From Pericles to the Internet: Journey of Democracy

April 1, 2025, Bhramit Pradesh: Harish had great expectations when he voted for Indian Bhramits Party (IBP) four years back. He does not really see many changes around him. Sieving emails from the distribution list all-citizens-bhramit-pradesh@bhramit.pradesh.gov.in he searches for Bhagola Prasad Marg. The pathetic roads had been much of a nuisance. The elected representative had promised to do something about it. Harish dug up a thread and found loads of discontent amongst his neighbours. He shoots an email to the list seeking updates.

He spawns a new tab, browses to the Election Commission Web Site and clicks on the ‘Government Report Card’ link. He sees the promise of launching metro rail services in his city – the current status shows a Bhramit Pradesh Metro Corporation (BPMC) coming into existence. That was four years back. He sees all deadlines of the project missed.

He wonders if it is a good idea to repeat his ballot in favour of IBP in the elections next month.

Over the past two decades, India has made good use of its growing command on IT. In fact, IT has single-handedly triggered the growth of global centers like Bangalore and Hyderabad. IT has also had some impact on governments, local civic bodies and their interactions with citizens. However, there is still much to be desired in this space.

The application of IT in any field necessarily enforces objectivity. Terms like ‘large amounts’ or ‘highly skilled’ stop making sense. Further, Open Source models like Apache have demonstrated how volunteers can collaborate on shared objectives with high levels of transparency. Today, under circumstances when increasingly higher levels of governance transparency are in demand, IT offers innovative possibilities of enforcing government accountability by tracking government performance through ‘e-Report Cards’ and measuring adherence to its promises.

This kind of tracking can be on an E2E (‘Election-to-Election’) basis, wherein the tracking begins right from election campaigns including information on election code violations, candidates with criminal records, net-worth and profile declarations of individual candidates etc.

During this phase, a huge leap would be the creation of ‘e-Manifestos’. E-Manifestos, unlike ‘Human-Manifestos’, would be purely objective with measurable parameters to determine the success of the government tenure. Manifestos may be surveyed and a global ontology developed that can accommodate all government work areas. Such non-normative classifications exist in manifestos even today.

An ‘e-Manifesto’ brings about the feasibility of tracking government performance on an ongoing basis. This implies – government performance could be measured by something similar to Report Cards. Integration of this system with existing Government Systems under the NeGP initiative could enable it to pull relevant information from diverse systems automatically.

This same platform could also be a means of citizen collaboration. Numbers bring power and there is no better way for information to flow through than the Internet. ‘Citizen-Collaboration Mailing Lists’ for such communication could enable citizens to participate constructively – share information and ideas between themselves or with government bodies. This could serve as a perpetual feedback for elected representatives.

Leveraging an awakened citizen base, a social collaboration between the government and philanthropic private sector could bring about path breaking e-Democracies. Governance will no longer be the same.

June 12, 2025, Bhramit Pradesh: The all-citizens-Bhramit-Pradesh list looks quite disillusioned with the government. Harish did his bit in reminding the citizens of promises unmet. Having cast his vote on the Internet, he joins his friends to conduct a Web-Conference based training session to educate his neighbourhood of ‘e-Ballot’. From Pericles in 5^th century BC to the 21^st century AD – democracy has journeyed a great deal. Exciting times indeed!