Rise of problem-solving, digital citizen

The hope that technology will deepen democracy has been around for quite sometime now, since at least the introduction of the telegraph, but it has proved elusive. With each new generation of technology, it seems that the usual powers?that?be have figured out how to use it to their advantage, and dashed wider expectations of change.

Now comes the latest round — social media. Whereas all the older developments in communication and information technologies had very tech-sounding labels, we are now beginning to see, for the first time, technology being understood through its potential use in shaping non-technical worlds. Can the emerging technolgy shape society? Can it shape media? And therefore, can it shape democracy itself? These were not questions we asked about wires, bits and bytes, until now.

This is especially significant because of two other trends — the rise of urbanisation and globalisation, and a renewed understanding of citizenship. There is a new Pax Urbana around the world, as dense clusters of human life in cities is becoming the norm. In this new geography, people are connected much better to each other, both within their own cities and across continents. A common thread of civic issues, community concerns, and innovative ideas binds these clusters together, winding them ever more tightly into something altogether new: problem-solving citizens.

A few months ago, I found myself in Sao Paulo for a conference on urbanisation, around the same time that popular unrest against mis-governance was spilling onto the streets of Brazil. A few locals attending the event at Ibirapuera Park invited me to speak to a circle of social activists the following day. The conversation that ensued could have been held anywhere in the world, except for the language.

What people care about, and are acting on, appears very similar in many parts of the world. This week, I'm putting together a short document to guide Kenyan civil society and business about how technology can anchor joint problem-solving efforts in Nairobi.

The rise of the problem-solving citizen, in urban areas in particular, directly impacts our understanding of democracy. In India, in particular, the public's expectation so far has been that the mai-baap sarkar must solve all problems, while citizens have convinced themselves of their helplessness to do anything about the large development deficits we face. But Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are shaking up this resigned world — to the point where citizens now see themselves as part of government, too.

The rise of public information platforms is clear evidence of this. In the last few years alone, I have been part of building a transport information system for cities, then a governance observatory, and a heritage portal. Now, some of us are working on a public safety information system, and an Environment portal. These are all the sorts of things that in the past we would have expected the sarkar to do. But now, armed with a purposeful notion of 'government BY the people', we are thrilled to find that we can do these ourselves.

Such technically-anchored changes are also easily scalable — since the same base of software and cloud-hosting can be used in any city, with only the data being 'local'. Media companies are also interested in this new form of 'content', which citizen consumers appear to want, because it is directly focused on their local communities.

Why is all this relevant to democracy? For two reasons. The quality of government is strengthened greatly when people know more things about their government, and social media has made this extremely simple. And in the process of making it simple, it has also turned the attention of many people away from conventional media towards more peer-to-peer ways of keeping track of the world around us. Around the world, governments are scrambling to meet this challenge. And it is increasingly being asked, "could the next election be won without ICT?" Sooner than later, the answer to that question will become obvious. Digital democracy in cities is coming, and it is here to stay, because the forces that are driving it are themselves raging among us.

There is clear evidence of all this from the India Against Corruption campaign, and the political spin-offs from that effort. Every single mass-connect activity of the campaign leveraged technology greatly. Bulk sms'es to millions of people were only a push-button away, at globally competitive rates. Setting up ring-tones with the major telecom providers was a cinch, too. Surveys, viral email marketing, missed-call campaigns to receive messages and updates from IAC, registering new volunteers and parceling out tasks among them — all of these ran on technology platforms, and competed effectively with the large media attention the government can command.

And paricularly important, young people — who were the real target of the campaign, and its vibrant force — were much more attuned to these new technologies than the conventional newspapers, or even television. Even when the government moved to cut off bulk sms'es and emails, young people themselves pointed us to alternatives to circumvent the new restrictions.

The political campaigns of new-age parties, too, has naturally gravitated to these same tools. Even poster-making, which doesn't seem like a terribly tech thing, is enabled by ICT. A template on power-point with the standard messaging and the logos can easily be leveraged into a poster that is shared across any geography, and printed by volunteers on an as-needed basis in their own neighbourhoods.

Entrepreneurs in the tech world, and in the media world, have also proved useful allies to all this. These are the people who know how ICT is already being used for mass communication and advertising, and they have closely advised IAC, Loksatta and AAP — and possibly others, too — on how to use these same tools for public interest campaigns and political contests.

All this is no doubt exciting, and promise much change too. But we must also ask: is there a limit to what we can achieve through digital democracy? It seems clear enough that we can get better information through technology, and communicate among ourselves better as a result. But what about the larger things? Planning, for instance. Or policy. Can ICT positively impact those aspects of public life? Can we change the nature of city planning or state policy development using these tools? This is the frontier that is now being explored.

Sooner or later, citizens will create the tech-enabled government that they want. In Estonia, even parliamentary debate and cabinet meetings are held without needing to bring the participants physically together. There's a lesson in that, too: the changes that technology can enable will happen very much faster if governments themselves believe in participatory democracy. In India, unfortunately, this is not the case yet, but with every new election, that possibility is drawing closer.

In five years, technology-enabled political contests will tip the scales of power, so that those who demand greater citizen involvement in decision-making will routinely reach the corridors of power. Perhaps as soon as 2014, the missed call is about to connect.

(Ashwin Mahesh is president of Loksatta Party in Karnataka)