Can the Samvad cell make an impact

The promise and the practice of Samvad Cell of the BJP which has over 60,000 members contributing their ideas for a New India can only be described at best archaic. Just because, the samvad cell has garnered over 60,000 mermbers using technology does not make it an effective tool. The promise is immense and encouraging, the potential limitless, but reality is that it is doing things not in a visionary way but as an archaic bureaucracy. Perhaps I am being too critical with just two papers created by this enthusiastic group. But if these two papers are any models to go by, I cannot be but skeptical. 

Whats wrong with these two papers. 

Well, it does not come up with any unique insight into the problem. Period. There is nothing in it that will make a reader go - Wow, I did not know that. Presented to a seasoned bureaucrat, he will just cast it aside saying that there is nothing he does not know, nothing new by means of causes or statistics and nothing by mneans of solution that has not been tried. 

You cannot solve the problems of today using the same systems that created them. 

The solutions suggested in the papers are just results expected. There is not a single idea on how to go about implementing them. Both papers address only one aspect of the public - its aspirations. A wish list. That is all. This list can be prepared by two people sitting and thinking for 2-3hrs. What the samvad cell needs to do is to co-ordinate the nation and enlighten them in the language of the polity. 

The missing analysis & arguments

Being in the government, they have access to statistics. Before they come up with just the aspiration list, they could do well to cross check these with statistics.  

Any paper has to talk about all aspects of the problem including potential opposition, potential costs, potential failures, measurement metrics and safeguards for misuse. With 60,000 people contributing, i know it is a huge task, but how else can you use the collective intelligence. The parameters have to be analysed in detail. 

Waste of Time

I spent 3-4 hours on researching the subject before posting an opinion on the samvad cell. Adding the time spent for each subject, that is a cumulative loss of over 10 man days. After seeing none of the ideas even touched by samvad cell, i should come to only one conclusion that I might as well have spent it on something useful. But my love of MODI and his vision and passion makes me stick on to the samvad cell. I have long given up hope on the bureaucracy to come up with any new or practical solution. This government through a participative approach gives me a glimmer of hope that even I in some way could be part of the Think Tank. I think that there are atleast 60,000 people like me who give their opinions in hope of being listened to. Pls. do not ignore our time and ideas that could make India better.

The samvad cell should not act just as a proactive, responsive government. It should act as a proactive, intelligent, responsive BJP government. It has to believe in its serious role in Nation Building. 

THE PROMISE YET

Being technologically savvy, BJP should employ state of the art systems to data mine both the government and the ideas generated by the members of samvad cell. 

Data convergence, data mining of the suggestions from various members should be classified into various meta tags and analysed individually by creating a matrix that can be classified and sorted. A rough tagging principle could be, topic, governance level, branch of government, nature of suggestion sub tagged as pain point, underlying cause, expected end result, methodology, regulation, change in procedure, creating institutions, policy idea, better implementation, enforcement etc., credibility of suggestion following a ranking system ranked by both the member and peer group rating by volunteers. This can be sorted, rated and ranked by a peer group much like how Wikipedia functions. The best and innovative ideas can then be further made into an argument that should then be made available to the government and the public.

Re-inventing the wheel

Are we re-inventing the wheel so to say. We have to look globally for successful models and adapt them to suit our needs. This has to be done carefully with due diligence paid to long term effects and learnings from other countries. Proven programs that have worked should b emulated as early as possible. 

Cloudsourcing Statistical Analysis

One of the greatest problems in governance of India is the lack of real time data available to the think tank. Because the data is not being crunched by the experts. BJP can facilitate this by allowing members to aid in data analysis and then give suggestions based on various results. This is very important as no solution can work pan-India. In many cases it need can be done on trial basis in separate pockets which can be tracked and then the results included with the idea paper when presented to the government.

Thinking outside the box

You cannot do the same thing again and again expecting a different result. Meaning, whatever solution we provide has to be about creating insitutions, policies, laws, that are outside existing systems. Creating access and transparency is the only demand I see in the existing documents and in my humble opinion will not even make a scratch on the problem. 

The solutions should be very specific in the following 

1. What should be removed

2. What should be changed

3. What should be created

Each of which should deal with 

Regulations, Procedures, Personnel, Institutions, Responsibilities, Framework of action, Performance metrics, Social metrics, financial model etc., wherever applicable.