GAURAVSIKKA.COM

Much of my free time now goes into reading and learning about community building and citizen movements. One of the pioneers of this field in India is Ramesh Ramanathan, writer of the Mobius Strip column for MINT and founder of Janaagraha, “A movement to include people’s participation in public governance, which has now evolved into a robust institution for Citizenship and Democracy.”

Besides his groundbreaking work, Mr. Ramanathan is able to go past the superficial issues on hand and articulately identify what really ails our political and social system. Three recent articles in particular provide great insight into issues that are on everyone’s mind since the 26/11 attacks.

1) Our politicians are useless but are we responsible citizens of the largest democracy in the world?

For years, India’s upper classes have been waltzing through life making minimal contact with the government. We have been going above the government, below the government or around the government, but we never really engaged with the government.

Last week in Mumbai, all that changed for India’s aspirational class.

We’ve come up against the one issue where we can’t dodge the dependence on the state: terrorism. Suddenly, we are waking up to discover that the same state that we have ignored for the past 60 years is necessary for us to make sense of our lives (a visceral glimpse into the life of the poor). And with it comes a whole new definition of the citizen-state relationship. This is existential exfoliation.  (more…)

2) “I want to make a difference but don’t know where to begin.” For those who get past this initial conundrum, it’s a struggle to become relevant!

On the politician front: many politicians have told me over the years that the urban middle class is irrelevant. Politicians are market players, they react to the signals they receive from the people. So, this observation is not a value judgement, it’s a statement of reality.

Politics in India is still substantially driven by identities of caste, subcaste, subcommunity within that. Elections are like chess games, with each major party watching whom the others are nominating in each constituency like hawks and then working to break the numbers: getting relatives from the opposition candidate’s family to stand, incentivizing some independent candidates to step up, buying off others who could swing key blocks. With each move, the calculated aim is to splinter the electoral math and nudge the needle by the barest minimum margin for victory. (more…)

3) So then are we living in a false democracy? Read this story about a murderer from India living a new life in Dubai.

“But this is strange, are you blaming India’s democracy for you being a criminal? You are the one who committed the crime. So they should have caught you and put you behind bars, is that your complaint?”

“Yes! How can people get away? Here, if I had done anything similar, I would have lost my life. Maybe if they had caught me when I was doing petty crimes, I wouldn’t have slid down this path. Dekhiye, we all want to live good lives, but majboori hai. We need to know that the system works. Bura insaan bhi sudharna chahta hai. Everyone wants to reform and live a clean life. But if the system allows you to remain bad and actually makes things worse and forces you to take the wrong path, where is the hope? (more…)

The Economist’s recent special report on India, “An elephant, not a tiger”, probes into the country’s economic, social, political, and geopolitical affairs, providing insight into how India will fare in her quest to become a superpower. Despite all its chaos, bureaucracy and occasional violence, India has had a remarkably successful past few years, but can we cope with the economic downturn? Shocking, depressing and hopeful at the same time, these are stories that most Indian are accustomed to. Nonetheless, it’s clear that India faces daunting challenges going forward and here are some highlights from the report.

POVERTY

• According to the World Bank, in 2005 some 456m Indians, or 42% of the population, lived below the poverty line. In 1981, by the same measure, the numbers were 420m and 60% respectively. The government’s own estimates are lower. But everyone agrees that poverty in India is falling much too slowly.
• The effect: India has 60m chronically malnourished children, 40% of the world’s total. In 2006 some 2.1m children died in India, more than five times the number in China.

LABOR

• Some 65% of Indians live on agriculture, which accounts for less than 18% of GDP. Therefore the biggest challenge will not only be to create more productive jobs but also to upgrade skills of the large labor force through education and training.
• Roughly 14m Indians are now being added to the labor market each year, and that number is rising. Half of India’s people are under 25 and 40% under 18. Therefore the pace of development has to be rapid in order to mobilize the youth population.
• The manufacturing sector has its own complexities; to escape throttling labor laws, Indian entrepreneurs tend to keep their operations small: 87% of manufacturing jobs are with companies that employ fewer than ten people.

EDUCATION

• By one estimate, which may be optimistic, only 20% of jobseekers have had any sort of vocational training. If India cannot find employment for this lot, poverty will not be reduced and India may face serious instability.
• India is already worryingly violent. A Maoist insurgency in eastern India, which Prime Minister Mr. Manmohan Singh has called “the greatest internal security challenge we have ever faced”, is an obvious ill omen. Where it is spreading, in poor, agrarian and broken places, the “invisible threads” that bind India, in the phrase of Jawaharlal Nehru, its first prime minister, are almost non-existent.
• A combination of all the above factors could lead to social unrest, starting out as mini-revolts that we’re beginning to see across the country. What is being termed as Fourth Generation Warfare (4GW), could be a serious threat to India’s stability if the Government does not implement bold reforms.

