 All right. So this is basically not just a hypothetical scenario this actually happens quite a lot. And most of the material that you find here is condensed. I mean, there's a lot more detail that ought to be said here which I can't because this itself is like a several level talk. Yeah. So what I will just try to go about doing is first jump into definitions. So when we come back and say fix, it has a very different meaning. The first, the meaning that we have in our head when we use word fix is hacking. And hacking is not what most of the people think it is. It's about basically getting a one-up advantage or changing a particular outcome the way in which we wanted not as a certainty, but as a probability. So one way to think about how the definition here matters is that if you basically take a coin and say that, look, it's head or tail, 50-50. But what if you just basically tilt the coin such that the probability of you getting a head is 70? It is not really fixing in terms of fixing immediately but it is basically ensuring that if you play the game long enough, you would actually get a much higher advantage compared to an opponent. That is exactly how you have to think about the word fixing and hacking here. And that is exactly what you see in India on elections. Basically the way in which they are run and the way in which it has been operated now off late, essentially gives a very unfair advantage to some party and essentially gives a very un... Put the other party in a very difficult situation. So the question that you then have to ask is like unfair for whom? The answer here is unfair for voters and unfair for the opposition parties. And then how do you ensure that this unfair advantage comes? The answer is by creating asymmetries. So that is really the definitional aspect of what we need to talk about now. So moving forward, there are three fundamental ways in which you can create these asymmetries and all these asymmetries are linked together and they feed off each other. So the first information asymmetry that you have is information itself and then there are institutional asymmetries and which creates resource asymmetries. I mean, so if you look back and think about what these asymmetries fundamentally means is that they till the election live the line itself, more towards the incumbent and very little and much worser towards the voter and with a particular outcome when the game is being played long enough. That's the way in which you ought to think about it. So what does the informational asymmetry mean in the context of how the election game is being played? So if you understand a fair contract, a fair contract is where the parties who enter into the contract have all information about each other. In an unfair contract, what happens is like one party knows much, much more about the other party and that is what we call as informational asymmetry as. So if you take an example of the stock market, you come back and say inside a trading is banned or at least illegal because the insiders by being the very nature of insiders have much more information than what is going on with the stock compared to any other outside parties. So informational asymmetries in general are not looked upon very nicely and there are various laws in place in order to ensure that it doesn't play too much. But in the case of election strangely, you will find that information asymmetry is never even talked about. And now let's take this informational asymmetry problem into the voting issue. The voting is essentially a three-party problem where there is an incumbent opposition and an voter and likely or not the way in which the election works is that the voter has to choose between the incumbent and the opposition when the elections are held. It really doesn't matter whether the opposition is one party or many parties or it doesn't really matter if the incumbent is again one party or many parties, there is the same problem. And so in the way in which elections come nowadays work, information asymmetry ensures that the incumbent has a very, very high advantage compared to the opposition and the opposition also has a better advantage in a voter. So if you fundamentally take this problem and break it down, this is how the greater and greater sign kind of a thing works in the sense that the incumbent also has a much better advantage. So how does an operator ensure that the incumbent has a much higher information asymmetry? Let's dive deep into that. So yeah, so the first interesting part about building an information asymmetry is to build more databases. That is not a surprise for people who have been doing this kind of work for a very long time, but it may actually come across as a surprise for many others. It's always about building more databases. The step two is to merge, share and analyze them. And that part is also pretty obvious for operators. And I'll explain more about what it means. The step three is deny access databases about yourself. So let us think about how step three works. Now, typically the way in which democracies are supposed to work is that regime change happens every X number of years. And some democracies, it's three years, some it's four years, some it's five years, whatever the number is. But most of the democracies are designed to create what we call as regime change. And the regime change every happens in a particular cadence. And the way in which the information regime change works is that you are supposed to decide as a country as an odor, what is good for your country based on whatever metrics that you choose about. And in most of the democracies, people like to get rich or at least not poor. So they have a general sense of direction about how to go forward as a country or how to go backward as a country or whatever. And then they basically would based on that. I mean, that's typically the operating theory. So in this aspect, if you look at a commentators would come back and say, in general, if you are leading the country towards prosperity, where people are feeling a sense of direction, growth, happiness, incomes are growing and they call it indicators. And there are quite a lot of indicators about these. Some are high frequencies, some are low frequencies, some are