Travelling

I am travelling from the United States to India. I hope to get back to blogging when I get to India.

You've got E-Democracy!!!

So, over the week, I was reading up about an interesting concept. This concept is called 'E-Democracy'. In the recent Mumbai terror attacks, the one thing that came out of a terrible situation, was a demonstration of how electronic media, social networks, blogs and sites like twitter were used to disseminate almost instantaneous information about what was happening on the ground in Mumbai. So much so, that a couple of reputed news networks were giving in live feeds to twitter to show their viewers live updates about the attacks.

E-Democracy is fairly intriguing in concept as well, and has already been implemented in various ways around the world. It essentially involves using all of the new age media out there as a political tool. This takes the effect of democracy, and the message that can be passed to the people to a whole new level, which can then be used by them to educate the lesser educated about politics, the importance of being involved in government, and how online spaces can be used as a forum for airing grievances, and addressing them by providing real situations.

A tool like this becomes incredibly convenient for people of a democracy, especially among the tech-savvy, educated section of the population, the kind this blog aims to reach out to, to make their voices heard in a world dominated by the neanderthal mode of governance we are used to, with our members of the parliament, and legislative assembly screaming at the top of their voices to get laws passed, and decisions made.

Consider the possibilities for the government

• A bill needs to get passed. The local representative of the state/ federal governments puts it up on a central portal, and announces that the bill is now open to votes for all constituencies. A time period for the bill is also announced as to when it comes up to be voted on, in the assembly. All popular votes will have to be completed by then.
  
• The local population is made aware of the highlights of the bill via a preamble written to local constituencies, and distributed along small community blocks by volunteers. The preamble also offers details on various ways to vote, by going online, by writing to your local representative, or placing a vote over the phone.
• The full text of the bill is also available by request, and under the Right to Information Act, it is obligatory for the bill to be presented to anyone who asks to see it.
• Depending on the number of 'yes' or 'no' votes received by the local representative, he/she decides on how to vote. If they decide to vote against the decision of the people, a written explanation as to why is afforded and attached to the text of the bill at the time of the vote by the local representative.
• This set of actions will truly bring democracy into the mainstream, and ensure that people that need to be governed, are kept aware of the laws being passed, and how they affect their daily lives.

For the citizens, E-Democracy can serve a host of purposes.

• Education of the population. A lot of people today are unaware of the power that rests in their hands, choosing simply, to deny their capability to make change happen, and accepting situations on an as is basis. E-Democracy can be implemented by way of citizen created portals to put up information about the political process, problems with the daily bureaucracy, and the ability to provide people with a common ground for discussions with no physical or location based constraints. It is a strong platform to learn about alternatives to the one process of the state, and gives people an insight into the sources of power outside it.
  
• Using the internet as a platform to spread political, environmental activism. Again, this comes back to the power of the internet to disseminate knowledge. Organizations seeking to garner the support of people toward a cause can use the internet to gain popular support.
• Open Source Governance, which gives power to the people to draft legislation that can then be presented to our local representatives, and then acted upon by those representatives according to the points mentioned above. This is an excellent method to boost participation of the people in the governance of a region.

Again, as with all forms of participation, there need to be adequate checks and balances, to the implementation of E-Governance/ E-Democracy in general, and the concept is still in a fairly nascent stage of realization. A central body controlled and staffed by the people, needs to be established, to watch over the process, and to keep people from manipulating it to their own advantage.

All in all, it seems like a good time for democracy to evolve. Isn't it time we got E-Democracy?

(Credits: A lot of good information of E-Democracy is available in the public domain by way of wikis, and articles written up by prominent political analysts. Please contact me if you need more information about e-democracy, and I can point you in the right direction. Thanks to all those people on the internet, who took the time out to write those articles, and got these thoughts cycling in my head.)

An open letter to my friends

This is the first email I sent out to all my friends, and asked them to pass on to come back with any suggestions they might have for what a common citizen can do on a daily basis, to make our cities and localities safer. This email was sent out in the wake of the 11/26 terror attacks in Mumbai, and there have been several responses to this, which I will put up in due course.