INFRASTRUCTURE

• As the River Ganges in Varanasi enters the city, Hinduism’s sacred river contains 60,000 faecal coliform bacteria per 100 millilitres, 120 times more than is considered safe for bathing. Four miles downstream, with inputs from 24 gushing sewers and 60,000 pilgrim-bathers, the concentration is 3,000 times over the safety limit. In places, the Ganges becomes black and septic. Corpses, of semi-cremated adults or enshrouded babies, drift slowly by.
• Besides the religious implications, this is a result of India’s execrable sanitation methods. By one estimate, only 13% of the sewage its 1.1 billion people produce is treated.
• India’s urban roads are choked: the average speed in Delhi has fallen from 27kph (17mph) in 1997 to 10kph.

POLITICS

• Of the 522 members of India’s current parliament, 120 are facing criminal charges; around 40 of these are accused of serious crimes, including murder and rape.
• In the 2004 election Congress and the BJP mustered only 283 seats between them, a record low and only 11 more than is needed for a majority. As a result, most energy is lost in keeping alliance members of the coalition government happy, causing friction and disharmony.

ECONOMY

• The RBI has already revised its forecast for GDP growth this year downwards, from 9% to 7.5%, and even that may be optimistic. Most independent forecasters see a further drop next year, possibly to 5.5%.
• The case for optimism: Until recently India’s investment splurge has mostly been covered by domestic savings: as a share of GDP, savings have risen from 28% in 2003-04 to 35.5% last year.

WHAT LIES AHEAD?

India has managed to grow rapidly for the last 5 years despite all these hindrances, but the global recession has caused the first net outflow from Foreign Institutional Investors (FII) in 11 years. This credit freeze will create complications in the Government’s ability to raise capital and sustain growth levels that are imperative for the 14m people joining the workforce every year. The need for reform is urgent and we need to do our part as citizens to instigate change.

Personally, I was extremely disenfranchised by our governance recently and wondered if it was worth voting in the upcoming General Elections of 2009. I wondered if change could really come about with no party challenging the status quo of corruption and incompetence. But that is foolish. We do have some intelligent leaders that care about India’s future but are constantly bogged down by bickering from alliance members. It’s time to set aside our regional differences and unite as one nation, recognizing that the right to vote is our greatest weapon in a democracy!

My feeling is that we have enough headroom to grow despite macroeconomics factors but we can’t afford another coalition government at this stage. If we can go out to vote in record numbers next year and either the Congress or BJP win a majority in Parliament, I’m confident we’ll start seeing reform from the Center.

Cast your vote, don’t vote your caste!

WHAT: Mumbai Screenwriters is a writing group for aspiring and established screenwriters. Through weekly meetings and online collaboration, the group will brainstorm ideas and support each other in developing concepts into finished pieces for short films or features.

WHEN: Every Sunday, start date TBA

WHERE: TBA

WHY: I’ve been getting many ideas for short stories and screenplays recently but finding it hard to make time to write and develop them further. I’m looking to start a small writing group that can meet once a week to improve writing through workshops, storytelling exercises and critiques. The group can also setup a collaborative space at www.mumbaiscreenwriters.com to engage in free writing and blogging.

JOIN: Leave a comment on this post, email me, tweet me, or join the facebook group.

Photo Credit: Zen

Here’s a quick update on the Rise Up India initiative. I pitched the idea of a social platform to promote civic and political action to both the Professionals Party of India and Ashoka. PPI sent me an “Awareness Release” (attached below), which I urge you to go through and send to your family and friends.

I await further contact from PPI’s General Secretary and Head of Election Strategy about possibly meeting with their core group at their next gathering in Mumbai. I also spoke with the Ashoka team in Delhi which seemed receptive to the idea but still await feedback from the Mumbai office.

Professionals Party of India: Awareness Release (Post 26/11)

Here are some pictures of the perigee moon I took on December 12, 2008.

A full moon has occurred closer to the Earth than it has done at any time for the past 15 years.

The Moon’s elliptical orbit means its distance from the Earth is not constant.

It was a little over 350,000km away as it passed over the northern hemisphere, about 30,000km closer than usual. (via BBC)

A few days back I seeded the idea of “Rise Up India” (RUI) in response to the Mumbai terror attacks. After evaluating the reactions of people, I believe the site needs to focus on 3 key areas: idea forming, education and action.

There is a massive outpouring of ideas, emotions, and a will to contribute, but there will be a big drop-off on how much of this will convert to action. Therefore it is critical to collect these ideas while the sentiments are fresh and riseupindia.com can first launch as a social platform to share and rate ideas in a Digg format.

