Thread by @roshankar

I decided to move back to India on May 16th, 2014 on LS voting day, a passionate decision that paused a personal life and a Ph.D. The 5 years have been interesting though. Here are my #ThrowbackThursday learnings from state and market, delivered as an India talk at @MSFTResearch.

Context with information and insight is necessary. Finding a path for dialectic or synthesis requires patient exploration. Its absence causes clashes through argument and debate through conflict. To avoid that on this thread, here's my context + canvas :) Dissect + question away!

Searching for a common why with 1.25 billion people can be hard. Rights (De jure) and Outcomes (De facto) are frequently pitted against each other. A fractal local approach with our fundamental duties as a vector might be able to do a better job of finding all of us a common why.

Looking at the problem as a technologist and math enthusiast, problems can be seen as local/fractal vector spaces, whilst solutions should be stackable, with truth, ethics, aesthetic and dialectic dimensions. Data availability and quality should be central to insight generation.

Why 13? Because 10 is an indoctrinated base in religion and mathematics, 11 can be left for Pascalian fundamental duties, 12 got taken over by Jordan Peterson and 13 needed a makeover :)

Lucky? Because our public problems needs a lot of it despite right ideas, teams + execution!

I broke the presentation down using @vgr's Unflattening Hobbes article for structure on individual/collective, looked at some key institutions that could use technological help and shared learnings from state, market, and society. Here are three ideas of mine for the individual.

Data, frequently and especially at the state/local government level, suffers due to unfunded mandates, lack of technical assistance or lack of intention for sins of commission/omission. Private money/Crowdfunding to create data as a public good will be needed to jujitsu reality.

Citizens aren't able to visualize their fundamental rights and duties as it affects them or should because they aren't measured or quantified with nth order effects. Eg: Right to Freedom in abstract doesn't show us how mobility, local development and economic freedom are linked.

India's population grows way faster than job creation, where firm sustenance is extremely hard. Citizens became a byproduct of literacy obsession and social change through politics and policy instead of knowledge/value creators. Reimagining perpetual learning will be important.

For non-profits, startups, firms as well as alternate collectives, the measurement of sustainability (which is largely absent), technology and IT solutions that lower the entry barrier into politics will be critical. Growing pie of good ideas/people > good ideas > good people.

Isms and Ologies dominate our political and policy discourse. Rediscovering Indian/Local stories, symbols and rituals will help find us scale in communication and implementation.

Short run: Pal Pal hai Bhaari!
Medium run: Yun hi Chala Chal.
Long run: Yeh Taara Woh Tara :)

Some problems are deep-rooted and seemingly intractable. Resisting bad ideas is important but for habits to change, we must find a path to further better ideals. School vs. Temple vs. Mosque is a great contest on land use. So is pushing scientific enquiry and humanism at scale.

Thought leadership on privacy, technology and security front for the individual in the digital age as well as AI/BT's impact on society must be technological, academic and social. Else, technology will be pitted against ethics. And lose out in the face of tangible outcomes.

Solving problems of necessity instead of problems of abundance can be more valuable though usually less remunerative. Cost of being responsible and ethical shows up especially when returns are for short run or Masayoshi/Buffett/Soros dependent. Keep calm and trust the process!

Nationally, bringing crowdsourced computer literacy and education to different parts of India, building/maintaining open-sourced technology as capital or medium difficulty technology for obvious public problems and opening government/public data will benefit society + citizens.

Institutionally, the Election Commission of India can use a fair bit of help, monitoring and oversight from citizens. Here's how you can help lower the entry barrier to politics, visualize problems before solving them and help achieve one person one vote simultaneously :)

The Government of India could use an ASER Report or IPCC Report kind of wake up call for data to be a critical component of analytics and decision-making. Unpacking SDGs for communication is critical for awareness, making programs out of projects reduces cost of implementation.

Measuring and/or Quantifying the tax money collected from Indian citizens and their public assets combined with its expenditure through the lens of multi-layered government and its 1/2/3rd order outcomes can be very useful to cast a spotlight on public problems and solutions!

Outcome and Output Budgets, Input and Income Disclosure, Impact of Laws, Policies, Orders and Rules scraped, digitized and visualized through government websites and planning for large cities/states using graph theory and UN thumb rules is impactful! With political will that is!

In India, the nation has the money, the states have the power, cities have no space, the villages have no economy and people have the problems. Local Government at Municipal and Village level needs more problem solvers. Implementing Gandhian 73rd/74th Amendments is the way ahead.

Justice isn't delivered neither is it felt. India's executive with minimal rule of law doesn't help. Judiciary's pendency and processes need Gantt innovative reimagination. Judgments need to be for people, not judicial egos. Algorithmic and spatial justice are challenges ahead.

Money-Labour-Power lleverage can be combated by Code-Digisocial Media. Do-gooders can leverage AI to spread work with developments in languages/tools problem. Public interest media can become repositories of knowledge and insight! Rethink media, viewership and growth for ideas.

Four institutions that could use technological inputs and assistance are the Central Vigilance Commission, Central Information Commission, Law Commission of India and Comptroller Auditor General of India. Mapping meaning for Indians could use concepts of spirituality + morality!

India has an old, communal, casteist, patriarchal, centralized and unscientific Parliament. We don't need such shallow representation. Walk streets, knock doors, aggregate opinions to create agendas, pursue cognitive empathy and decentralize politics/policy. Change it for good.

Keep this document in front of you when thinking about governance, politics, policy or your work. If you miss more than 30% of the nouns/adjectives in it, you are probably not doing it right or well. It is, like Karan Johar said, all about loving your parents. And fellow humans!

And one more thing!

It's important and critical to find and nurture love, have fun with peace and create meaning with relevance.

I failed on multiple fronts innovatively and repeatedly over the last 6 years. Not fun to fail there.

That's my TLDR. Will improve!

Thanks for reading through this long #ThrowbackThursday.

In 6-8 months, citizens will evaluate our Dialogue and its Del(h)ivery :)

Help us take the best of India to the rest of India.

Do write in if you can help in anyway. The common citizen needs it!

Yours truly,
Roshan