#ActiveCitizenship | Citizenship as a Service (CaaS)
In this session on ‘Citizenship as a Service,’ the discussion aims to explore the role of technology in enabling active citizenship. What is needed to build cutting-edge products to reach masses at scale? How can we attract talent to build? And how does citizenship play out in the context of the Bazaar and enable cooperation towards a resilient Samaaj?
Sarayu Natarajan, founder of the Aapti Institute, moderated this session with insights from Anisha Gopi, Team Lead at Nyaaya; Viraj Tyagi, CEO of eGovernments Foundation; and Aniket Doegar, CEO and co-founder of Haqdarshak.
Scale, Speed, and Access
According to Anisha Gopi, technology has played a massive role in democratising access to information, creating awareness about rights and empowering people to enforce them. For example, real-time reporting of judicial proceedings has encouraged citizen engagement with the legal system, and tech solutions can take the burden off the courts; however, these advancements don’t take into account those who can’t access technology, Anisha points out. With eGov, Viraj Tyagi says that tech has enabled scale and speed, especially with open digital platforms, and has created more transparency within systems. And, to Aniket Doegar, we need to start looking at technology differently from the perspective of the last mile user. Technology is the only way to scale in a country like India; however, there is no ‘one size fits all’ solution, so how can we make digital tools through a more decentralised process, he asks.
Barriers to Access
There are several other factors at play that create barriers to access. Aniket mentions challenges that may not always get factored in, like patriarchal hierarchies and the dynamics of caste and religion, which may hamper access to technology in households and villages. This is why we need community champions/agents and to build tech in a very localised manner, using local languages and providing different tools and options, he suggests. Anisha also notes the barriers created by the Bazaar since a lot of tech is made for-profit and therefore often doesn’t cater to large sections of the population that will not bring in profit for companies. This affects everything from the choices made in the design to language and even marketing strategies for products. So innovation in the Bazaar often excludes large groups of people, while civil society organisations lack the funding to innovate in this space. There are also certain things that technology can’t solve on its own—pointing to issues like access to justice where we need to build capacity, awareness, trust and ensure that last mile communities know that there is support and that they should access it.
“The divides on technology tend to play out along the lines of existing social divides and gender, community, caste, geographic location also play out in significant ways.” Sarayu Natarajan
The Need for Digital Public Goods
Another limitation is how technologists view issues as problems to solve, i.e. value capturing, which is how markets operate, says Viraj. However, given the complexity of the issues and the diversity of India, one solution will never apply to all contexts or realities. Instead, he suggests that we need to distribute the ability to solve and design in a way that increases the capabilities of actors across the Samaaj, Bazaar, and Sarkaar. Digital public goods are platforms for social change without any profit motive. These platforms will significantly enable people to use technology to do their jobs better, make communities stronger without taking their agency away, and ensure service delivery to citizens in an equitable manner. He calls for designing intra-operable, open public digital goods, where the role of technology is to absorb complexity and make services more accessible. It should enable people to do their jobs better and create impact at scale and speed; however, we also can’t expect the market to deliver public digital goods when they are not incentivised. Therefore, he suggests collaborating with the Samaaj and Sarkaar to run public service delivery programs that are enabling and give back agency to the communities they’re serving.
The Role of Civil Society
According to Anisha, civil society can play a considerable role by taking some of the burdens of the state, demanding more accountability, and fighting for marginalised communities. Civil society also has a better understanding of ground realities; therefore, civil society actors should be harnessed and involved in conceptualising and implementing solutions. She also notes that there are boundaries to this, including the rule of law and certain functions that only the state can carry out. It’s not possible or advisable for civil society to take over state functions, so while they can assist from the margins, it is unfair to shift the burden onto them.
“We need to pick community champions and community agents for whom more and more technology has to be built in a very localised manner.” Aniket Doegar
Enabling Resilient Societies
How do we ensure that people working in communities are enabled and participate in solutions, and how do we make the tech accessible and easy-to-use, asks Viraj. If we can think through these questions over the next few years, we could have millions of community actors using digital tools to help them do even better work than before. However, this is where the balance of the Samaaj, Sakaar, and Bazaar must come through because there are systemic barriers we must address before the Samaaj adopts these tools.
Our Takeaways:
- What are some of the limitations of technology in the Indian context, and how can we reassess our approach to problem-solving while keeping these in mind?
- What are the opportunities and boundaries within which civil society can advocate for communities, and where should the Sarkaar and Bazaar step in to fill the gaps?
- How do we build platforms that are not technology-led but technology-enabled and give agency back to community actors by distributing the ability to solve?
