Critical Mass
Continuing from the future…
So it was in 2023 that Bharatverse, powered by network effects and Web3 tokens, attained critical mass. The power and prosperity (“shakti and samriddhi”) message resonated. There was nothing that the incumbent government could do to stop it. The app had a life of its own; there was no leader to threaten or pressurise. Politics leapfrogged from offline to on-chain. Willing donors stepped forward to contribute to the campaigns of willing candidates. Creative people created a content factory to spread the message, knowing that for the first time the pipe to deliver it to people existed and was not controlled by a few big media houses. Volunteers helped with offline events to give the feel of community and belonging to members, with tokens offering an economic incentive for actions.
Tokens were tradeable on an internal exchange. Demand rose because of scarcity (there was an upper cap on the tokens), its use for influence (in internal voting), and its value for an earlier date for Dhan Vapasi. With the rising demand, the tokens also rose in value, creating an additional upside for the token holders.
Building on the Sabhas idea [LINK}, as soon as a constituency reached 10%, there was a primary that was held to elect a “Jan MP”. The Jan MP thus became the favourite for being nominated for the actual Lok Sabha seat for which primaries would be held when the notification for the general elections came out. All of this created buzz and competition. The threshold for a very high degree of confidence for victory was 30%. Member by member, many seats crossed that number by the end of 2023. The political establishment still did not take this movement seriously; “how can a bunch of leaderless political novices run the country?”, they said. But the people knew what they wanted. The movement continued to pick up supporters, and as the world of business has seen so often, disruptions can unseat incumbents before the latter realise it.
Almost everything that was needed for spreading ideas, voting, making decisions on policy or internal governance matters was done digitally via the app. The only physical world action needed was walking to the polling booth and voting on election day. In Digital India, the only vertical that had been left untouched by the tech revolution was thus transformed – “politech” became a new addition to the *tech (star-tech) lexicon of fintech, edutech, agritech, insuretech, and the like.
When one looks back from the vantage point of 2024, what becomes clear is that the only alternative possible in India to the existing parties was not yet another party but a completely new platform. The blockchain and crypto revolution that powered Web3 provided just the base to build on. A leaderless movement is not exactly a movement without a leader; it is just that it has thousands of leaders – thus making it immune to the machinations of those in power. This was a true grassroots movement that gave a political voice to people who had been suppressed by the parties for decades. It created an opening for thousands who wanted to serve but had no entry. This was truly a people’s movement – one that brought Indians together based not on their surnames or the God they prayed to, but on a simple desire that tomorrow should be better than today.
