Recently Chetan Bhagat asked on Twitter which company does Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) resemble. Many people replied Open Source Software companies like Android. One key comparison here is that the AAP like Open Source is mostly run by volunteers.
Personally, I find AAP to be the most exciting to happen to India in the past so many years and I want to be out there contributing in any way I can. I thought maybe I should help their web team locally. But did a few searches and did not find any contact info. From my past associations, I knew some senior functionaries in Mumbai and sent them a mail asking a few slightly hard questions, maybe my tone was a bit impatient too. What I got back was an unfriendly response from the functionary.
Now that got me thinking. I am a part of a smallish open source software from the beginning and have been in open source software for a few years now and I can understand where this bitterness comes from. They are having a volunteer and scaling problem. For AAP though, the Open Source Movement has already given a few answers.
1. Maintain public mailing lists
Almost all discussions, decisions of open source software happen on public mailing lists. Infact some of the discussions become stuff of legends. Sample this discussion between the legendary Tanenbaum and a young Linus Torvalds. Not only does having public discussions educate the rest about the thinking behind the actions, but also helps maintain a public record that is searchable by everyone. Plus, the burden of answering all questions does not fall on a few key people but a wider community. This one is really a no brainer.
Imagine if the entire public had access to the inner discussions between the core AAP team members like Arvind Kejriwal and Yogendra Yadav on whether to form a government or not, would not that be a huge win? Transparency to such a level would be game changing for politics.
If one list is very large, you can break-it up into sub-groups. One for each major region, one for communication, one for events, one for publicity, one for web, one for social media etc.
2. Make easy for people to contribute
All major open source projects maintain public repositories of their code which can be read and contributed to by technically anyone. And you can not only contribute in code, but also help by identifying bugs, helping in documentation, translation etc. The biggest game-changer for Open Source has been the rise of GitHub. Thanks to GitHub, the amount of contributions to Open Source projects, specially the newer ones has just exploded.
For politics, the equivalent of code is policy, there are issues, there is documentation and translation requirement too. So if AAP uses GitHub or any such platform, they can exponentially increase their problem solving capacity. Sample this problem: AAP needs to find out what is the most efficient way of distributing electricity in Delhi. They can open an issue / repository and their internal experts can post their views. They can also publish data from exiting utilities including technical, commercial etc. Now this problem encompasses technology, commerce, economics, supply-chain, management and implementation. So any experts from all of these areas can comment on the various aspects of implementing a new distribution policy. This way AAP can tap into virtually any number of resources. Sometimes it is surprising to see the number of people who are happy to help.
3. Create a eco-system for contributors
Once people have engaged in a project, their public "commit" record speaks for itself. Suddenly it is apparent to the entire community who are the people that have done exceptional contributions and whose insights matter. In Open Source, good projects are helped by donors and by people who use the software. Apart from donations, the public profile of these key contributors is elevated so that they can now earn a living as consultants, trainers and speakers. This creates a sustainable pool of contributors that is based on meritocracy and new contributors are encouraged to join.
In politics, debates do not end in policy creation only, they also have to be executed. The contributors should be given a chance to act as executives too. For example if in the electricity distribution debate, a few key individuals appear to be most knowledgable and competent, then their services will be automatically required to execute the policy too. All execution should be based on strict guidelines for transparency and accountability. The most important thing is that the party in charge of execution should be accountable to the people that could be a government or non-government body. Any party, private or government, that manages to win the contract for execution, they would be better off hiring the consultants who have publicly demonstrated high level of knowledge and skill.
4. Create public forums or let third parties maintain unbiased ones.
5. Let go of hierarchy. Let meritocracy take over.
Meritocracy is at the heart of the Open Source movement. If you do not like what is out there, you are free to make it better, in fact you are encouraged to make it better. Linus was not the President or Convenor of some high sounding group that made people use his software. People use Linux because its just better. The open source software domain is probably the most democratic one out there. There are numerous projects, contributors and sub-cultures out there and they are all thriving. The greatest example is probably Sal Khan. From nowhere, he became a major force in post-modern education because his videos where actually good.
For AAP, there is lots to be done. Everything from primary education and healthcare to the most esoteric financial regulation needs public attention and accountability. The only way they can quickly scale up quality is to embrace meritocracy. What is important is the mission not who executes it. If there is someone who is more capable, the system should allow that person to be identified and elevated quickly and not be buried in some senseless bureaucracy. For example, the Maharashtra leaders distributed two sample posters as the "official" posters of the party. Now who decides if they are good? What if someone can do a better job? Is there a system? Is there a way to put the mission before the personality? I think this is going to be culturally difficult to implement.
