Democracy Diary

As early as four years ago, despite the very obvious failings of George Bush's administration, Senator John Kerry tried, and failed, to wrest power from the president with the lowest ratings of any leader of the United States in history. Countless reasons have been given for this failure, and one of them is more conspicuous now, with the 2008 elections looming ahead, than it ever was in 2004. At the time Kerry was trying to prevent Bush from getting reelected, the world of politics continued to be separated from us as by a veil. TV debates, CNN and the New York Times still dominated the information scene, despite Kerry's modest but significant success with embracing the internet as a medium to reach out to voters, and the Swift Boat Veterans greater success at stirring up the controversies that led to the Senator's downfall. It appeared overwhelmingly that people were getting information about what's online from traditional media, and not from the internet itself.

Then, along came YouTube. The video site, which initially hosted home videos of people's cats, dogs or babies, and fan videos for various films and TV shows, suddenly became the most unusual, and most powerful political tool ever seen. Add to this several increasingly popular blogs, and the likes of Jon Stewart, and it is hard to ignore this new revolution - a marriage of technology and politics that, for the first time, has allowed Americans, and people around the world, to actually see the wheels of this massive process called democracy turning. One might argue that this is a generation conducive to such a revolution - several of them are first-time voters, who have an almost natural appetite for sites like YouTube, a strong disdain for old fashioned political tactics, access to instant, and more importantly, accurate information, and of course, an overwhelming desire for change. Whether any of those factors are going to continue to have any impact after the November general elections or not is unclear, but the government is sitting up and taking notice, and has learnt at least to tread carefully around these media phenomena that can neither be influenced nor silenced easily.

Look at some of the numbers - Obama's YouTube channel has 13,282,437 channel views till date, and Hillary Clinton's channel has 1,424,528 views - a total of 14, 706, 965 views. Searches on Google for presidential candidates and politics have reached unprecedented levels since last December , and website traffic to candidate websites, particularly Democratic candidate websites, is only slightly less impressive than traffic to Google. It is evident that the growing interest and the tools at voters' disposal have finally heralded the end of the Age of Indifference, and started closing the gap between people and their parties.

But the biggest success of this process lies in the way it has completely changed the definition and scope of a grassroots movement. If Obama's campaign is any sign of things to come, small businesses, local political groups, and above all, non-profit organizations must feel heartened by the fact that a relative nobody with a name like Barack Obama was able to raise $35 million over a period of four months!

Not only are candidates using the power of the internet to help their campaigns, they are also talking about applying it to government to help fix the system. Obama, for instance, has promised to appoint the country's first Chief Technology Officer if he is elected president, and has already started working on a partnership with Google, to provide transparency into tax dollar spending (i.e., people can look at which projects and initiatives their tax dollars are going towards). Clinton has also promised to make her proposed healthcare system an electronic one, so that people are able to understand and better control their expenses, payments, etc. Whether either candidate lives up to such promises remains to be seen, but it is definitely a start.

What strikes me most is the fact that it took the United States two hundred years to get to this place - to a point where technology isn't just confined to homes and offices, but spreads its fiber optic roots to villages and government buildings, to finally connect people with those who govern them. Is that how long it will take India? Or are we at a slight advantage since the lessons learned from this evolving mechanism are disseminated using the very same tools that are a part of it? It may not be YouTube, but cell phones which govern the transformation of government.

But what is most evident is the fact that this force is all but unstoppable, and those who hope to sweep things under the rug had better watch out.