Technology

Technology in Deepening Democracy

One of JCCD’s goals is to effectively utilise the power of technology as an enabler in the urban governance landscape. The organization’s vision for technology is two-fold:

1. Servicing the needs of JCCD’s programmes and enabling them to link where their functions overlap

2. Enabling the organizational goal of participatory democracy

On the first:
Technology takes care of the software and hardware needs for the overall functional requirements. The general requirements are large data base handling, speed, multi-format content management, data storage and retrieval, and sourcing external services where required. In addition, the technology team designs solutions for Janaagraha’s specific needs on communications, volunteer management, programme management, creation of groups, emails administration, etc. The website is an important communications tool to the world at large and technology works to make this easy to maintain, update and provide links between programme overlaps.

On the second:
In urban situations the process of deliberation and consensus has seemed an impossible ideal thus far. The ideal of democracy is to do with how binding collective decisions are made by a group of free and equal individuals. Globally, democratic processes are being challenged everywhere, with more pressures for citizens to be "heard". The success of revolutionary technology of open-source software such as Linux and Wikipedia validates counter-intuitive ideas like the "wisdom of crowds" or "co-creating value with customers".

Janaagraha’s technology programme is working towards large-scale information dissemination, providing a virtual platform for debate and simplified processes for engagement. Besides the website which hosts useful information about government and civic agencies, two specific examples where Janaagraha uses technology for citizen participation are: the development of Spatial Geographic Data; and "Ward Online", a ward-level citizens’ complaint management system. The first is an important cartographical tool designed for local community information and grassroots participation. The second is an online complaint management system that captures complaints and tracks the redressal status.

While Janaagraha has still a long way away in harnessing the true potential of technology in its work, the programme has an outstanding group of advisors to help guide it along.

Janaagraha Technology Advisory Group Members:

Akila Krishnakumar, is chief operating officer and country head of India for SunGard Technology Services.
She joined SunGard in 2004 following the acquisition of an Indian product development center, a business she helped to start in 1993. During this period, Ms. Krishnakumar has built and led product development teams in banking, higher education and the public sector.
Ms. Krishnakumar began her career with Wipro in customer support and application development before moving on to manage the regional professional services for ICL-Fujitsu with focus on ERP and banking solutions.

Anil Viakara, Partner, Softbank China & India Holdings, Based in Mumbai.
Anil is responsible for leading investments in India. Anil was previously a founding partner of Horizen Ventures, an early-stage venture capital fund. As an early-stage entrepreneur, Anil has also co-founded four other companies demonstrating the ability to successfully take companies from an idea stage to medium-sized organizations.

Sridhar Ranganathan, Chairman, Blue Vector India
Sridhar has 16 years of experience in the industry. He started his career at Xerox Corporation as a software engineer. He left Xerox to join Pure Software that eventually merged with Rational Software and later with IBM. Sridhar left Pure to co-found Online Anywhere in 1997 and wore many hats to get it off the ground, including business strategy, day to day operations and engineering. Online Anywhere was acquired by Yahoo! in 1999. While at Yahoo!, Sridhar ran the worldwide P/L for Yahoo! Everywhere. More recently, Sridhar was the COO of the Yahoo! Software Development Center Pvt. Ltd. in Bangalore, India to help scale operations in a very rapidly growing technology sector in this part of the world.
Sridhar holds an MBA from UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business, an MS in Computer Science from Villanova University and a bachelors in Computer Engineering from Bombay University.

Rajesh C. Mathur,Vice Chairman, NIIT GIS Ltd.,India
Mr. Rajesh C. Mathur is the Vice Chairman of the Board of NIIT GIS Ltd., a strategic alliance between NIIT Technologies Ltd. and ESRI, Inc., the World’s largest provider of GIS software. Prior to that he was the President and Chief Operating Officer of the company.
Mr. Mathur is an Electrical Engineer from IIT Delhi. He has attended general management program conducted by Ross School of Business, University of Michigan. Mr. Mathur has been associated with the IT industry both in India and overseas for more than 30 years. He has handled assignments in General Management, Marketing, Corporate Planning and International Operations. Prior to his current assignment he has worked with Wipro, IDM and DCM Data Systems in India and USA.
As the head of NIIT GIS, India’s premier GIS products and services company, Mr. Mathur is spearheading the growth of GIS deployment in India. He is actively involved with various professional bodies associated with the Indian GIS industry. He is Sr. Vice President of Geospatial Industry Association of India. He is also former President of Indian Society of Geomatics. He is a member of the Advisory Board of GIS@Development and Editorial Board of Geospatial Today. He has been a member of the NSDI Task Force set up by Govt. of India and chaired the Working Group on Applications. He has also been a member of various task forces formed by CII and FICCCI.

Ananth P.N., Director, Research & Development, Adobe Inc., Bangalore

Gaurav Mishra.,CEO, 2020 Social, New Delhi, India
Gaurav Mishra builds and nurtures online communities as CEO of 2020 Social. In his previous avatars, he has studied at IIM Bangalore, held senior marketing roles at the Tata Group, taught social media at Georgetown University as the 2008-09 Yahoo! Fellow, and co-founded Vote Report India.