In conclusion, these are tall expectations, but the AAP has surprised us till now and I am hopeful they will continue to so!
(I am a reasonably skilled web developer and a member of AAP and would love to help the party to implement any of the above suggestions. If anyone in the party who matters is listening, give me a shout at my twitter handle @rushabh_mehta)
Personally, I find AAP to be the most exciting to happen to India in the past so many years and I want to be out there contributing in any way I can. I thought maybe I should help their web team locally. But did a few searches and did not find any contact info. From my past associations, I knew some senior functionaries in Mumbai and sent them a mail asking a few slightly hard questions, maybe my tone was a bit impatient too. What I got back was an unfriendly response from the functionary.
Now that got me thinking. I am a part of a smallish open source software from the beginning and have been in open source software for a few years now and I can understand where this bitterness comes from. They are having a volunteer and scaling problem. For AAP though, the Open Source Movement has already given a few answers.
1. Maintain public mailing lists
Almost all discussions, decisions of open source software happen on public mailing lists. Infact some of the discussions become stuff of legends. Sample this discussion between the legendary Tanenbaum and a young Linus Torvalds. Not only does having public discussions educate the rest about the thinking behind the actions, but also helps maintain a public record that is searchable by everyone. Plus, the burden of answering all questions does not fall on a few key people but a wider community. This one is really a no brainer.
Imagine if the entire public had access to the inner discussions between the core AAP team members like Arvind Kejriwal and Yogendra Yadav on whether to form a government or not, would not that be a huge win? Transparency to such a level would be game changing for politics.
If one list is very large, you can break-it up into sub-groups. One for each major region, one for communication, one for events, one for publicity, one for web, one for social media etc.
2. Make easy for people to contribute
All major open source projects maintain public repositories of their code which can be read and contributed to by technically anyone. And you can not only contribute in code, but also help by identifying bugs, helping in documentation, translation etc. The biggest game-changer for Open Source has been the rise of GitHub. Thanks to GitHub, the amount of contributions to Open Source projects, specially the newer ones has just exploded.
For politics, the equivalent of code is policy, there are issues, there is documentation and translation requirement too. So if AAP uses GitHub or any such platform, they can exponentially increase their problem solving capacity. Sample this problem: AAP needs to find out what is the most efficient way of distributing electricity in Delhi. They can open an issue / repository and their internal experts can post their views. They can also publish data from exiting utilities including technical, commercial etc. Now this problem encompasses technology, commerce, economics, supply-chain, management and implementation. So any experts from all of these areas can comment on the various aspects of implementing a new distribution policy. This way AAP can tap into virtually any number of resources. Sometimes it is surprising to see the number of people who are happy to help.
3. Create a eco-system for contributors
Once people have engaged in a project, their public "commit" record speaks for itself. Suddenly it is apparent to the entire community who are the people that have done exceptional contributions and whose insights matter. In Open Source, good projects are helped by donors and by people who use the software. Apart from donations, the public profile of these key contributors is elevated so that they can now earn a living as consultants, trainers and speakers. This creates a sustainable pool of contributors that is based on meritocracy and new contributors are encouraged to join.
In politics, debates do not end in policy creation only, they also have to be executed. The contributors should be given a chance to act as executives too. For example if in the electricity distribution debate, a few key individuals appear to be most knowledgable and competent, then their services will be automatically required to execute the policy too. All execution should be based on strict guidelines for transparency and accountability. The most important thing is that the party in charge of execution should be accountable to the people that could be a government or non-government body. Any party, private or government, that manages to win the contract for execution, they would be better off hiring the consultants who have publicly demonstrated high level of knowledge and skill.
4. Create public forums or let third parties maintain unbiased ones.
Open source encourages debate and this is best done on forums. Some of the best ones out there are obviously Stack Overflow, Hacker News and the erstwhile Slashdot. The quality of discussions on these forums is mind boggling. These are places where Open Source developers hang out to ask questions, share news or comment. This is also where culture is created. The best part of these forums is that there is a system that values good contributions v/s noise creation using a point system. Each of them have perfected the sauce based on their community. There are elaborate rules so that the forums are not gamed and moderators make sure that quality of each discussion is very high.
For AAP or politics, there is a big need for such forums. There are so many issues to be discussed and these do not all have to be discussed in the main forums. Having multiple forums will help in creating different cultures where the people will be discuss and form views. Such forums can be a good sounding board to gauge an idea before is brought into the purview of policy.