much frequently published, some are much less frequently published and so on and so on. So this is basically the state of just non-economy, but the state of the country. So in general, when voters are supposed to make decisions about whether to vote or incumbent in or the opposition in, they need data. And the government actually has quite a lot of data about itself or whoever has a ruling party has quite a lot of data about itself. So when you want to build an information asymmetry, which ensures the level playing field is still towards it, the incumbent typically does not give access to any data about its own performance. I mean, that is usually step three. And then once you go into that mode, in step four, you fundamentally try to tilt the level playing field by what we call as narrative control. We are targeted decision. I'll go back to that. There is a very fixed process of doing narrative control and I'll explain more to the extent of time allows on that. And in step five, what you have is, you have institution control to entrance. And then, so if you look for the steps very sequentially and it basically goes through a loop, you start off with building one database, you go and do two, then three and four. At somewhere along the line, an inflection point comes at which point of time, the institutions that you have created essentially work in your favor more and more, thus essentially entrenching your advantage for a very long, long, long time. That is how you build information asymmetry at an institutional level. It is harder to spot when it starts, just like how you see the COVID waves not being able to be spotted when it was like starting, but it multiplies and multiplies and multiplies. At some point of time, the inflection point afterwards, it's impossible for you to push back or very difficult for you to push back. This is basically how information asymmetry is a process box, yeah? Let's go forward, okay? So before we go into step one about why building more databases is very important, there are some fundamental e-governance laws that you need to understand about building databases. And these are not flippantly written stuff. These are, this is actually what most of the people actually believe, yeah? So the first and foremost rule in e-governance says that every problem can be solved by building a database eventually. That is the part that I skipped out. And if you fundamentally take the problem of building any database, be it fan numbers or being able to write these or be it whatever, the first and foremost issue that they have is, at least in the modern world, when we see databases not good old paper and pen kind of a thing, it's modern digital databases. Building databases is a very hard and expensive procedure. And you typically try to build them using capital infused by the government via subsidies. And in general, because government is usually considered poor, you take the cheapest and the most viable option. It really doesn't matter what collateral damage you cause by doing that because we thought that no database will ever get built and hence you would never succeed in the long run and hence you would take whatever corner cutting that you do no matter what the consequences are. And that is fundamentally because of the way in which the government subsidy becomes like a bottling factor in building a long-term database of any kind. And then what you then do is, it is just not sufficient for you to build it. You have to somehow operate them. And however, operating them is an operational expenditure via public private partnerships which share revenue model in capital appreciation. So I'll come back to it and let's think through some of the interesting databases that we had built in the recent past which people had great difficulty and trouble with even after so many years. The first and foremost is the GST database which of course, everyone who ever files or runs a business and file returns as familiar about and the kind of issues that it has been talked about about you having to log in to the middle of the night and not working and so on and so on. A similar episode played out in the MC database which not many people were aware of. A similar issue of very recently that passed out was basically the income tax plan database with a new portal and stuff like that. And so in essence, you had to really start wondering about how hard it is to create a database of plan numbers and how hard it is to create a database of just income tax returns and collect tax filings. So in general, if you notice, the government is pretty good at only doing one thing which is collecting money and you really got to wonder if it is so hard to run and maintain databases that collect money from citizens, which is the primary job of any government. How hard it is for it to maintain and run other databases at scale. It turns out that it is way beyond its competence. So what it normally does is that it either creates a shell organization or gives it to Elvin bidding and so on and so on. And no matter the operational route it takes, it is always a public private partnership. Sometimes it's a shared revenue model. Sometimes it's a fixed cost model. And sometimes with VC funding, creating digital economy kind of a thing, et cetera, et cetera. That is how it is always being with e-governance. The fourth rule of e-governance is utility and accuracy increases with use. Well, again, use the word law. It is not a certainty. That is really the belief. So the main issue I should have probably written as e-governance beliefs, but that is what they believe as laws. And so we are basically understand that. So the primary here is why is this utility and accuracy increases with use thing came because if it fails often, people would shout and if people shout often, someone would basically beat up someone and then essentially ensure that the accuracy and utility over period of time increases. I mean, of course, you could argue about the fact that well, power matters here. Yes, it does, but this is what they believe. And of course, the last thing is use can be incentivized or coerced, which is another way of saying that either you pay people for it or they will be coerced to use it because there is no choice. And