If anyone happens across this, and wishes to use it as a starting point for a call to action in their own networks, please feel free to do so. It's time each one of us stood up and took action.

"Guys

On this list are some people, I've contacted before, and some that I am getting in touch for the first time. 

So, to start with, Hi everyone. This is Ramprasad Hariharan, a Mumbaiite.

This email is going out to everyone as a request for help from a city, that all of us are connected to, or have been connected to at some point of time in our lives. I've decided to step in and do my bit, as a responsible citizen, to make as much noise about the apathy, and sheer docile nature and pure blatant disregard of the security of our people that was demonstrated by our state, and federal governments, as well as the intelligence mechanism and police forces, during the audacious assault on our freedom and democracy on 11/26/08.

I'd like to think we are getting to a point where the people of India, or at least a section of it will wake up and start questioning the functioning of our democracy, and demand a shift, however slow it might be to a welfare oriented society. We need to realize that the government has failed the country as a whole and has done more than put the country at grave risk, they've endangered the future of one-fifth of all humanity, and all of our kids/ nephews/ nieces, and pretty much everything we hold dear today. It's high time the administration gets accountable to the promises it makes, and takes real steps toward improving the security of the country, so at least some of these attacks are pre-empted. In my personal opinion, there can be no development, economic, humanitarian or personal without a sense of security in the society we live in. 

What I am proposing here, is starting a grassroots movement to get our broken community together, and break down the walls that exist between the different sections of society, the administration, the law enforcement and the justice system. Before security needs to come trust, and I propose building up that trust by networking between people who like on this list are from different facets of society, and can help a lot with the right inputs.

Please take a couple of minutes to read this email, and try and respond back to me with what you think should be a further course of action that we as citizens can recommend. This does not necessarily need to involve the government, but might range from educating ourselves politically, to educating a section of the illiterate population in india, as an attempt to bring them to the mainstream, to organize local events in your city, that brings all sections of population togther, and gets them invested in each other, to something as simple as voting in the next election, which pretty much is the most potent weapon in a democracy's arsenal.

Please also feel free to forward this along to whoever you think can contribute to this discussion. I am trying to make it a little more official, and have requested guidance from the concerned people about how we can setup a citizens watch group that can be co-ordinated online, via a blog to start off with, and depending on the results it shows, I'd like to grow it into a portal for us concerned citizens.

I am also trying to recruit for this effort, and would welcome any assistance offered. 

11/26 shall never be forgotten in my heart and mind, as I am sure it wont be, with everyone on this list. The question is, can we act now, so we can pre-empt something like this the next time? The government clearly needs a clap of thunder to wake from their slumber. Maybe it needs to come from us. 

If you read till here, thanks for reading :-),and any help offered is truly appreciated. Once i receive feedback, I will format and post it up at http://thesosclub.blogspot.com, along with this request for help. All of your replies will be posted anonymously, unless requested otherwise. 

Ram Hariharan"

The thing with Talking, and then walking it...

So, its been more than a week now, and still little or no response from our dear elected leaders, that were chosen, (or least we are told) to represent our interests. It's a democracy after all, power to the people and all that jazz..

A week after the tragedy, people still are holding candlelight vigils, and demonstrations, and everything else that involves them congregating in a group, and very few are actually acting. The NGOs at this point should latch on to this, or least, there should be some citizens groups forming out of this situation, to put a handle on it, build up a measured response, and rack up the pressure on politicians to affect a change. All I've heard, on social networks, and blogs are whispers of action, that fade into thin air.