Meritocracy is at the heart of the Open Source movement. If you do not like what is out there, you are free to make it better, in fact you are encouraged to make it better. Linus was not the President or Convenor of some high sounding group that made people use his software. People use Linux because its just better. The open source software domain is probably the most democratic one out there. There are numerous projects, contributors and sub-cultures out there and they are all thriving. The greatest example is probably Sal Khan. From nowhere, he became a major force in post-modern education because his videos where actually good.
For AAP, there is lots to be done. Everything from primary education and healthcare to the most esoteric financial regulation needs public attention and accountability. The only way they can quickly scale up quality is to embrace meritocracy. What is important is the mission not who executes it. If there is someone who is more capable, the system should allow that person to be identified and elevated quickly and not be buried in some senseless bureaucracy. For example, the Maharashtra leaders distributed two sample posters as the "official" posters of the party. Now who decides if they are good? What if someone can do a better job? Is there a system? Is there a way to put the mission before the personality? I think this is going to be culturally difficult to implement.
In conclusion, these are tall expectations, but the AAP has surprised us till now and I am hopeful they will continue to so!
(I am a reasonably skilled web developer and a member of AAP and would love to help the party to implement any of the above suggestions. If anyone in the party who matters is listening, give me a shout at my twitter handle @rushabh_mehta)
2 comments:
Hi Rushabh,
Your love for AAP is evident but I must say that things are not as rosy as they seem.
Most of it seems like AAP is there to under-cut the Modi factor and I think people like us are taking the bait.
AAP for me even sounds too good to resist but honestly I would like to wait for 5 years before we give them a chance to Rule India atleast in Lok Sabha.
Btw, the team AAP is more of a socialistic team run by people who are ex-congressmen like Yogendra Yadav who was an advisor of RG link here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yogendra_Yadav
Similarly there are many numerous examples of the team who had been with either RG or SoniaG.
I really hope that educated people like you should refrain for atleast 5 years to see the real face of AAP and honestly I am hopeful that all my worst fears are not true in the time to come (if our country has to grow).
It has been long almost 67 years since we got independent and still our country reels under the same old issues which were prevalent in 1947 like Riots, Food, Water and electricity and if you really give heed to these 67 years then you would find that we have been voting the same old family to power and only 1 PM from non-congress government has ever completed 5 years in Office (AB Vajapayee).
Now if you see that AK seems like a good person to me as well on the face value but there are many examples which have come forward where it seems that the world is not that clean after all. Look at the example of the graft case against Sheila Dixit, for example, you might recall that our dear AK had before becoming the CM in 2010 told publicly that he has a 370 page report which shows Sheila is corrupt and has hand in glove with electricity companies and also had a hand in CWG but after becoming the CM he is asking Harsh Vardhan that if he has any proof against Sheila then he would not spare her.
Now this kind of a change in tone was least expected out of AK and hence I would still entrust the destiny of my nation with a person who has been serving one state for past 12 years and more.
Also there is a serious lack of credibility at AK's end since many of its team members are not sure whether J&K should be a part of our nation or not. You being in Mumbai might say that it is not a big deal for J&K being a part of India, but let me tell you that a nation is built on credentials and I am sure that if one day we let go even an inch of our nation to others then that day would be the last for a United India since then any nation, read China, would come and claim any land of ours as theirs and then the day might not be far off when we would both be members of different nations.
I really empathize with those who support AAP since in these dark days where in a country so vibrant as ours and so young as ours a govt is run for 10 years and then also the PM of the nation has only to say that the brightest thing in his tenure was the nuke deal which was done by buying the MPs and people like me in the manufacturing are really feeling the heat.
I would finally like to conclude that the AAP culture could come one day but I sincerely hope that for our nation to grow there is only one alternative in the near future and that is NaMo and for our nation to become a superpower I would say that AK comes to be true to every word he says on corruption and then they clean up their mind on territorial front and probably get to power in 2019 but not try to do anything in 2014 since that would be playing into the hands of Congress which according to me should be banned from our nation like any terrorist organisation as they have caused more harm to our nation than any terror network has done to any nation.
@Aditya - sorry just saw the comment - blogger does not give me any notification for them :(
There are many things that attract me towards AAP
1. No frills culture - why should our ministers live in palatial bungalows when children are mal-nutritioned. There is something tragic about that.
2. BJP is same as Congress. Yeddy is back and so is Bangaru Laxman. I am not even going into its communial past.
3. Which party in our history ran a clean election and won substantially.
4. The quality of politics has already improved. BJP was forced to remove Vijay Goel
I think this is more than enough for me to realize that AAP is needed if we want corruption free India!
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