Gauravonomics Blog

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At the recent e-STAS Symposium on Technologies for Social Action, it became evident to me that there are two dramatically different paradigms of digital activism: empowering with information and engaging with inspiration.

In the first paradigm of digital activism, you work with a disadvantaged group that suffers from limited access to even the most basic information and tools for self-expression. So, you use simple-to-use digital devices like Nokia mobile phones and Flip video cameras and simple-to-use digital technologies like text messages and online video to enable them to access basic information and share their own stories. Frontline SMS, Ushahidi, Freedom Fone and Video Volunteers are good examples of the ‘empowering with information’ paradigm of digital activism.

In the second paradigm of digital activism, you work with a group that is anything but disadvantaged. This group is at ease with using always on internet and mobile devices, both for instantaneous access to information and for self-expression and social interaction. Here, the digital activist isn’t trying to solve a crisis of capability, but a crisis of caring. Here, the aim is not to empower with information, but to engage with inspiration. Move On and iJanaagraha are examples of the ‘engaging with inspiration’ paradigm of digital activism.  Read More

I was quoted recently in a WSJ article on SMS-based social networking platform SMSGupShup. The article delved into the business model for SMS based social networking platforms in India and focused on the need to limit usage to control outgoing SMS costs –

Analysts say restricting the number of user exchanges is the only option SMS GupShup has to hold down costs. “If 1,000 people in a group can keep sending messages to everyone else, that cost quickly becomes unmanageable,” said Gaurav Mishra, CEO of 2020 Social, a social-networking media consultancy based in New Delhi.

SMSGupShup is often compared to Twitter, especially in US media, but the comparison is problematic because SMSGupShup is essentially a group SMS service. It doesn’t have a searchable public timeline, a robust API and application ecosystem, or the highly engaged user behavior we see on Twitter that is driven by public one-to-one conversations.

Most importantly, the default user behavior on Twitter is to “create” a status update, but the default user behavior on SMSGupShup is to “consume” updates created by others. I’ll not be surprised if less than 5% of SMSGupShup’s 26 million users have ever created an update, or created a profile.  Read More

My article on why the internet is the perfect hunting ground for young entrepreneurs was published today in Mail Today. All entrepreneurship is about betting on the next big thing, and if you are a 20-something entrepreneur, your bet on the next big thing on the internet is as good as, or even better than, someone double your age and experience.

Mail Today published a slightly edited version of the article I had submitted. Here’s the original.

Almost two years back, a month after I turned 28, I was interviewed for a newspaper story on why IIM types were leaving behind their corporate careers and following their dreams, mixing work, pleasure and purpose, pursuing what the journalist called “lifestyle entrepreneurship”.

I wondered why I was quoted in the story. My blog about the intersection of business, society and technology was becoming prominent, both amongst bloggers and journalists. I hung out with entrepreneurs and sometimes wrote about startups. I had even blogged about launching my own internet startup before I turned thirty. Still, I hadn’t taken the plunge yet. In fact, I was on a fast track in the quintessential corporate career. I has joined the TAS cadre in the Tata Group from IIM Bangalore and stayed with them for almost six years. My friends believed that I had acquired the Tata gene, that I would never leave, that I would retire as the CEO of one of the iconic Tata companies.  Read More

Rajesh Jain recently wrote an interesting series on the opportunities in the Indian internet space: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4.

Rajesh’s main point is that “the current crop of portals (horizontals and verticals)… haven’t yet become “utilities” (daily must-visits) in our lives” and there’s an opportunity “to build a hybrid net-mobile consumer media business, if one is willing to invest $5+ million over the next 2-3 years”.

I agree with Rajesh that unlimited flat-rate broadband plans will be the key to driving internet usage in India. I also agree with Rajesh’s assertion that web services need to leverage both internet and mobile to maximize reach and build in multiple revenue streams.

However, I think that Rajesh rushes through the last post and merely lists down the big sectors and players in the Indian internet space, without identifying the big business opportunities.

The big opportunity in the Indian internet space consists of three parts and here’s the missing third (first) part –

Part 1: Build a compelling vertical offering combining rich local content and a vibrant local community.  Read More

As part of my 2009 Society for New Communications Research Fellowship, I gave a talk titled ‘SMS as a Social Networking Platform’ at the 2009 NewComm Forum in San Francisco on April 29.

I started off by saying that one of the most important lessons my research on social media in the emerging BRIC countries has taught me is that marketers, and entrepreneurs, can learn a lot from digital activists, especially about engaging people who aren’t going to spend much, or anything at all, at little or no cost.

