Startup
Here is the summary of the Nayi Disha Pipe challenge:
- Assume a multi-lingual, multimedia content factory can be created. This is the factory that creates sticky and persuasive stories to amplify the Nayi Disha ideas of freedom and prosperity, and brings out the fatal flaws in the current approach to politics and governance by those who have exercised power through the past decades and prevented Indians from becoming rich.
- The focus then moves to how to take these ideas to tens of millions of Indians while lacking a national leader with a large following or an unbiased media that speaks truth to power. This has to be done in the context of a government empowered with laws to block any social media accounts, sites and apps that it considers against the vaguely omnibus “national interest”. The project also has to be frugal with spending since it will be difficult in the early days to raise funding.
- For Nayi Disha to succeed, it needs to attract the support of about 30% of voters in every Lok Sabha constituency – a collective which decides to vote and vote as one, the United Voters of India as part of Mission Free543 to ensure a Lok Sabha of Independents, free of the negative influence of every politician and political party. It thus has to be a national freedom and prosperity movement, touching every part of India and almost every Indian.
- There are about a thousand days to make this happen until the next national election in the summer of 2024. Miss that opportunity and it is a wait of five years and more importantly, a nation even further away from freedom. Hence, there needs to be a sense of urgency – a “now-or-never” attitude because with every passing year, the terrain becomes increasingly harder to navigate.
The mindset has to be that of a startup entrepreneur. Startups imagine and work to create new futures. They are led by entrepreneurs who know no fear as they know they are competing against strong incumbents. They are constantly solving one problem after another to get the product-market fit, climbing “mountains beyond mountains”.
What India needs for Nayi Disha success is the startup and entrepreneurial mindset applied to the political space. The rise and spread of digital can lay the foundation for possible success. Nayi Disha will not win by aiming to replicate the attributes of political parties; in fact, it has to chart a completely new course – with its ideas, members, products and go-to-market. Nayi Disha has to become the “disruptive innovation” in the Indian political space, and the starting point has to be to rethink the pipe to connect the content factory to the consumers (the influencers and voters).
