If I were Asimov, Imagining Franchise for India

Characters:

  1. Finance Minister- Amisha DSouza

  2. Home Minister- Rishab Prasad

  3. External Affairs Minister- Gauri Sheikh

  4. Prime Minister Mannat Kaur

  5. President Angad Joshi

  6. Stalexa team

  7. BBC World news reporter

  8. Multivac

April 2029: New Delhi, India. 

It is a bright sunny day in Delhi. Like usual office days, ministers at the Rashtrapati Bhavan are at work, debating on new agendas for the next term. Their office is reduced to half the number of employees, because majority of the tasks can be handled by a team of Stalexas, a government only chatbot network. China’s 6G has brought Indian government to really keep their budgets and brains both open to scientific and technological advancements in development. It was all they could do, when the rest of the world is nice to India, but eying on our annual world resource consumption. The hot summer is getting to people. And even, to their heads..

Stalexa switches BBC World News on, on its own. (It likes spending time catching up on world news, and shares information with her masters as she keeps their ongoing conversations in check. It is, of course, still an open, transparent democratic country..

Reporter: (Surveilling Live, intelligently from the Headquarters of the United Nations, Manhattan, NYC) 

” AAAND in today’s news, India, over the past decade has been an idealist mixed economy model for developing nations, gauging its way up in the world to become the largest human capital in the world. But oddly today, it looks like the world’s booming human capital- India is facing crisis at their end. They were just this morning, presented with a notice from the World Bank. How does this affect her game plan? Where will it take the world with it?

Amisha DSouza (Finance Minister): I’m amused by how inaccurately accurate this quo-pro system works. Our problems are complex! “Stalexa, get to the pros and cons list. And sort factors increasingly by percentage growth in GDP. WE NEED TO DO THIS QUICK AND WE NEED IT NOW. THERE IS NO TIME”

Pros

Cons

  • Nuclear powered nation

  • Populous: Human Resource Development

  • Unity in Diversity

- Very little say in the world race 
-   Populous: Depleting, expensive resources

-   World pressure to perform\  |

Rishab Prasad- Home Minister: The news is still better than all human reporters show back home. Par DSouza maam, what’s the hurry? We have our 5 year plan drafted. In accordance to the previous one, this lays emphasis on These elections will represent all solutions we’re seeking to attain.

5 Year plan: 

The Tech Trajectory

  • More investments in the science in tech R&D industry. Applying those models to smaller subdomains

  • Data- driven solutions, user- friendly ways to bring all indians on board with this digitised economy

  • Become a self-sustaining democracy

  • Recognise the potential of growth & expansion of India globally. Bring UN and the World Bank on board to invest in India. 

  • Educational and Healthcare reforms for rural areas. 

  • Expansion of inter-domain collaborations.

  • Emerging Technologies like Multivac would be attempted to be contradicted, so as to not preach them religiously.

  • Make tech reforms available to all, poor and rich.

Gauri Sheikh- External Affairs Minister: Aap samajh kyu nahi rahe Prasad ji, yes, we are a potential liability to the world. But we’re also well equipped with brilliant minds, and smaller growing brainchildren of these minds. Do you not trust our science at all?

(everyone looks at Mr. Prasad)

Reporter : “ …and then there is the Big Five countries, seeking to investigate the situation, and are even offering help to the developing nation.

President Angad Joshi: Let’s not forget the pressures from our own people. Are we even in the condition to pay the world bank back like this? Our farmers are committing suicides hungry, because they can’t afford their families. We’re thankful our kids are going to school but the weather is intolerable. Our society is breaking apart because our little villages and facing bigger and bigger wage gaps each day. But what of jobs, opportunities for the talented? We can’t even provide for our own people. And Delhi? Oh lord save Delhi. These pollution mask costumes are going to be the death of us.

(Stalexa scribing the pros and cons in the background)

Amisha DSouza (Finance Minister): I agree with you sir. But we don’t have much time. What if the Big Five at the UN join forces and conspire against us? Have no faith in humanity, for it is your tribe that comes to your rescue when it is the survival of the fittest.

