5.2. Self governance- B.
Autonomous.
Policies, Parties.
Individual powerless.
Corruption.
Spectrum of views.
Decentralised.
Professional management.
AI.
Outsourced.
Consultants.
Executor agencies.
Maintenance agencies.
Lean government.
Earlier most of the population of a nation used to live in rural areas.
Now 70% of the population live in cities.
This demographic change has a profound implication.
Democratic power is now in cities.
The resident of cities by their sheer numbers determine national policies.
Earlier nations were organised as a federation of states.
This model is broadly adopted even now.
We are now advancing well into democracy 2G.
One of the salient features of democracy 2G, is decentralisation.
Governance is decentralised, from nation to state, state to city,
and city to community.
Most of the self governance happens at the community level.
Community managers represent the community's views to the city, state and the nation.
The city is becoming an important autonomous self governing subsystem, of the nation.
This is an important democratic power shift.
Cities are able to decide on many subjects, what is best for them.
They broadly follow national policy.
More importantly they shape national policy.
At one stage politics was defined by parties.
There were various parties, like Republican, Democratic, Communist, Socialist, etc..
Each party professed to have a unique ideology.
Each party trumpeted that its ideology was superior to the other.
Some capitalist countries, even portrayed communists to be evil people.
Though different parties evolved in different countries,
they were essentially rigid compartments.
People were forced to think along party lines.
One is supposed to belong to one party or another.
This deeply polarised people into essentially meaningless groups.
It was not too long before a strongly communist country like China,
started practising capitalist policies, while remaining a communist country.
Many capitalist countries took the lead in implementing widespread social welfare schemes.
This helped to break the myth that a set of ideas can be rigidly compartmentalised.
This was true for most other parties also.
There is nothing called an ideal ideology.
It was a convenient way of bunching together some ideas and professed ideals.
In reality the ideals were never practised as professed.
The concept of parties came into existence, when democracy came into being.
It facilitated the transition from kingship to democracy.
In the new design for democracy, parties have little or no relevance.
People align themselves to policies, rather than parties.
Primacy is given to the individual citizen.
In the party based political system,
during the elections parties canvassed the electorate in favour of their candidates.
The party which won the majority, 'came to power'.
They used this power to govern the country and the people for about 5 years.
The party was supposed to reflect the views of the people.
The winning party was supposed to implement schemes for the welfare of the people,
as promised during the time of the election.
The candidates were supposed to reflect the views of the people, in the government.
The model served well to act as a startup design, for implementing democracy.
In this model :
The people elected the party.
The party came to power, and governed the people.
Since the people elected the party, power was with the people.
Unfortunately this model had serious flaws.
The party presents a manifesto to the people before elections.
The manifesto usually is a vague collection of ideals and intent.
The electors rarely read the manifesto.
The elected party rarely implements the manifesto.
The manifesto being a vague document, it is not possible to compare the performance of the party,
with the manifesto.
The party itself may not take the manifesto seriously.
The emphasis is on coming to power.
This system tends to concentrate power to a party.
Earlier power was concentrated with the king.
This power is now with, what they call 'the party in power'.
It is dangerous to concentrate power with an individual or a party.
Power can be, and often is misused.
The individual becomes powerless in this system.
We need to design a new democracy in which the government does not overpower the people.
We need one which empowers people.
Coming to power would mean convincing the electorate to vote for them.
This could be true, a mixture of genuine means and dubious methods.
In many countries, specially developing countries, the process of elections is highly corrupt.
It is usual to bribe low income people to vote for the party.
When the party comes to power, it needs to collect funds in exchange for favours done, usually to business.
The party tends to employ corrupt means to collect funds.
The government itself becomes corrupt.
Corruption which is practiced at the highest levels,
percolates throughout the administration, to the lowest levels.
Even the government clerk is pulled into this web of corruption.
To do many transactions with the government, involves some kind of bribing.
Coming to power gets equated with a license to take bribes.
To come to power requires corrupt funds.
Once in power it is required to collect corrupt funds.
This becomes a vicious cycle.
In a scenario, when one party is corrupt and another is not,
people have the freedom to choose the non corrupt party.
The party system evolves where all the significant parties are corrupt.
In this scenario, voting for a party, typically is based on 'the lesser of two or more evils'.
Loyalty to a party is not a intrinsic goal of democracy.
If we introspect, it is not the real goal of an individual, to bring a 'party to power'.
The old system allows him to do only that.
Corruption, like cancer tends to spread through out society.
It can take many forms, and forge many links to embed itself.
Within a party, the more corrupt people tend to become more powerful.
Power tends to concentrate around some highly corrupt, wealthy individuals.
They perpetuate this power through nepotism.
