the civil society mantle. Instead, what needs to happen is neighbourhood forums where citizens can debate and arrive at a consensus. These deliberations have to become the foundation of our democracy.  Citizens must be careful to weed out extreme positions since they will not take the discussion forward and only end up polarising the debate.

Second, the outcome of the citizen meetings need to be formally discussed with elected representatives periodically at open meetings. These can take place once every 2-3 months. A common complaint that citizens have is that elected representatives only show up just before elections asking for their vote! This needs to change. Elected representatives must be accountable to their constituents and interact at public meetings on a regular basis.

Taken together, these two steps will allow for a frank exchange between people and the elected representatives.

Continued tomorrow.

Even as Parliament gets down to discussing the details of the Lok Pal Bill, we need to take some learnings from what has happened in August. First, India’s middle class and youth have genuine reason to be unhappy. Anna tapped into their discontent about corruption, and struck a chord. There is a need to address this discontent. Second, there is anger against the political class. This too should be addressed. This needs a dialogue between people and politicians. We have to move from confrontation to constructive co-operation.

India’s democracy needs to become of, for and by the people. India’s government must become an agent of the people. We need to create greater trust and deeper engagement between people and politicians. After all, our shared goal is to create a better future for our nation.

Continued tomorrow.

From my Gov 2.0 series a year ago:

The Greatest Challenge for our Generation

India’s governments have through the years have failed in providing the most basic services to the population at large. A radical rethink is needed on the role of government and the government-citizen interface. The time has come for us, the citizens of India, to help in fixing government and governance in India.

The challenge is to rethink and re-architect India. The first version created in 1947 was doomed to fail because of its origins in continuing the institutional legacy of the British Raj, combined with flawed economic policies by a political leadership that should have known better. Those fundamental mistakes have hurt us badly and continue to do so. Without a recognition that we are on the wrong path, we cannot hope to make any changes.

India needs Gov 2.0 to create India 2.0 – because the first experiment has failed. We need to come together to define the country we want for our children – much like the Founding Fathers of the US did during the American Revolution. It is time we had an Indian Revolution.

That then is the great challenge to each of us – the generation born in independent India. We need to put nation before self, and change the construct of the government, and its relationship with the citizens. And in doing so, we need to create an environment and mindset of continuous thinking and improvement. This can be the greatest gift we can give to the next generation.

This week’s links:

• What’s next for Apple? by Matt Mullenweg. “Here are six things I think are inevitable for Apple to do over the next decade, from most to least obvious: maps, iCloud, payments, TVs, search, and cars.”
• A Google Engineer on Google+: from SiliconFilter. “Google+ is a knee-jerk reaction, a study in short-term thinking, predicated on the incorrect notion that Facebook is successful because they built a great product. But that’s not why they are successful. Facebook is successful because they built an entire constellation of products by allowing other people to do the work.“
• Smartphones: Technology replacing Contact? by James Steddum. “how do you keep those devices from becoming a dependency? How do you keep yourself from letting them take the place of direct human contact rather? It’s something to think about as technology continues to evolve and permeate our lives.”
• US VC Scene: by Fred Wilson. “The internet investing market is transitioning….Investors are moving into new areas like cloud, peer to peer marketplaces, and trying to take what worked in consumer into the enterprise.”
• The Decision-Making Flaw in Powerful People: from strategy+business. “Overflowing with confidence, many leaders turn away from good advice.”

Look at the details of a tender put out by the Home Ministry, as reported by Medianama in June. Everything that can be monitored will be monitored. Every move we make is being watched, every word we say online, every link we click, every mail we send, every SMS we send, every location we visit — everything is planned to be tracked (or perhaps already is). And we haven’t even started talking about the UID info.

At some point of time, this goes beyond the norm. We are supposedly citizens of a free country. Given some of the steps the government has shown itself capable of taking, there is little to say when the limits will be crossed and citizens who have opinions different from what they think is right can find themselves being harassed by officials.

It is one thing to say that the threat to terrorism is very real and hence this is called for. But there have to be safeguards for individuals.

As a society, we need to think harder about how intrusive we want the government to be in all our lives. The time is now. Because once the pattern is set, as we have seen from the US, no future government is going to undo it.

Under the guise of internal security and some random reasons, our privacy and rights are being deeply impacted. Let us put various elements together:

• According to a friend I spoke to, the recent restrictions on SMS have less to do with telemarketing and more to do with the government’s desire to prevent recurrence of April and August type mass mobilisation of people through SMS. Hence, the restrictions like 100 messages daily per SIM and the planned 5 paise termination charge on SMS. Apparently, the government folks were quite spooked with the way SMS was used to garner people and spread protests across the country.
• Digvijay Singh has filed cases against 8 websites and 22 people. This is a test of the new IT rules. The eventual goal here is to muzzle what people say on the Internet and social websites. Or at least scare people and websites enough that makes them fall in line.
• The new rules for launching TV channels have increased dramatically the licence fees to be paid. This will constrain new launches. Also, from what I have heard, news channels are under the scanner for the comments made by anchors during the August protests.

There’s more scary stuff.

Continued tomorrow.

In April, the rule regarding payment of service tax was changed. Earlier, payment had to be made when the money was collected. Now, payment of the tax has to be done on billing. In India, it typically takes 3-4 months for most payments to come in, and there is always some issue with some bills – write-offs, changes, etc. Taken together, this hurts cashflows for companies, and especially smaller, growing businesses, because money now needs to be paid to the government upfront rather than when the real cash comes in.

I am not a finance or taxation expert, but as a business owner, I can definitely saw this is not a good step for business. Over the past few years, paperwork has increased manifold with all the government rules and regulations, and now the cashflow is being hit. I am surprised that this issue has not been raised more vigorously by business owners and industry associations.

I hope someone sees the light. India’s growth needs to come from entrepreneurs, and rules like this make it much harder for entrepreneurs to succeed.