so here is the interesting thing about coercion. When people are coerced and they are not incentivized, the system basically gets marooned out of incentives in the sense that because you are coerced, no matter what, there is no market kind of an exit option and because there is no market exit option, you have no choice then to put up with the inanities that the system demands. And so number four, the law number four of the governance that utility and accuracy increases with use actually works in reverse when coercion is involved. When coercion is involved, utility and accuracy actually decreases with use and the system falls apart and what you have no choice then to keep up with the system because that is the price of living. I mean, unfortunately, that is how it works. So in this model, if you can understand very clearly, it is very visible that any system that has a mandatory opt-in with no opt-out will always over a period of time encounter issues because its service quality will never improve. It will just keep falling apart, falling apart, falling apart, falling apart. And that is something that will create more further problems for anyone who implements the system. But that is how it is. So this is the fundamental of how you build databases when it comes to India because these are observations that have just basically told them as laws, right? So let's talk about databases in the context of elections. There are quite a lot of databases in this country because we have prioritized building databases over service quality in the last decade or so. So let us think back about what kind of databases are available. So the first is an authority databases. I mean, it typically has name, EPIC number, mobile number, rate of birth, state district, constituency, pulling both, and even other numbers because the ECI did quite a lot of linking even before the 2015 law came. And even after that, it did quite a lot of linking. And then they do a lot of cross-linking either without telling people. I mean, the consequence of that was seen in the telling on elections on 2018, I think. Then there are quite a lot of other databases, which we call benefited databases. There are quite a few of them, but in general they have cash, region, mobile number, bank accounts, other number, and so on and so on. Then the third kind of databases actually from the private sector, these are basically telecom databases and bank databases and other kind of databases. They also have named data, mobile numbers, email IDs, ID card numbers or various kinds and other numbers. Then there are other databases that trade separately in the market, which we call as the other mobile databases. Then there are student databases, club databases, hotels, entry registers, exit registers and so on and so on. So if you look back about all these databases, most of these databases are available to you if you know where to look for, or you can buy them. For instance, if you look at the OTRID databases, people have been scraping and scrounging OTRID databases for quite a long time. Using various techniques, but off late, there is no such notion of private and public field in these databases in the sense that there may be something hidden, but you can always get them if you know where to get from. A similar thing happens even in beneficial databases. Beneficial databases are also available in the market if you look for it. Me and my co-author, Shivam, who collaborate on this have tracked quite a lot of databases that have been traded in the market. You can buy them off in Massey, particularly when elections are coming. Well, the accuracy is something that you have to determine over a period of time, but these are always available for a song. Yeah, the value goes up during election times and comes down later. And the interesting part about these databases is that you can also get them directly from the state hubs, or you can get from partners. I mean, there are various ways in which you can get them, which I will not go much into, but that is all it is. Telecom databases are interesting in the sense that there is quite a lot of places where you can find telecom database. These are typically sold by operators who are manning these stations, or sometimes it was vulnerability on this thing which allows them to do a mess of scrapping and so on and so on. Similarly, there are other databases which are also traded. And every time a data breach happens, there are operators who basically accumulate these databases and clean them up to some extent, do some mixing and matching and sell it off for a higher value. So this is the fundamental problem when it comes to fixing elections or hacking elections as an electoral hacking, as we call it, where you get to access a lot of databases and what this database actually tells when mixed and matched with people is that it can reveal a lot about how a water works, and what can be the water. That's what it is, right? Step two, once you have access to all the databases, whether you procure them or you get them directly, it really doesn't matter. You are supposed to do merge, share and analyze. And the process of merge, share and analysis works by having a common identifier across all these databases. One of the most commonly used identifiers are actually mobile numbers and other numbers. And if you look at mobile numbers, it is actually a pretty priced a set in information control and it is fundamentally enabled by this OPP, each that India has got, where for no matter, even if you want to buy a milk from BigBasket or any of those places, you have to give them a mobile number and you want to go buy exercise equipment and some exercise shop, they'll ask you for a mobile number, you're going to go buy the curry in some place, they will ask you a mobile number and so on and so on. So what fundamentally happens is that that a mobile number is basically like a static identifier which everyone gets a lot. So when you try to do a mixing and matching of databases, this is one thing that they use as a common identifier. But the hard problem about mobile numbers when it comes to elections and voting is that unlike most, we are noticed on the field that mobile numbers change and recycle a lot. But other numbers don't