Pros

Cons

  • Nuclear powered nation

  • Populous: Human Resource Development

  • Unity in Diversity

  • .

  • .

  • .

  • …

- Very little say in the world race 
-   Populous: Depleting, expensive resources

-   World pressure to perform

-   .

-   .

-   .

-   ...

-   No savings for the world, reliant on manpower and money

-   Threatened by all other forces united

Prime Minister Mannat Kaur: (hearing the conversation & observing the list) We shouldn’t worry about these concerns. Our country needs saving. Our people need food. And even though we’re not under direct threat from the UN, we need to put ourselves first. Any ideas, Stalexa? People?

(computing large chunks of data, Rashtrapati Bhawan needs to fix their wifi)

KrishnaMurthy, The IT intern: Sir, if I may, yes we ARE a nuclear superpower. We do have everything we need, except liberal rules from the rest of the world. We need to seek power. We need to help ourselves. We should step up to the world & set its course in conversation with them directly.

Rishab Prasad- Home Minister: And who are you now? And how is your genius intellect going to help us? Haven’t you realised if that were going to happen, it would have, it’s been 55 years. Operation Smiling Buddha was in 1974!

Amisha DSouza (Finance Minister): This is the intern for the IT system. I’m sure there’ll be a rational alternative. We’re still powerful up front. Let’s not change that about us. We’re a world ecosystem. They ARE going to be affected by us gone, you do realise that?

KrishnaMurthy, The IT intern- Sir, myself KrishnaMurthy, the intern. I’m working on the intelligence of the system with Dr.KJ. I must say, the internet needs an upgrade and my friends, jobs. The situation is bad, computation for ourselves is going to take forever. But here is how this may work. Sir, we realised potential in our human resource the past two decades, not in 74. And we all agree, we can present Dr. Shankar’s work to the UN…

Rishab Prasad- Home Minister:Beta, is the heat getting to your young blood too? It only had a 82% accuracy for our last few problem sets. It’s too big a risk!

Amisha DSouza (Finance Minister): No wait, that is brilliant! President sahab, you know the conditions we’re facing. Petrol won’t last us a year this way. But this way, we may be able to buy some time. Think of it this way, Shankar Ji. We deal with the 18% with the help of the representation system. We can use their global data and hook it with the system to let data prove our trajectories of growth we’re gonna meet soon. It’s a better risk than getting kicked out of this world altogether. We are a nuclear power. We deserve a seat in the United Nations top five. We need to secure our people, and we need to take this risk for them.

looks expectantly at the heads of the table

The pressure on the president is tremendous. She has to be rational about their decision, like always. But this time, they can’t be off-tune with what the electronic system has to say. It looks like our PM will use his de facto..

Stalexa (on pure fact mode): Humans, India is the largest democracy in the world. The citizens are self sufficient because the internet is booming. It is 2029.

Prime Minister Mannat Kaur : Let’s show them how it’s done and grab our seat in the deciding the course of the world. It is about time we received some representation they don’t argue push us down for. They don’t face the world conditions like we do, they don’t have a say if they don’t understand our needs. Let’s revive Dr. KJ’s work! Amisha, Rishab, Gauri, let’s take the proposal forward. Request them for their dataset so we can train Multivac. We should show them the power of a united front. Let’s bring in a common language of mathematics, proving ourselves worthy with their own harboured data, and take all proceedings forward next week.

India sends the proposal to the United Nations. The data usage is granted to India in two day’s time. Multivac runs the data set and states facts that convince the United Nations of the potential we carry. Data, once more, brings consensus. Or does it?

India is now on board with the Big 6, and the country is receiving more and more technological grants and deals that boost its economy.

We can also see Modi releasing himself happily of the (a+b)^2 = a^2 + b^2 + 2ab Canada joke. He is indeed proud of the government that came after his rule.

  • Simran Singh

Human Centered Design

Year 3