Transforming India’s electoral democracy using Tantra framework

Abstract

India has a rich tradition where good governance is highly valued. The theme of good governance is emphasized by a lineage of thought leaders from Kautilya in 230 BCE (प्रजासुखे सुखं राज्ञः प्रजानां च हिते हितम् । नात्मप्रियं हितं राज्ञः प्रजानां तु प्रियं हितम् ॥ अर्थशास्त्रः १.१९.४३ ॥ Chapter 19 titled राजप्रणिधिः duties of the king in Arthashastra of Kautilya. The happiness of the king is in the happiness of the people, his welfare is in the welfare of the people. The welfare of the king lies not in what he desires, but what his subjects desire) to Mahatma Gandhi [Mahatma Gandhi propounded the concept of “Su-raj” and according to him “good governance” has the following eight attributes, which link it to its citizens: (1) accountable, (2) transparent, (3) responsive, (4) equitable and inclusive, (5) effective and efficient, (6) follows the rule of law, (7) participatory and (8) consensus oriented] in recent times. However, achieving good governance in a country of size of India is hard. Good governance needs to address social, cultural, ethical and process dimensions. Governance not only needs to be good and efficient, but needs to human-centric. At times even well-intentioned and well-thought out processes of Government cause lot of trauma to common citizens. On the contrary doing away with safeguards is inviting disaster. To meet the objective of human-centric good governance, we have developed Tantra social information management framework. Tantra framework makes use of concepts from Zachman framework and unified foundational ontology. The framework itself is modeled as a social network (entity–entity network). Tantra framework interoperates with models such as balanced score card, theory of change and Bartels’ theory of separations. This paper describes the Tantra framework and how it can be applied to transform India’s electoral democracy.