Then, I used several examples to illustrate my three big ideas.

1) The $50 mobile phone will continue to be the default computing device for billions of users in Asia and Africa.

2) SMS (not WAP, GPRS or 3G) will be the primary technology for web access for these users.

3) The ecosystem to create a social networking platform entirely on SMS is slowly emerging.

Then, I used my 4Cs Social media Framework to identify the features an ideal social networking platform should have and speculated that it can be replicated for the $50 mobile phone by doing all the transaction on SMS and running all the algorithms in the cloud.  Read More

I recently wrote an Op-Ed in Indian business daily Live Mint on why BJP’s digital election campaign wasn’t a #fail.

I have praised BJP’s election campaign before and even argued against dismissing BJP’s campaign as flawed, just because it failed. I have also written about why praising BJP’s election campaign isn’t the same as endorsing it’s ideology.

Here’s the full text of the article –

BJP Wide Web: A Success

BJP supporters dominated online conversations about the elections in the Indian blogosphere and on social networking sites such as Facebook, Orkut and Twitter

Gaurav Mishra

It is tempting to see the Congress’ victory this election as a validation of the tried and tested methods of political campaigning. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ran an aggressive digital media campaign and focused on reaching out to the urban first-time voter, but failed. The Congress ran a traditional campaign, focused on movie songs, local rallies and the charisma of the Nehru-Gandhi family, and succeeded.

However, I would caution against reading too much into this coincidence and mistaking it for causality. It’s not the BJP’s campaign but its Hindutva ideology that has failed the party. The BJP has lost in spite of its brilliant campaign, not because of it.  Read More

DigiActive co-founder Mary Joyce and I are delighted to announce our new co-authored blog Netfluence.org, which is an investigation into whether and how networked technologies influence political power structures.

The debate on whether internet and mobile technologies are transforming traditional power structures is dominated by three divergent narratives.

According to the first, utopian, narrative, internet and mobile technologies enable individuals to publish and distribute content, self-organize into communities of interest and participate in collective action. As a result, they can create new types of media outlets, build new types of civil society organizations, and monitor, protest against and even bring down governments. Even though these new degrees of freedom are far from universal, they are fundamentally changing political power structures. The future has already arrived, this narrative insists, it’s just not evenly distributed yet.

According to the second, status quo, narrative, power structures are ingrained into our society’s institutions, and internet and mobile technologies don’t really change these institutions, or create new ones. The case studies compiled by the utopians constitute anecdotal evidence, at best, and the influence of networked technologies will always be limited because of issues related to access or ability. So, internet and mobile technologies are a minor influence on political power structures, at best.  Read More

I gave a talk at NetSquared DC on Tuesday where I talked about social media and digital activism in India, digital initiatives during the 2009 Indian elections, and Vote Report India. I talked about our experience in using Ushahidi for election monitoring and our plans to integrate Swift into Ushahidi. I talked about how eMoksha is trying to become the Sunlight Foundation of India. Finally, I used my 4Cs Social Media Framework to analyze our successes and failures with Vote Report India and even plugged our Vote Report India Version 2.0 application at the NetSquared Microsoft Mobile Challenge for Development.

Here are the slides (PPTX/ PDF/ SlideShare) –

Here is the video of the talk (Vimeo) –

Thank you to Matt and Gabriela for giving me the opportunity to talk to the great NetSquared DC community.

Vote Report India was featured today in Cadalyst Magazine story on Ushahidi.

Here is the full text of the story –

Indian Citizens Serve as Election Monitors
Open-source technologies empower a geopolitical movement driven by the people.
May 19, 2009
By: Kenneth Wong

In late April, ordinary Indian citizens — the tiffin wallahs, the programmers, and the civil servants — began casting their votes in the general election for the Lok Sabha, the lower house of Parliament. But in the land of ancient gods and hereditary castes, the modern political process is fraught with mishaps.

On May 5, because of complaints of rigging, the Election Commission ordered repolling at three locations in the state of Uttar Pradesh. On May 6, supporters of a local candidate in Jaipur were reported to be offering opium to the villagers, justifying the practice as “the strengthening of bond.” Elsewhere, reports of distributing homemade alcohol to voters (presumably as bribes) emerged. In some locations, voters reported their names were either missing or duplicated.  Read More

I was interviewed recently by Homeland Security Today for a article on the use of social media and mobile technologies in crisis situations.

I talked about how technology is agnostic and can be used by both good guys and bad guys. We specifically talked about how both victims and terrorists were using mobile phones during the Mumbai terrorist attack.

