Crowdsourcing is not a new concept to India. Ankit Jain tells you how this technology can become a powerful tool for mass mobilisation
Throughout its political campaign, AAP insisted on pulling in common man to pitch in as the voice of the nation, a voice that talked loudly about dethroning corruption in the country. As surprising was the turnout of people to vote for AAP, so was the role of technology in bringing people together in its support. Whoever said cloud telephony has proved to be a boon for only millions of SMEs in India!
With AAP’s total funding a mere Rs20 crore and with an agenda that required a pan-Indian involvement, AAP knew it had to devise a strategy that ensured maximum outreach — every single Indian citizen; even the ones sitting abroad needed to be part of its call against corruption. The party used crowdsourcing as a method and cloud computing as a medium to achieve what well-established political moguls didn’t expect. This was one of the main reasons why AAP not just sustained a steady and successful election campaign but also got many seats — with an excellent communication strategy and 7,000 eager volunteers, the party surged ahead of others.
Through technology, AAP acquired a large and growing network of Indians spreading its message in seconds. This made it a whole lot easier to bridge the gap of caste, creed, State lines and even oceans.
How it workedIJ
A volunteer could dial a toll-free number provided by their service provider. He or she would then be directed to an unknown random Indian citizen — details of both parties (the volunteer and the citizen) would remain undisclosed — and would then inform them about AAP’s message and request their support. What’s interesting about this system is that once the volunteer successfully converted a non-believer to a believer, he would become a part of this movement. Th resultIJ More volunteers and more calls.
Since volunteers were able to make calls from outside the country, the movement got a lot of NRIs involved. This meant that with each call, AAP got closer to covering every Indian citizen. Once the call was over, the person’s number would be moved from the list and would never get connected again.
This process was absolutely unbiased as the cloud picked up the number in a random manner without categorising it into any kind of framework. Plus, the caller and the receiver had no prior information about each other and so they knew nothing about one another before, or even after the call. The person on the receiving end was at liberty to let the call ring till it went silent or even disconnect midway.
Impressive outcome
Surprisingly, that hardly ever happened to volunteers who managed to convert many of these people to join the movement. By using more than 100 calling channels, more than 100 volunteers were making calls simultaneously to citizens. Within a week’s time, 5 lakh calls were made to Indians by 7,000 AAP volunteers. The message spread like forest fire and by the last day of the campaign, the number of callers/ volunteers rose to 17,000! Using cloud telephony as a strategy to boost their election campaign worked like magic.
It was a genius idea by AAP’s IT department as it incurred minimum cost while involving volunteers, even those financially weaker than others.
What AAP did was not just use social media campaigning but also go back to traditional door-to-door campaigning, though with a difference. This time, the doors opened up to Indians sitting overseas as well. The horizon had been widened by a great deal and cloud computing opened up newer avenues for AAP.
Technology & crowdsourcing changed the course of what will now be the State Government. It has, no doubt, made the world a smaller place. But, through AAP’s use of cloud telephony and crowdsourcing, technology became a powerful tool, instrumental in creating a positive wave in the country.
Crowdsourcing all the way
Crowdsourcing helped AAP achieve public engagement, cost-effective content and party awareness. It acted as a way to gather fresh ideas from across different dimensions of languages, religions, regions and age.
Crowdsourcing is not a new concept to India. A powerful instance of crowdsourcing was the Delhi Traffic Police Facebook page, where in DTP asked their Facebook fans to post images and video footage of traffic violations around their neighbourhood. The page created great public interest and support with thousands of followers sharing information of violations being committed around their locality.
In yet another instance, the Bangalore Police posted a hit & run case on their FB page while searching for the driver who fled. In three days, that post had been shared 27,000 times! Such is the power of crowdsourcing. And in a country which happens to be the world's largest democracy, it is one of the most constructive tools one could devise for taking the nation ahead. This is exactly what the AAP did. It took the power and gave it to the public and asked them for help. Consider this ripple effect. The crowd was used as a medium, like water in the ocean. Arvind Kejriwal implemented his idea, just like a drop in the ocean makes a tiny splash, in no time, ripples spread far and wide, connecting Indians from around the world to their motherland - bringing them together for a cause! Technology can certainly bring ideas and people together. The result is a revolution and we're all proud to be a part of it!
The writer is founder of VoiceTree Technologies Pvt ltd