#05 What governments can learn from open source projects?
June 30, 2022•256 words
The open source or the free software movement became popular because of its community. When a software is published under the open source license, its entire codebase is made public. Anybody can study the code for security vulnerabilities or other issues and contribute by developing a fix. If the owner of the software accepts the fix, the codebase will be updated with the new changes. That is when it occurred to me What if we use this concept to build a new democracy?
Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. - John Adams
Our democratic system is 74 years old and we've seen what it has done to the country. We need a new democracy that is community-driven, transparent, and should involve people's participation even after the elections. We need Democracy 2.0.
Every constituency should have a 'Monitoring Squad' made up of 50 people from different economical, social, educational, and professional backgrounds (somewhat similar to Quorums in grama sabha) mapped to its respective MLAs/MPs.
The squad will evaluate every policy/government decision and will provide a collective opinion about how the decision will have an impact on them. In case of nationwide policies, members of all monitoring squads will collectively vote for the decision. If something doesn't work, the monitoring squad can collectively propose
a new solution and MLAs/MPs can present them in the assembly. This way we'll have a system that is transparent and has policies that work for every citizen.