NEW POWER IN THE NEW AGE
by Ajit Dass
Power is a tool to serve. In the past power has been confined to a few and has mainly served a few. However, the new paradigm for power is to serve all and to involve all. When your purpose is to serve all, then there is no politics involved because politics is about exclusion and not inclusion.
What really is involved in New Power is just one purpose- to make our planet into a better place. New power is benevolent.
To make the planet a better place we have all the ingredients available to us and all that is required is the intention to weave all of it together with integrity and perfection, to deliver innovation in a scalable and sustainable way.
What we have available to us are:
- Governments, Non-Profit Organisations and Corporations as institutions available to deliver innovation on a large scale.
- Technology as a force for the good.
- Young leaders raring to go and own their future with brilliant ideas.
- Social media as a new means to your ends.
What New Power must do is use all of this to deliver results and the first thing to do is to break down the walls that disconnect institutions from each other and from the people. You have to drop your feeling of superiority and realise that in an interconnected world- what you do for another, you do for yourself. New Power has to be sensitive and compassionate towards the planet and humanity. New Power has to work with an open mind and be proactive.
New Power doesn’t have to confront Old Power nor blame it, but has to co-exist with it during this phase of transition and has to lead by example.
93% of the world population is likely to be connected through mobile phones by 2019. New Power must devise ways to use this connectivity through technology; young leaders; sharing of strengths of Governments, Non-Profit Organisations and Corporations for achieving goals decided by the people and for the people.
Let us see how this New Power system works through a hypothetical scenario. Let us say, a large corporation that manufactures aerated drinks decides that before it can sell its products in Rural India, it has the social responsibility to supply clean drinking water in each of the 638,365 villages in India. This corporation uses the social media to source ideas about designing and implementing this huge task. Having received around 10000 responses it sets about deciding the best innovative way of accomplishing this project. It breaks the silos within itself and sets up a team with people under the age of 30 years from all its departments to study the responses and design a product and a way to deliver it.
In a month it comes up with an amazing product design that would cost only Rs25,000/- everything included, to fit in each village. The product also carries the various logos of the corporation’s aerated drinks. Part of the financial model includes that each villager must pay Rs10/- towards this product so that their participation in this project will ensure that it is looked after and not vandalised. The corporation engages a large Non-Profit Organisation for; implementing the distribution of this product; the collection of the funds from each villager; tackling Old Power issues within the village; the education of the villagers about how to use it and the benefits of hygiene.
The corporation even sets up a system to receive feedback through mobile phones functioning in each village, about the product; its service issues; and also about its aerated drinks.
The corporation approaches the Government of India and the various State Governments to reduce taxes on this product and this project. The Governments who are now sensitised to New Power readily oblige.
New Power is the new way for evolution on this planet and we must all wake up to it now.