Bureaucrats are appointed officials to look after administration of the government.
They are supposed to lend some continuity and stability to the system.
Over a period of time, a nexus builds up between the politicians and the administrators.
The administrators are used by politicians to extract corrupt funds.
The bureaucrats willing cooperate when they are suitably compensated for their efforts.
When business joins this nexus of politicians and bureaucrats, the system becomes remarkably stable.
Regardless of which party comes to power, corruption continues.
This defeats the purpose of democracy.
In the new system, the individual can exercise his franchise, at a policy level.
Power is bestowed to the individual.
One of the greatest weakness of the party based democracy,
is that it cannot reflect the spectrum of views, that an individual has.
Let us assume for simplicity, that there are 5 subjects, which require our views.
We could have 5 different views on the five different subjects :
Strongly in favour.
In favour.
Neutral.
Against.
Strongly against.
A single political party will not reflect this spectrum of views of an individual.
In reality there would be scores of subjects, related to governance.
An individual is free to have, and usually has, specific views on each subject.
An elected individual or party can never reflect the spectrum of views of every individual.
This is a primal weakness in the old democracy.
It can never truly reflect the views of the people.
A party based democracy is at best a rough approximation to reflect peoples views.
When there are many subjects, there are an infinite number of combinations of the views,
of the people of a country, with millions of citizens.
It is impossible to have a party to reflect all these combination of views.
We need to have a system, where an individual is able to express his unique views, on every relevant subject.
This would mean, designing a model of direct democracy.
In the new model people do not vote for a party, they vote for a policy.
They vote for each policy that is presented for public views.
Essentially direct democracy cuts out the middle man, as a powerful person or party.
It directly links the individual to the government.
This kind of model is highly suitable for self governance.
The new model of public opinion is constantly collected and aggregated, in cloud sites .
Even on subjects that the citizens do not vote on, public views are available on the cloud.
The government is forced to constantly tune their policies, in line with public views.
Any policy or plan of the government is made transparent, and is subject to public scrutiny and appraisal.
There is no leeway for the government to act against public opinion.
In the new model public policy is closely linked to public views.
The public have no loyalty to any party.
They have loyalty to their own views.
In the days of kings and kingdoms, government was highly centralised.
Though the king had advisors and administrators, he had the final say,
on everything that mattered.
Democracy succeeded to a certain extent in decentralising government.
It is possible to design a system of democracy, which is both centralised and highly decentralised.
Perhaps we can take inspiration from nature and life sciences.
Every cell in the human body, manages its internal functions by itself.
But all the trillions of cells work in a coordinated way.
This coordination is mainly done by the brain.
This is a good example, of how systems can be designed to be both decentralised and centralised.
In a good design what need not be centralised, is not centralised.
In other words, the system strives to decentralise to the optimal possible level.
In the model that we will be discussing, a collection of about 10000 people,
live in a community.
The community can be thought of like a cell of a human being.
The human cell is perfectly capable of managing all its internal functions.
Yet, it works in coordination with all other communities of the country, in tune with national policy.
The objective of the new design would be to delegate most of the managerial functions to the community.
We will later discuss a model organic city called Ur.
Ur has a population of one million, with hundred communities of 10000 people.
Within the community people live in apartments called communes.
The community is designed as a mixed use model.
The places where people work are distributed through out the city, and are located in different communities.
There is no centralised business district, like in old cities.
The community has residences or communes, business units, commercial units, schools, park, lake,
hospitals, avenues, club, welfare centre, cultural centre, cafe, salon, etc, etc..
Many people in the community also work in the community.
This means that most of the living needs of people are within the community.
Communities are linked to each other by road and high speed underground rail.
The community has its own avenues, trees, power generation units, water recycling units, waste recycling units, etc..
The design is to see that most of the communities needs are located within the community.
This community manages itself.
The community has its own finances and budget.
A portion of the national taxes devolve to the community.
The community is expected to manage its own finances.
Many aspects of the earlier concept of governance, now becomes apart of community management.
The community manages its micro infra structure like avenues, last mile travel, transport, cleanliness, pollution control, etc..
Community has its own court and judiciary.
It conforms to national policy, but is responsible for managing itself.
Like the human cell. it is an independent self contained unit.
Like the human cell, it works as a part of a larger national system.
There are several advantages to delegating management responsibility to the community itself.
In this model of management small is not only beautiful, but far more effective.
By implementing a 360 degree management concept, the community is able to govern itself.
Most decisions of the community are made collectively.
A digital system of voting, on a continuous basis, involves the community, in its management.
The management of the community is constantly appraised by the community.
If it is not up to the expectations, the community manager is replaced.
In summary, the community governs itself.