recycle at the same rate. So when we basically say don't, remember we're talking about this abstract idea called rate of change. Quite a lot of people's mobile numbers change if they belong to a particular economic strata. And as you go higher and higher and higher on the economic strata or mobile numbers don't change. This is a empirical observation on the field. So if you go back and look at one of the things that I actually track, this is called as a mobile and other number linked databases, which if you basically go back and look at it, whenever many telecom operators, the accuracy is about 15% to 10%. What it means is that the database that you get and the database that it is actually linked to don't actually have a match because the numbers recycle a lot. As the telecom vendors become a duopoly or tripoly or whatever it is you call it, the accuracy is increased now to 25 to 30%. And the accuracy again goes higher with economic strata but that is all it is, right? What is the next step? So when people come and say, but apart from dark databases, trade market, etc, etc, how are these databases shared? Sometimes they simply ask them, but there are two public case studies that I want to discuss about. One is the Seva Mitra app that TDP made in Andhra in the last elections. I mean, it is a public source. You can, I will probably click and go back to it or probably not acquired. So if you look back at the Seva Mitra app, what it is, it basically got a full dump of the state database hub from Andhra. And remember the public architecture here about the state data hub. It is basically another database which you already have since then frequent updates on top of which every state run beneficiary database is linked with it. So in essence, what has happened here is a political party, which was actually running the government, was able to ensure that all the data that the government had in its state data hub was leaked to the political party, but not to the opposition. And so this became like a big issue. So one thing that kind of people got very interested about is about color photos and whatnot. And so Ketter's basically what wrote by Road Street, collecting numbers and databases and whether they were pulling both link, et cetera, et cetera. So Seva Mitra app, if you look at it, had databases from the state government, had scheme database, then they had voting I list because that is always made available to the political parties. Then there was street to street surveys where they walk around and figure out which is where and there was an app made for it and there was an analysis made for it. The UID have been admitted it and said it was stolen but they never wanted to tell about how it is stolen but and no one ever investigated it after that. So this is the first case study. The second public case study was on Pondichetti, the recently concluded elections where there were a bunch of activists who basically gave link to their other numbers to a mobile phone, which they did not give it to anywhere else. And before they know it, they were getting chat, WhatsApp chat group invitations for those mobile numbers. And so the Metra's High Court investigated it through all the UIDAs response as not sufficiently good in earth and it ought an investigation and it just so happened that the judge who was basically on the bench who was a Chief Justice of Metra's High Court got transferred for reasons no one knows about. So this in a sense is basically what you're looking at in the sense that for all practical purpose an incumbent fundamentally has access to an incumbent party, not the government because those two are supposed to be different has fundamentally has access to all information about you. And we'll go further on what it means for the secret ballot itself. And so just think about what I told you so far databases can be bought, databases can be treated, databases can be given or databases can be taken. And this is because of step one, right? And of course, if you go back, what is the step three I talked about on how to fix an election as an operator? You had to get access to databases about yourself which is fundamentally about government performance and what they are doing and where is the money? I mean all the usual stuff that you call yourself as democracy. There are several recent examples I will not go much into it. So the first was about the NSOS survey where there was an internal survey which from the statistical organization which said we had the worst unemployment in the last 40 years and it was never released and the principle statistical scientists designed over that and it got leaked. There were civil change in RTA Act which fundamentally ensures that citizens have accountability towards democracies which nowadays now come back to most of the time as no data available, not requested exemption. So those things have increased quite a lot. And then there is also quite a bit of controversies on the GDP backdated stuff where the methodology is being questioned whether growth is being really growth and so on and so on. So what you now have is at step three more data about voters and less data about the government. That's really what you're looking at, right? And step four, this is the interesting part about target messaging and analysis. So what you do here is that at the end of every election pulling both data is available. So in the past when there were physical ballots that were being used or before the EVMs came in they would basically take all the ballot papers put it in the central counting place and mix it up. And this is in the form of non-immaciation. So what it really means is that since there is no polling data available at a booth level you can do targeted analysis or analytics. And of course in those days there's no such huge databases. So the very speed problem and the analog problem of paper has fundamentally made democracy stronger and people have really not understood the extent of that because if you have paper and you have this databases your democracy is much stronger because it is very difficult for the political party to have voting information about yourself. But of course you can always question in the modern day services, digitization and all is required. But