To quote Jennifer Aaker and Andy Smith, the authors of the book The Dragonfly Effect: Quick, Effective, and Powerful Ways To Use Social Media to Drive Social Change (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2010): "People are often disillusioned by the idea of tackling a seemingly large social goal - it is easy to believe that you, as an individual, can't have any real impact. However, when you remember that you have the power to affect just one human, in one measurable way, the illusion of helplessness dissipates, and you feel inspired to make a difference." This book was inspired by the work of two brilliant young Indians, Sameer Bhatia (a Stanford grad and a Silicon Valley entrepreneur) and Vinay Chakravarthy (a Boston-based twenty-eight-year-old physician), who both accomplished a lot in a relatively short life span before succumbing to the incurable disease of leukemia in 2008. The authors go on to say: "Although we've all witnessed the power of the Internet and such Web 2.0 tools as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube to connect us to others, it is only now becoming clear that we can harness these tools strategically and thoughtfully to bring about massive change and drive social good."
This is precisely what we are going to do to bring about a massive change in the political setup of the Indian society. In order to make what I am proposing clear and practical, let me take the state of Kerala as an example. I believe that the powerful ways of using social media, as illustrated by several examples above, to drive social change can be utilized to craft a credible and viable alternative in the coming state assembly elections by creating a new party to contest the elections.
Presently the people of Kerala are left with the only option to select between the Marxist party-led Left Democratic Front (LDF) and the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF). In the case of LDF, the CPI-M party secretary himself has orchestrated the massive corruption by looting the common man of Rs 374.50 crore on behalf of all party cadres (see SNC Lavalin scandal). In the case of UDF, the Congress party and allies have entrusted the practice of corruption and other fine arts (à la PK Kunhalikutty, PJ Joseph), in true democratic sprit, in the able hands of its multi-talented leaders (à la late Sri K Karunakaran, Balakrishna Pillai, K Sudhakaran, etc.). Both LDF and UDF have been hoodwinking the people of Kerala by patronizing the lottery tycoons during their regimes by facilitating illegal lotteries to flourish in the state and helping them loot crores from the common man. See how even the Central government is clandestinely supporting the lottery mafia by raising mere technical issues for ruling out a CBI probe into Kerala lottery scam. As the assembly polls near, both fronts are eagerly exposing each other's corruption cases, which they have been assiduously concealing from the public till now.
How do we go about creating the new party of the common masses? As pointed out earlier we do not need a leader – charismatic or not. And we do not need the traditional practices of a rich and well established political party which usually start off the democratic process of election with the corrupt practice of seeking overt and covert “donations” from corporate houses, organized crime groups, lottery mafias, and drug cartels.
How do we arrive at our candidates? These shall be nominated by the people of the respective electorates. However, I would recommend that the potential candidates should fulfill some conditions:
The candidate’s complete bio-data and income declaration should be available for everyone to see.
With the full support of all categories of people for this revolutionary approach to providing an alternative government in Kerala we can expect to win the next assembly election with an absolute majority.
Our election campaign will be unique with the complete absence of political leaders shouting at the top of their voices on road sides, or with processions causing inconveniences to the people and obstructing traffic. We can make it possible to mobilize resources, both people and money, more quickly and easily using social media than any political party can.