Crowdsourcing: A sign of digital democracy in action

In a recent social media post, Prime Minister Narendra Modi called for crowdsourced inputs to aid in the formulation of his party, the BJP’s political manifesto ahead of the 2024 general elections. PM Modi’s call to action on crowdsourcing follows a more than decade-long digital tradition that has now become institutionalised.

Digital crowdsourcing has emerged as the norm for a variety of activities ranging from the monthly radio broadcasts of Mann Ki Baat to the Indepe­ndence Day Speech on August 15 every year. The origins of crowdsourcing political inputs from citizens through the internet date back to 2013 when Modi, the then chief minister of Gujarat, announced a digital portal dedicated to volunteering for what was termed Mis­sion272+, the BJP’s campaign for the 2014 general elections.

The India272 portal, which was created to engage professionals, students and the diaspora through the internet for the BJP’s campaign, became a digital platform both for city-level volunteering and an enabler for crowdsourcing of inputs. Modi’s call to action ahead of every major campaign event during 2013-2014 witnessed a plethora of suggestions from volunteers on the portal. From his famous speech at Fergusson College in Pune to his many campaign speeches in Bengaluru and Hyderabad, the volunteer portal became the gateway for voters and supporters to not only witness the events but also become active stakeholders by getting an opportunity to have their say.

From speech inputs to ideas for the manifesto, the BJP’s campaign for the 2014 elections was as much about the use of the internet for outreach and communication as it was about input sourcing and soliciting feedback. Perhaps it was this crucial closing of the feedback loop that made a distinctive difference in contrast to other similar political efforts at digital campaigning that have largely been about propaganda and very little about listening. 

The scale and volume of crowdsourced inputs through the volunteer platform reached a threshold where manual sifting became inefficient. It was the first time that natural language processing tools were used to analyse the crowdsourced inputs to identify dominant themes and major concerns of the voters ahead of each campaign event. Crowdsourcing also played an interesting role in localising the speech content with references to icons, heroes, festivals and other aspects of local culture that helped establish an emotive connect with potential voters. Soon after forming the government in 2014, one of the earliest decisions taken by PM Modi was to convert the volunteer portal, india272.com, into one for citizen engagement.

Thus was born MyGov.in that has since become the gateway for all kinds of crowdsourcing by the government over the past decade. From crowdsourcing ideas for logos and taglines to soliciting inputs on policies and legislations, MyGov emerged as a platform for citizen engagement on a scale that was hard to imagine a few years ago. From Independence Day speeches to the Union Budget, MyGov has played a crucial role in making citizens an integral part of the governance process reflecting the mantra of “jan bhagidari”. With the monthly radio broadcasts of Mann Ki Baat regularly seeking ideas and inputs through MyGov, digital crowdsourcing has assumed an institutionalised role over the past 10 years. 

From Swacch Bharat to the GiveItUp campaign, digital crowdsourcing has both played a role in encouraging citizens to volunteer for initiatives in public interest as well as become a motivator of behavioural change. The statistics on MyGov are staggering with millions of volunteers pledging to undertake tasks in public interest, participating in quizzes to spread awareness and contributing ideas to India’s developmental journey as part of the Viksit Bharat movement.

Taking the engagement be­y­ond the digital realm, the cro­wdsourcing platforms have also facilitated on-ground acti­vities by bringing together ind­ividuals to collaborate on sha­red passions and work towards shared goals. Interestingly, the institutionalisation of digital crowdsourcing has gone bey­o­nd the central government in­itiatives with several state governments developing their mi­c­r­osites on MyGov with their own regional editions for sourcing ideas and inputs. With cro­wdsourcing of campaign and relief contributions through micropayments, the digitalisation of Indian democracy has ad­ded another dimension.

Most recently, with the Congress party seeking donations to its campaign through an online portal, it would seem the institutionalisation of digital crowdsourcing in Indian politics has become near universal. With the diversity of Indian languages adding significant complexity to analysing crowdsourced inputs, it is no surprise that artificial intelligence (AI) tools are being seriously evaluated to aid in the process. The government’s grievance portal, CPGRAMs, has emerged as an early adopter of AI in analysing crowdsourced inputs with the ability to handle both multi-modal and multi-lingual inputs. If fears over the misuse of generative AI throu­gh deepfakes have been top of mind ahead of elect­ions, perhaps the most interesting use case of political significance in 2024 could conversational AI for both crowdsourcing and targeted grassroots volunteering enabled by personalised en­gagement thro­ugh popular messaging platforms.

As India’s Constitution enters into its 75th year, a Digital Bharat is today able to add significant state capacity by engaging citizens through the creative use of digital tools and platforms. As we head into the general election, the critical differentiator between the political parties would be the ability of campaigns to use technology to listen to a plurality of voices at a macro scale across the country, while simultaneously being able to take localised, targeted actions at the micro level of your neighbourhood polling booth.

The writer is former CEO, Prasar Bharti