As for the response from the politicians, there was a pansy little address from our PMOI, which made it look like someone from his entourage had a gun to his head, and he was reading from a prepared speech, without a trace of concern, or genuine regret, that the country he so magnanimously chose to represent, was attacked so brazenly. The NSA has all but disappeared, and our MEA , Mr. Mukherjee, chose to dial up the rhetoric when Ms. Rice was in New Delhi, and then fell silent, when Ms. Rice went to Pakistan, to showboat with some others. Heartening, yes? A couple of politicians from Maharashtra were fired, for bumbling their way through this crisis, yes, for the way they acted during this crisis, not the way they acted before it. Not for the way they behaved before the security situation in the crown jewel of the country had some to such paltry heights, but for misplacing a couple of words in a press conference, as was the case with R. R. Patil, and with Mr. Vilasrao Deshmukh, who could possibly blame him for running the state into the ground, letting something like this happen, by keeping the local security services so woefully inept, and now, wanting to make a movie out of it?

The next crop of politicians, that replaced our esteemed leaders, dont seem to be much better off as well. Maybe that's because politicians in our country are all in the same mindset? I wonder what "Chance pe dance karna" means to them.

I've been sending out an email asking for suggestions of next steps, the text of which I will post on this blog shortly, followed by the responses I've gotten to date. The shocking part seems to be that out of the 150+ people I sent these emails to, less than 10% have responded. Seems like people are just accepting these as just another terror attack, just another unfortunate 180+ people dead, just another 600 injured, just another group of families ripped apart, just another failure to deny an attack, and just another failure to respond effectively to it. Seems like, the message from the majority of the people seems to be, "Just another part of being an Indian".

See for the following groups, the thing about talking is, it needs to be followed up with someone walking it.

1. For the politicians, they need to dial down the rhetoric, and take a long hard look at what brought the country in general to this situation, and how they can fix it with the help of the people. Else, the people will do it for them, and they can all go dig a hole.
2. For the people, they need to stop accepting this as a part of their life, everything from the fear of an attack, to the attack itself, and then the response to it. They need to take the response to this attack seriously, and use it as a foundation to build out a plan to make a real change in their community, their city, and ultimately their nation.

Intelligence, does it exist?

This is the second point that a lot of people seem to be focusing on, and since so many armchair warriors seem to be talking about it, I decided to join the fray. If only the authorities listened to armchair warriors, some of them actually have some neat ideas.

After all the attacks, several questions remained purely related to the possibility of pre-empting these attacks:

• How did the intelligence agencies fail to anticipate this brutal assault, especially in the wake of the relatively visible methods used to plan this operation? There was a significant reconnaisance component, weapons, and explosives had to be setup and supplied, and communication networks would have been needed to put all the various pieces into place for this operation.
• If the agencies did not fail in intercepting information about the attacks, did the breakdown occur in disseminating that information, to the various security agencies?
• If that wasnt the problem, was it in the understanding of the information, and how to effectively respond to it?

I think the problem has been a combination of these factors. Our country, even though it aspires to be a superpower, and generally struts it's stuff like it already is one, has a long way to go, before it achieves the integration of security services that most western governments, and countries like Israel have demonstrated over the past decade or so. 

The intelligence mechanism of the country suffers sorely because of the following reasons:

• Being used to suit the personal agendas, and settle the personal vendettas of the powers that be. 
• Being generally underequipped, understaffed, underpaid, and hindered by red tape every step of the way.
• Having no central agency that shares and disseminates information about any intelligence inputs received by assets based inside/ outside the country.
• Lack of human intelligence based in every city in the country. This is an absolutely necessary point, that cannot be overlooked in any future upgrades of the intelligence services.
• Lack of an established quick responder unit to any situations, that comes in and takes over  on the ground, plans intelligence, puts together situation awareness briefs for hostage rescue and assault teams.

It seems likely that in the wake of the massive local intelligence failures, there will be some steps taken to solve these issues, and some of them might actually show results, by securing the homeland a little more than it is now. 

In my opinion, in light of the above mentioned shortcomings, we absolutely need the following upgrades to the intelligence services.