I also pointed out that, often, the difference between the good guys (activists) and the bad guys (troublemakers) isn’t obvious. So, governments should assume that terrorists and dissidents will use these technologies, but refrain from trying to control, block or monitor these technologies too broadly.

Here is the full text of the article –

Social Media Opens Communications for Terrorists, Victims
by Mickey McCarter
Wednesday, 20 May 2009

Experts relate how terrorists, victims have been using Twitter and text messaging in crisis situations
The general public has very recently embraced the use of new social media applications like Twitter. Oprah Winfrey, for example, turned her fanbase onto the Web site last month. Traditional newspapers have lit up with stories about how blogs and tweets are changing the world.  Read More

I had mentioned yesterday that we will soon relaunch Vote Report India as a platform to crowd-source the performance monitoring of our elected members of parliament.

We have submitted Vote Report India to the Netsquared Microsoft Mobile Challenge for Development. The winners win up to $15000 and an opportunity to be showcased at the N2Y4 Mobile Conference.

I would urge you to take out five minutes from your time to have a look at the Vote Report India application and leave a positive comment that can help us win.

Here is a short summary of our Netsquared Microsoft Mobile Challenge for Development application –

WHAT: Vote Report India is a collaborative platform to enable Indian citizens to track election irregularities and monitor the performance of elected officials at national, state and local levels.

Users contribute direct SMS, email, Twitter and web reports and the Ushahidi-based platform aggregates them on an interactive map, and distributes them via RSS and email/ SMS alerts.

WHO: Vote Report India is a non-partisan all-volunteer collaboration between software developers, designers, academics, and other professionals to bring transparency to the Indian political process.  Read More

The 2009 Indian Lok Sabha elections have come to an end and so has version 1.0 of Vote Report India.

We have had our successes and failures and I have talked about some of them before.

I think we did a lot of things well –

- We were able to get the website up within a week, thank to some great work by the Ushahidi and eMoksha teams.

- We were able to build a number of important relationship, with civil society organizations (like Jaago Re/ One Billion Voters, National Network for India,  Liberty Institute, Citizens for Justice and Peace, and Women’s Political Forum), traditional media organizations (like Al Jazeera) and new media organizations (like Global Voices, Indipepal, Desipundit, BlogAdda, NGO Post and Digital Democracy). In fact, our partnerships page looks like a literal who’s who of the important players working on the Indian elections.

- We were able to generate a lot of buzz for Vote Report India, on blogs, on Twitter, and in mainstream media within a very short time.

- We have been able to build a vibrant Vote Report India community that has been active in supporting us on both the technical and outreach side.  Read More

An article I had submitted sometime back appeared in Hindustan Times today. It’s a reflection on whether digital initiatives by civil society organizations have worked in the 2009 Indian elections.

Here is the full text of the article –

E-lection fever

The successful online poll initiatives and blogs may help India 2014 do a US 2008

Gaurav Mishra

One of the ironies of Indian politics is that while the urban middle class complains about corrupt politicians, it neither steps out to contest elections or even cast its vote.

Mumbaikars proved this right on April 30, when the city registered its lowest voter turnout since 1977 despite the hullabaloo the elite had created post-26/11. Since then, the content and the tone of conversations of the Indian online community have changed. Well to-do youngsters, who earlier shied away from political debates, now seem to thrive on it.

For the first time in India, online voter-registration campaigns and initiatives have channelled the zeitgeist into constructive conversations and created an online space for civic engagement. It’s because of this groundswell that unlikely candidates like author Shashi Tharoor and danseuse Mallika Sarabhai have stepped out to contest the elections.Even political parties, which often speak to the lowest common denominator, upped the ante and reached out to millions of first time voters through blogs and social networking websites.  Read More

I’ll be giving a talk on Vote Report India at NetSquared DC on Tuesday, May 19th.

Vote Report India is a collaborative citizen-driven election monitoring platform for the 2009 Indian Lok Sabha elections, built on the Ushahidi platform. I’ll talk about the story behind the project, reflect on how well the project has worked, and share some thoughts on the future of the project.

I’ll also talk about how political parties, civil society organizations and corporates are using digital media in the 2009 Indian Lok Sabha elections.

When: Tuesday, May 19, 2009 7:00 PM

Where: Affinity Lab, 2451 18th St, NW 2nd Floor, Washington DC 20009

The NetSquared DC events are free and great food, wine and conversations are (usually) guaranteed. You can RSVP for the event here.

Cross-posted at Vote Report India.

Vote Report India was recently featured in Indian magazine Man’s World in a story on transparency initiatives related to the 2009 Indian elections.’The Watchdogs of Democracy’ is a great headline.