the thing that really is important about digitization is we can still do a lot of targeted prediction based on pulling both data because even after EVMs polling data at every EVM is actually published out, right? So what it really allows is it allows a lot of mathematical techniques to be used for predictions because remember I have a lot more data about you than you about me. So the first thing is what they normally do is they assign this thing called a Panna Pramukh. Panna Pramukh is a very old construct. My dad used to be a polling worker on 1960s maybe and he was as old as that. I remember him telling me about doing the poll with working then. And the way they should work is that you take a water database or water list as they call it in those days you print them on a piece of paper or you do cyclostyle in the old days and let us say that there are 500 people on a polling booth and then you take 50 at a time and then you say that this 50 person tell me what is the meaning? I mean, so the Panna is a page you assign the one worker of the party whose job is to basically figure out the people whom he is responsible for what are their meanings? Okay, so this is how it used to be even on the paper side. So nothing new about it you may say but let's go back further, right? So what you do is you just basically mark down leanings in the olden days it used to be leanings based on whether he's a member and cast and so on and so on that's the same thing exists even now and then but in the modern day what you do is you do a statistical analysis and you can do markup analysis and so on and so on you start with the prior and you say assign a probability and then when the data comes back after the poll you adjust and so what you're doing in this process is that your probability of what the voter is going to vote and the leanings is actually getting much more sophisticated over a period of time, right? And so I'll give a very small example with what I call as a three-voter problem because it's much easier for you to understand you just have to extend it mathematically to n-voter problem but it's essentially the same, right? So you take a polling booth let us say there are three voters in it and then we just took about two parties there's voter one, there's voter two and then there's voter three and the way in which analysis process works is that you write down the leanings and you say what is the probability this person is going to vote for me and then you do what is called as an expectation analysis and so here what you do is you write it down and say, okay, it really doesn't matter what party I'm actually being given as a polling booth consultant I just say one is BGP, one is INC, one is neutral and depending on which party I'm working on I'm going to say that no matter what the net result of this polling booth data is one by three, right? So at this point of time the way in which target messaging works is that you do something like this, right? You basically now get access to a whole lot of databases remember that is step one and step two so you start writing like this you say leanings, you write I mean is this person getting a subsidy in MNRIGA is this person getting LPG subsidy is he getting a Kisan subsidy is he getting a scholarship custody what is his cash, right? And then you write down all the meanings and then you come back and say now what, right? In order to win, you only have three options the option number one is to spread a neutral to vote for you the option number two is suppress the opponent the option number three is make your linear the person whom you're leading to vote out but this is what is called as a get out to vote campaign, right? And so if you look back what this allows is it allows you to custom crafting of messages you can come back and say well vote for me because you got so much of scholarship from you vote for me because I gave you so much of MNRIGA or you come back and say to the other person vote for me because maybe I'll give you higher reservation for your cast or in order to ensure the other person suppress you just basically spread information that oh he's not an MNRIGA person so what kind of crafted messaging can I send him, right? And then you, so remember at this point of time the features that I've written out what is called MNRIGA LPG Kizan scholarship gas are only mere markers a typical campaign may probably have about more than 20, 25, 30 data points over every voter. And so this allows you to do a lot of interesting stuff and I will not go into how messages and campaigns have started because it's a very distinct talk by itself but this is the essential strategy about how to target the messaging. Now coming back to it, there is also an adjustment process here that I will not go deep into because it will take too long time for it. So the way in which it works is that let us say you've got this one by three and then what really happened on the polling data is that when you go back to the EVM and the vote and then they do the totalizer machines they don't actually actually totalize the machines as a construct would have probably given much more anonymity for the secret ballot but that doesn't exist no more. So what then you do is you adjust. You say that, okay, I'm supposed to get one by three but I actually got two by three and maybe a neutral whom I thought was a neutral is probably not a neutral, but he has my leaning. So you just basically go back and adjust the neutral status to 1.0 or 1.0, I mean 1.0. And so this is basically how you do it. And so even when you run membership campaigns and all that kind of stuff, remember the first and foremost thing they call, they talk about on the membership campaigns or even missed call campaigns is that please give me a missed call. I mean, at the end of it, no matter what your targeted messaging is the mobile number is like an absolute, absolute base. And so when people come and talk about Jam, Jandan and Adaran mobile, they fundamentally forget about the fact that the M is the most crucial component for political parties and what enables the M is what everything else does. So if you find a whole bunch of farmers or a whole bunch of people not pretty unhappy with you six months before the elections