This is the theme of democracy 2G.
This model instills a sense of belonging to the community residents.
They no longer feel alienated from the government.
They no longer think that an unseen superior force governs them.
They don't feel helpless, they feel involved and enthusiastic.
This is reflected in the large number of volunteers, in the community, who willingly do community service.
They feel the sense of responsibility of the need to govern themselves.
Over a period of time this responsibility becomes inculcated in their culture.
In a decentralised model,
the community becomes the self governing cell of the city, and the country.
Formulating policy, developing plans and implementing the plans,
are part of governance.
Historically most of this responsibility has been given to the government.
We look upon and depend on the government to implement plans,
which will realise the policies.
The government relies on bureaucrats to implement plans.
The underlying assumption is that bureaucrats have the expertise and competence to do so.
A couple of centuries ago, the amount of knowledge available,
was significantly lower than what we have today.
In those days bureaucrats with good general knowledge could be expected to be able to manage,
all aspects of government.
This is no longer true.
The amount of knowledge has exponentially increased over the last 200 years.
We live in a much more complex world.
We need a much higher level of competence to manage this new reality.
We also need augmented intelligence to effectively manage complex systems.
There is a strong need to delink policy making and professional management.
It is understandable, and even desirable to have many national policies.
This helps orient ourselves to the same objective.
Translating policy into plans and implementing them requires professional management.
This management would have to include domain experts and specialists.
They need to be supported by augmented intelligence.
For example, a country could have a policy on recycling.
To make meaningful plans, and implement such a plan would require a large number of experts and specialists.
In democracy 2G we need to think of replacing most of the bureaucracy with professional managers.
The management team should comprise of experts in specialised fields.
For example, water recycling, plastic recycling, metal recycling, would require specialists in each domain.
A country could have a policy on using renewable energy.
We would require specialists in solar, wind, and other renewable energy,
to formulate and implement meaningful plans.
Almost every subject we can think of today requires specialised knowledge.
In this new world, it becomes imperative to entrust management to professional managers and experts.
A large portion of the bureaucracy can be dismantled.
Government becomes like a system of professionally managed organisations.
For example, organisations which manage energy, recycling, transport, communication,
education, research, health, environment, economics, agriculture, industry, trade, urban planning, social welfare, etc..
Each of these organisations is manned by management professionals and domain experts.
These professionals are appointed on a need basis.
They are accountable for performance.
In this model of democracy, the management involved in governance, is entrusted to professionals.
Management in democracy 2G is decentralised and professionalised.
The complex society we live in, requires sophisticated management tools.
We are witnessing a era where more and more intelligence is delegated to machines.
What we once thought could be understood only by humans, is now easily understood by machines.
Even at the beginning of this century, computers started defeating human grandmasters in the game of chess.
'Go' was once considered a very complex game, that only humans could master.
It took only a few more years for a computer to defeat the world champion of 'Go'.
What we once called computers, can be now called augmented intelligence systems or AI.
These systems have surpassed the conventional intelligence that humans used to be proud of.
Humans design and build augmented intelligence systems.
We are acquiring more and more intelligence to design and build AI,
and more and more wisdom to steer and guide AI.
This capability is what will differentiate us from machines.
Humans still will be the masters, and machines, even intelligent systems will be tools at their disposal.
Governance of countries, involves comprehending very large amount of data,
and the complex interactions in society, which creates them.
Machines are now capable of understanding complex systems.
They can simulate various 'what if' conditions.
They can even make intelligent suggestions, and provide alternative solutions.
There are many areas of governance, where it is critical even for experts,
to have the support of AI.
Governing not only needs professional management by experts,
it also needs this support of AI.
AI plays a important role in self governance.
Self governance evolves frequent and continuous feedback from citizens in the form of voting.
It is also necessary to continuously keep track of public opinion on various subjects.
AI will have an important role in collating and interpreting public views.
Almost all areas of governance would involve the use of AI.
Some examples where AI is deployed are:
Power generation and consumption.
Water use and recycling.
National and city transport management.
Lifelong education systems.
Research in science and technology.
Agriculture.
Urban planning.
Comprehensive health management systems.
Communication systems.
Trade.
Economics.
In fact AI permeates all areas of management systems.
There is no way that politicians can manage these systems.
We need experts supported by AI, to manage these systems.
In the new democracy we not only have decentralised and professional management,
we also have the extensive support of AI.
The role of the government has evolved overtime.
Government took on various responsibilities.
This included :
Building of infra structure, like roads, ports, airports, etc,.
Building power plants and distribution facilities.
Building dams, canals, and providing water for irrigation and domestic use.
Treatment of waste water.
Disposal of solid waste.
Providing health care.