The story isn’t online yet, so I’ll post the text as an update. In the meanwhile, you can read high resolution scans of the story (page 1, page 2, page 3), thanks to Varun Bubber of Indipepal who has earlier written about political activism and the top ten citizen activism campaigns in the 2009 Indian elections.

Vote Report India is a collaborative citizen-driven election monitoring platform for the 2009 Indian Lok Sabha elections. For more, see a brief description of the project, the story behind the project and reflections on how well the project has worked.

Cross-posted at Vote Report India.

Vote Report India was recently featured on a BBC story on the 2009 Indian elections.

India has taken to the polls. The online reaction this time is revealing how the nation is developing digitally as well as making political choices. Gaurav Mishra joins us to look at the future for India online and what the electronic reaction to these elections can show us.

We talk about the challenges of running an online election monitoring campaign in India and how the 2009 Indian elections are like the 2004 US elections.

Here is the podcast. My interview is from 5:45 to 10:45.

Vote Report India is a collaborative citizen-driven election monitoring platform for the 2009 Indian Lok Sabha elections. For more, see a brief description of the project, the story behind the project and reflections on how well the project has worked.

Cross-posted at Vote Report India.

Vote Report India was recently featured on CNN-IBN in a story on the use of internet and mobile technologies in the 2009 Indian elections –

Apart from Vote Report India, the story talks about Manoj Kewalramani’s journey through 11 states in 45 days to cover the ‘real’ elections and also about the election posters designed by The Comic Project.

Vote Report India is a collaborative citizen-driven election monitoring platform for the 2009 Indian Lok Sabha elections. For more, see a brief description of the project, the story behind the project and reflections on how well the project has worked.

Cross-posted at Vote Report India

Varun Babbur at Indipepal has written a great piece on the use of digital tools in the Indian elections.

He extensively talks about my own work during the elections, including Vote Report India, India’s First Digital Elections Wiki and my series of posts on the use of digital technologies in the elections.

In my interview with Varun, I said that India is witnessing its first digital election in which the level of participation from  political parties, civil society organizations, media houses and even corporates has been nothing short of amazing. However, I cautioned that these online efforts will not be enough to change election results as the biggest impact of social media campaigns is still in terms of getting mainstream media attention.

Do have a look at the Indipepal piece.

Vote Report India is a collaborative citizen-driven election monitoring platform for the 2009 Indian Lok Sabha elections. For more, see a brief description of the project, the story behind the project and reflections on how well the project has worked.

Photo courtesy Chhavi Sachdev

In the last two days, three different journalists have asked me why the voter turnout in Mumbai has decreased to 43% in spite of voter registration initiatives like Jaago Re and transparency initiatives like Vote Report India.

I have been shocked by the low voter turnout myself and will be reflecting on it over several posts. Here’s my first attempt to answer that question, partly through the Vote Report India lens.

We have had 170 odd reports so far on Vote Report India whereas I was expecting close to a thousand reports by now.

Also, most of the reports are web reports, which is surprising given that we had a SMS short code and users could report incidents by sending a SMS starting with VoteReport to 5676785.

In terms of the content of the reports, most reports reference a news report. Election Commission Interventions is the most popular category, followed by Voter Bribing, Violence and Inflammatory Speech. The categories with first-hand experience — Forged Vote, Voting Machine Problems, Voter Name Missing and What Went Well — have had few reports.  Read More

Vote Report India was recently featured in UAE daily The National.

Vote Report India is a collaborative citizen-driven election monitoring platform for the 2009 Indian Lok Sabha elections. For more, see a brief description of the project, the story behind the project and reflections on how well the project has worked.

Here is the full text of the story –

Website keeps candidates in line

Jonathan Spollen, Assistant Foreign Editor

April 27. 2009 4:00PM UAE / April 27. 2009 12:00PM GMT

The Indian elections have not been short of incident. Varun Gandhi delivered what some say amounted to hate speech, Maoists attacked poll officials in Chhattisgarh, resulting in seven deaths, and Lashkar-i-Taiba, the Pakistani militant group, has threatened violence.

Along with scores of other violations of electoral conduct, from bribery to the theft of voting machines, all were duly noted and posted on Vote Report India, a website dedicated to what it calls “citizen-driven election monitoring”.

The site allows individuals from anywhere in India to report occurrences of misconduct via telephone, e-mail, SMS and blog links, which are then aggregated by the site administrators with news reports, other blog posts, photos, videos and tweets (Twitter messages) of the same incident to verify its truth.  Read More