• A centralized agency, that handles all intelligence inputs, internal or external, and classifies them into threat levels, according to the seriousness of the content being intercepted, the time frame in which any plans are being made, and whether this intelligence has some actionable input, like a meeting place, or a particular route being taken by a convoy etc.
• A civilian arm of this intelligence agency, that recruits students/ youth right out of college, and moulds them into being effective assets on the ground, as field agents. The current cadre, at least to my knowledge, has to come from the police or the armed forces, which is one of the reasons for the acute lapses in our intelligence capability.
• A significant identified arm of the intelligence agencies, that is drawn from the minority population, as this might come in handy, in subverting the local support that seems to have been ample in the Mumbai operation.
• A highly mobile, hard-hitting, well equipped combat arm of this domestic intelligence agency, along the lines of the Hostage Rescue Team of the FBI in the US, that specializes in responding quickly to hostage situations, and blunting the effectiveness of terrorist assaults on the homeland, within the first hour of an attack happening.
• A dedicated situational command and control cell of this intelligence agency, that handles only setting up a field communications post for situations like Mumbai on 11/26 in the future. This command and control cell should be able to network with the local authorities, get situational awareness of the area the counter terrorist forces will operate in, and have it ready for the assault forces when they arrive, so that can sanitize the area with as much effectiveness as possible.
• This centralized agency should report directly to the Cabinet committee on security, the National Security Adviser, or the PMO directly, and should be strictly off limits to all other cadre of politicians. 
• This agency should also be required to provide a bi-annual statement of services rendered to the people, under the RTI act.

Given the steps above are implemented, it wouldnt be off-target to expect that any future attacks will have to undergo a lot of planning to deny detection by all of these measures. If an attack occurs, we will be more ready than we ever were, to deny its maximum effects.

Post the Carnage, a time for reflection, a time for solutions

So, the most audacious terror attacks in Mumbai are now over, and the post catastrophe process begins. For the media, its been disseminating every piece of information they can find, and they are doing a pretty darn good job of it. The politicians as usual are building up rhetoric, whether it's followed up with action remains to be seen. The intelligence agencies are trying to make sense of what hit them, and how they can change. I shall try and do a post on each one of these aspects, but the first one is the most important. 

What, as regular citizens can we do to not let this happen again, or at the very least, reduce the chances of us getting caught unawares in a situation like this, be it Mumbai, Delhi or Guwahati.

Here's some ideas about how we can plan and implement community programs to help bring the people closer together, and find solutions to the issues facing us at this point.

Create a petition to the Indian Courts, get help from the sheriff. Ask the politicians to provide an accountable deadline based plan to how they plan on improving the security of the country as a whole.

I am hoping that if enough media rallies arnd around this cause, and we time it right, we will be able to get the support necessary to get the local courts to act. 

Get a petition going to the United Nations, and our Federal government to put diplomatic pressure on Pakistan to get this issue into the spotlight of the international diplomatic community.

Politics in this day and age needs to be infused with young blood which seems to be sorely missing. 

The current situation in the political world contributes to the lack of world awareness, complacency, and the narrow mindedness that has come to be hallmarks of indian administration. The same old govt office desk workers mentality. Politics needs to be cleaned of people with criminal records. How can you commit a crime, and then pretend to lead a section of society? Get students and friends together and get them involved in political education first for themselves, and then for the people. This should be done without any political affiliation whatsoever.

For the youth, I would look at getting us together, and building little focus groups, that specialize in one area of responsibility, be it education for the poor, instilling a sense of national pride in the community, handling media for a certain awareness program or be it coordinating with local agencies and building community watch programs to help police neighborhoods. All of this can be done on voluntary time, with little or no effort from a person's daily routine. The most important thing is moving forward, we refuse to accept being erased from the world by a crazy lunatic with a gun, without trying to do something about it, which means tomorrow's rally should be the beginning of a series of steps that we, as responsible citizens take to fortify our society.

All of this will go a long way in getting a better awareness of the city/ community we live in, and will create small atoms of responsibility that adhere to form a bigger sphere of influence.