Empowering India is an initiative of Liberty Institute. The Institute is a public policy think tank dedicated to advocating ideas that enhance individual freedom. But to be effective, public policy proposals need to be politically acceptable. So the question is how to make public policies politically viable?

Empowering India was born out of this desire to understand the political process, which included the electoral process, political parties, candidates, and the citizens. This is the interface between political ideals and public policy proposals, where popular public discourse plays a very vital role. Empowering India seeks to make democracy meaningful, by improving access to politically relevant information.

Empowering India received the Manthan Award for South Asia 2009 in the e-governance category. This was a recognition of the innovative and practical use of IT for political empowerment.

Empowering India currently provides electoral information, and background information of candidates since 2003. Also, it has the election results from almost all the state and national elections held in the past fifteen years. It also has an unique tool for political analysis. But there is a lot of scope for improvement in the existing functions, and possibility of enhancement by inclusion of new information. The goal is to try and become a political portal. This calls for wider partnership with people, with domain knowledge on IT, marketing, finance, networking, donors and supporters, but most importantly with citizens actively concerned about the country.

Empowering India initiative is rooted to a couple of fundamental ideals.

First, informed choice and increased participation in the democratic process is the best way to nurture and protect political freedom.

Secondly, economic market and political democracy are two sides of the same coin. Both empower the citizen by ensuring freedom of choice. In the marketplace, the consumer is empowered by the freedom of choice in the range of goods and services available. In the democratic republic, the voter is empowered by the freedom to choose from a range of political options.

And finally, democracy is not about majority rule, since that would make it no different from a lynch mob. The defining characteristic of political democracy is to recognize and respect the freedom of those who disagree and dissent peacefully, so that every idea may have the freedom to compete, try to persuade fellow citizens through debates and discussions, and can aspire to become the majority opinion of tomorrow. This again, is perfectly analogous to an open market, where every product has to compete and earn the favour of customers.

The idea is simple, the technology is basic, and the website is not fancy, but during the general election in April 2009, the website recorded over 100,000 daily hits. Without any capacity to market the website, the number of visitors who discovered the website on the internet bears testimony to the enormous interest, and intensity of demand for information among concerned citizens.

Over the past one year, the website was launched in ten states and union territories across the country – Bangalore, Chennai, Cochin, Delhi, Guwahati, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Lucknow, Patna, and Ranchi. Local NGOs, concerned citizens, and national organizations such as the Press Institute of India partnered with Empowering India to help spread the word.

Former Speaker of the Lok Sabha, Mr Somnath Chatterjee, former Chief Election Commissioners Mr TS Krishnamurthy and Mr JM Lyngdoh, former Governor of Karnataka Mr TN Chaturvedi, former Supreme Court Justice Mr Santosh Hegde, and other public figures launched Empowering India at the various events.

Countless, political reporters, commentators and organizations made use of the information from Empowering India website. Prominent among them are Google which used data from this site to update their election initiative. India Today, the weekly news magazine, had a cover story based on the information from the website. Indian Express, the newspaper, brought out a handbook based partly on the information from the website. Many citizens and media persons from different corners of the country said that this initiative made it possible for them to get to know a little more about their own candidates and constituencies.

In the past few months, the initiative has attracted the attention of democracy activists in others parts of the world. Queries have come from neighbouring Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, as well as distant Namibia. The simplicity of the design makes Empowering India very easily adaptable to any parliamentary democracy, which uses the first past the post electoral system.

This initiative has been online for five years now, and has been growing as we were learning by doing. The current website, www.Empowering.India, would be considered third generation site. The scaling up the initiative, in the past two years, to the present level has been possible because of financial support from the Friedrich Naumann Foundation, a liberal foundation from Germany, and a few other friends. The technical support has been provided by three software teams, based in Kerala, Delhi and Gurgaon. Equally importantly, over 250 volunteers from across the country helped digitize a lot of the data during elections, using the online interface.

Empowering India welcomes comments and suggestions, and greatly appreciates all forms of support in cash or kind, in the form of knowledge or technology, in the form of skills and capacities. We can help empower all Indians by making information accessible, encouraging active citizenship and contribute to making democracy more meaningful.

Empowering India
C/o Liberty Institute, New Delhi
C-4/8 Sahyadri, Polt 5, Sector 12, Dwarka
New Delhi 110078. India
Website: www.EmpoweringIndia.org
Tel: +91-11-42815409
Email:info[AT]EmpoweringIndia.org