GAURAVSIKKA.COM

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.

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!

As I stood in Mercury Lounge, New York for potentially my final concert experience in the city for a while, I realized just how passionate I am about the independent and experimental music subculture. Over the past two and a half years, going to indie rock concerts has become habitual and the prospect of losing out on that completely when I move to Mumbai (more on that soon) is depressing.

I recently carried out a survey on mainstream Indian pop culture influences, which suggested that there is an emerging independent rock scene (primarily Hindi for now) led by Farhan Akhtar for making films like Lakshya, Dil Chahta Hai and Rock On!!. Local rock bands are also gaining prominence through performances at Blue Frog and Hard Rock Cafe in Mumbai. Last week a friend introduced me to SHAAIR + FUNC, describing them as “an uber-electronic Bjork meets new Britney”. For me, they represent New India—globalized and reconnecting with their roots in new and exciting ways to provide diverse forms of expression.

Though her roots can be traced back to Kashmir, Monica Dogra (of SHAAIR + FUNC) was raised in Maryland on a steady diet of Ani DiFranco CDs. She went on to attend New York University, dabbling in musical theater along the way. Her parents divorced when she was 11, greatly influencing her journey towards the arts.”In a lot of ways the divorce was very freeing, because I was forced into a situation where as it was, I was already different,” she says. “I feel like had my parents stayed together, I would have had this pressure on me to be this perfect Indian girl.” (via Nirali Magazine)

Even though Bollywood and its music dominates mainstream popular culture in India, I strongly believe there is an opportunity to create a sustainable independent music movement in the country. With that intention I’d like to launch SAFFRON NOTE, a grassroots operation that not only promotes Indian independent music but also American and European independent bands in India. And I don’t mean The Killers independent but rather dive bar, abrasive lyrics, cheap beer independent.

If this interests you and you’d like to help in any way please leave a comment on this post and I’ll keep you posted as the idea evolves. In the meanwhile I’d love to hear YOUR thoughts and suggestions as I’ve been away from India for a while.

Can this be successful? Will enough people be interested? What will it take? Setting up a bar in Mumbai dedicated to live shows and/or a music festival à la Woodstock? Would brands be excited by it? Would a company like Jet Airways see benfits in sponsoring artists to fly for free or alternately, would state departments provide subsisdies to promote tourism? Would foreign artsits be excited to travel to India if combined with tourism and promoted as a spiritual journey (similar to The Beatles’)?