Providing educational facilities.
Operating research facilities.
Maintenance of rivers, lakes.
Maintenance of parks, museums and public facilities.
Storage and distribution of food grains.
Maintenance of forest and public land.
Providing banking and financial services.
Production of metals, machinery, etc,.
and so on.
In the process, the government built up a huge bureaucracy, and a huge army of operative personnel.
The government took on the responsibility of planning, design, construction, operations and maintenance of these facilities.
In most cases the government was not the most competent agency to take up this responsibility.
But for mostly historical reasons the government shouldered most of these responsibilities, with its own staff.
In the new model of self governance, the government outsources most of these responsibilities to private agencies.
The government in essence needs to be a decision making organisation.
The functions of planning, design, execution, and management can be outsourced to the most competent private agencies.
Government will continue to be the largest employer in the country.
But there will be one major difference.
It will provide indirect employment, not direct employment.
The government will be by design lean and mean.
It will outsource planning, design, execution, and management to competent private agencies.
There has been a significant change in the work culture of people.
Earlier people used to seek life time employment.
Many jobs offered opportunities to do so.
With in an organisation a hierarchical ladder was provided for people to grow and serve the organisation,
in more and more senior positions.
The entire government bureaucracy was structured in this fashion.
People were employed for life, in various departments of the government.
There was very little co-relation with competence and the job requirements.
We are witnessing a society in which people are continuously learning.
Education can no longer be referred to, in the past tense, as 'educated'.
There are also no rigid compartments for subjects of learning.
A person could train himself for example, in physics, engineering, microbiology and water recycling.
There is an increasing trend where people work as consultants.
They will not seek life time employment, but seek to work as consultants,
in projects which can use their knowledge and skills.
A person could be a part time consultant, to many organisations.
Most of the work force now comprises of such consultants.
Organisations also tend to look for consultants more and more, to achieve their objectives.
This gives tremendous flexibility to both the individual and the organisation.
Jobs are offered on a need basis and fulfilled by competent consultants.
This trend has to be adapted by the government also.
The life long permanent structure of the bureaucracy is dissolved.
The government employs skilled professional consultants on a need basis.
The government is still the largest employer in the country.
But it does not offer permanent employment.
It offers short and long term consultancy opportunities.
At any point of time there is a large number of such opportunities in the government.
Selection is based on competence and expertise.
This ensures that the best of talent is available for government.
In democracy 2G, people employ the most competent people to govern them.
The people thus employed are accountable for performance.
The government can also employ organisations as consultants.
These organisations in turn employ professionals and domain expert consultants.
This gives tremendous flexibility to the government, while keeping its own staff to the bare minimum.
Executors are another type of professional agencies.
For example, let us say that, the government wants to build a large solar power plant.
There are professional agencies which specialise in doing just that.
Almost all government projects are awarded to private agencies, on a competitive basis.
These agencies could be local or global.
Many cases a global agency might tie up, with a local agency to compete, to execute a project.
The project could be of any nature.
For example, airports, laying roads, water recycling plants, construction of government buildings,
sub way rail, parks, lakes, sports facilities, universities, museums, cultural centres etc.
All government projects are executed by private executor agencies.
This ensures that all government projects attract the best talent.
It also ensures that the projects are executed at the most effective cost.
The government does not maintain public facilities, by itself.
This responsibility is given to private agencies.
There are agencies which specialise in maintaining facilities.
For example, water recycling plants, roads, parks, lakes, waste recycling, public records, etc.
These maintenance agencies become responsible to the community management, and city management.
The agencies are expected to provide high quality maintenance.
The community manager has the right, to pull up and penalise any deficiency in service.
For example, if a road is not in proper condition, the concerned private agency, is penalised.
If the situation warrants, the maintenance contract could be cancelled.
It is the responsibility of the community manager to see to it, that all community facilities are maintained in the best possible manner.
Community residents have direct access to the community manager.
They could report any deficiency in the quality of maintenance services.
Some facilities are shared by all communities, and belong to the city.
The city management is responsible for the agencies managing the facilities of the city.
The quality of life is vastly improved by providing high quality facilities to the residents.
The government uses outsourcing as a strategy.
Consulting, execution and maintenance is outsourced to competent private agencies.
All information regarding outsourcing is transparent.
It is available in the cloud site, and accessible to all.
Outsourcing leads to a very lean government organisation.
There are very few people who work full time for the government.
By its very nature self governance, means that most of the governing decisions, are made by the citizens themselves.
The large and rigid bureaucracy is effectively dissolved.
Since very few people are involved in government, access to them is far easier.
In practise the community manager acts as a nodal point, to interface with the government.
The individual citizen no longer feels powerless.
He feels empowered.