The educational aspect of the site will include community outreach sessions. A learning forum where people can learn from experts of crisis management, and those who have gone through attacks, whether they come from NYC, Palestine, Jerusalem, Spain, London, Bali or Sri Lanka. And then in the long term, there needs to be learning cells/democratic two-way dialogues set up in universities and colleges across India, so that everyday youth begin to learn the basics of citizen-driven governance: how to start a non profit, what public administration means, how to handle a disaster/attack, what it takes for a democracy to work in the 21st century, etc. We’ve learnt the hard way about the consequences of not having such systems in place.

The reason for our government failing in its response to the terror attack is a lack of leadership, probably stemming from the fact that Shivraj Patil had no experience in crisis-management. This meant that the NSG, MARCOS, QRT, ATS, and Mumbai Police didn’t have an overriding commander to direct operations and combine resources. Don’t even get me started on our “commander-in-chief”, PPP.

Simply put, I want to create an action-oriented social platform to breed young and able politicians who can bring a change in governance. Most people want to participate in politics and contribute to change but don’t necessarily know where to begin. I want to use the power of social media and the Internet to usher in a new wave of politics. Barack Obama is a true new media politician and fascinating lessons can be learnt from his campaign about grassroots action.

We will create a social platform through which “citizens” and “candidates” can register based on their constituencies. They will be urged to post issues and grievances that are being ignored by their local authorities—infrastructure, security, legal, social, disasters and the like. These issues will be seen by our “potential candidates”, either recruited or from the community at large. They will accept “open” issues and embark on the challenge to solve this issue facing the community.

The candidates will be responsible for building a swat team, marketing, PR, and raising funds. They will also be assigned experienced mentors from the site who will guide them through the campaign. Each detail of the campaign will be highlighted and documented by the candidate’s staff as well as citizen journalists using social media tools such as YouTube, flickr, wikis, twitter, and blogs. Once the issue is “closed”, the constituency and a special panel will vote on the candidate’s performance and assign them points based on a specialized rating system.

Where do we go from here? Social action is not enough, we need erudite leaders who can use tempered judgment and political theory to implement effective public policy. There is no doubt about the caliber and success of Harvard University graduates and the like. I’d like the same opportunity for the site’s candidates if they are to lead the world’s largest democracy. The first phase of community service can be seen as the vetting process, similar to Obama’s time on the ground in Chicago. Two years after creating positive change in their communities, I hope these candidates can get the best education possible by setting up foundations/scholarships with premier universities such as Harvard. Education is THE ONLY way we can eradicate poverty and the hatred that fuels terrorism.

Requirements and next steps for the project:

• My twitter pal Palam has agreed to help build the architecture of the site but we’d need 2-3 more programmers to help with the framework.
• If multiple people work on the project, we’d need to use a tool like Subversion to share, update and track all code changes. It would be very beneficial if we can find someone with experience in managing projects using this software or the like.
• Designers who can create an inspiring brand identity that will resonate across the country and transcend all mediums.
• Online and offline volunteers to launch and promote a pilot project (possibly for a Mumbai constituency).
• Leaders/fellows who can inspire teams in these key categories as a massive offline operation will be required to fuel our online activity.
• If you’d like to contribute in ANY way please email me at blog AT gauravsikka.com, leave a comment below or find me on twitter.
• Once we have some volunteers in place we can setup a wiki to begin formalizing the site framework and figure out how it will interact with our offline agents.
• There are many such forums and groups cropping up but we’d need to combine and operate under one banner because there is only one vision for New India. Someone suggested that we provide this social media support to an existing party like the Professionals Party of India. I like the idea. What are your thoughts?

RISE UP INDIA: Bring Change to Governance

Disclaimer: Many thanks to Priyanka Joseph for her ideas on education and community outreach, which I have shared in this post.

While reading Nina Yiamsamatha’s Don’t Hate on Twitter post recently, I struck upon an analogy that explains why I think Twitter is awesome. Remember the Verizon ads that have a bunch of people following you around to show the ubiquity of their network signal? Now imagine a similar multitude of creative folks with diverse backgrounds and interests always there to instantly give you feedback on thoughts, develop ideas, collaborate on projects, and share interesting content. That’s twitter! Seriously, don’t hate on it.

Are you one of the Indians that bemoans our paltry medal tally at the end of every Olympics? I certainly am! “A country of one billion can get gold medals in just shooting and hockey?” is the usual rant. Well, now we have a solution and you can help.

GoSports’ goal is to identify, groom, and manage sporting talent in India. The company was founded in Bangalore by an Olympian swimmer and Harvard and Oxford University graduates.

Our team primarily works with talented young athletes who have displayed the potential, commitment and drive to be winners on the world stage. We focus on making key interventions in our clients’ careers by securing them access to training, advisory, monitoring and representation services, sponsorships and other personal development opportunities.

GoSports recently made it through the first round of 600 nominees in the Tata NEN Hottest Startups contest and the final 30 now battle it out for five winning spots that come with these benefits. You can vote for GoSports here and view the final shortlist here. Athletic gold medal for India in 2012? I hope so!