when you're running ground polls, you can always announce a direct subsidy for that kind of people. And the fact that you haven't done it so far doesn't mean anything, but I actually expect these things to be much more operational going forward because of the change in the water ID linking thing, right? And then the beauty of targeted messaging is that you can pursue all of this simultaneously with a neutral suppress the component, open and make a leaner to vote. I mean, how the magic in India has always been WhatsApp groups. So you can look at a single example here. I'll just show the single example here just a minute. So if you look at this message, there is something very interesting. I mean, for those who don't understand Tamil I'll just translate what it is. It just says injustice, injustice. And then the poor is being denied the livelihood and so on and so on. But notice the amount of exclamation marks here. And if you understand Tamil, a similar thing that we have seen in many, many campaign messages, it's exceptionally emotional. And so this is an example of how WhatsApp messages are basically sent. I'll resume now going back. So what is WhatsApp groups? There are quite a bit of information about WhatsApp groups and how they are managed. Again, it's like a several other talks. I will not go into that. Then how will you get targeted message done? I mean, you do what is called as a random bombing via media. Then you do one-to-one canvassing. A similar kind of thing happened in the final protest. There were quite a bit of one-to-one canvassing, but not by the people who supported it, by the people who have posted it. So if you understand the modus operandi by combining data, fusing it with databases and fusing it with this kind of an architecture and then doing prior and back-dating, you fundamentally get a pretty good idea on who's voting. And this is primarily enabled by the totalizer machines and the absence of the totalizer machines. And so let's go back. What is the way to build targeted messaging? The way to build targeted messaging happens via what is called as focus groups. So what you do is you pick two or three persons per polling booth and then run quite a lot of focus groups. You basically figure out a bunch of messages and the bulletin rule about messages is it has to be emotional, directed and simple. And this is also situated in a larger context called as the ON3C framework. And so this is an example of objective narrative context campaign content. I will not go too deep into it, but the simple fact of the matter is that I've seen this ON3C framework and targeted messaging work many times forward. It doesn't really matter. It is for the ruling party or the opposition. It is work for incumbents. It is work for opponents and so on and so on. So when you are facing this kind of a messaging problem, what do you do as an opposition? You run counter campaigns. You do tap into data trade markets. And sometimes it just so happens that the other side also leaks information about their campaigns view. So this basically has become more mercenary and driven largely political consultants. You would really want to look at what they are doing in terms of their sophistication. It has increased by several notches in the last five years ever since we've been tracking this. And so if you go back and ask the first question, I had met a TDP campaign consultant and who when the Seba Mithra thing exploded and he explained to me like this and he said, what do I do? The other side is bringing guns to a fight. I'm supposed to just go and fight them with bows and arrows. So we did what we have to do, which is the explanation for the Seba Mithra thing. So in general, if you look at what has happened is this is basically an escalation of loss of privacy for citizens. And the very fact that everyone is doing it doesn't mean that it is actually right because we had a similar kind of an issue during the paper voting thing when ballot stuffing was pretty common and so on and so on, et cetera. So the ECI did a lot of interesting stuff during these days in order to bring it down. So we're probably looking at something like that but whether they would do it, I don't know. Right? So the last step I would discuss and then we'll just move on to the conclusion. I think it should be right on time. So last step is if you want to, actually run to step four and you got into a place where you are winning a lot of elections one way or the other, you use institutional control in order to entrench your advantage. And so an example for that is the ongoing debate about the PDP where the government basically said, look, we don't want to give data about ourselves. So we just want to be exempt from all the PDP stuff, right? I mean, UREA is one of the examples. The government can basically exempt itself from the entire PDP law, which fundamentally means it doesn't have to care about data protection anymore because it thinks that giving data about itself and telling people and having more data about people is pretty good for it, right? And of course you see the next thing which is pass law which allow easy merge by common identifiers. And so that is really what the ECI other, the other AP card linking is all about. What is now actually mostly done hushed by campaign consultants and political parties by tapping the data rate markets and hack and leak or leak and buy and whatnot is basically now being legalized. That's the way in which I would read it, right? So we're almost done. So just to think about if I were an operator, how do I do it? This is how I would do it. And this is what is actually also happening on the field. So think about this fact that orders have always been least informed and have the least powered by design. Technical solutions like other blockchain, et cetera, don't address the information asymmetry problem and hence worsen it. The easy availability of data also worsens power asymmetry as well, right? And I think we're done. Questions. So I think one of the questions that was asked was about decentralization of governance and what your idea around that might be? I don't know. I mean, we are supposed to be pretty decentralized, no? Isn't that the federal constitution kind of a thing? Yes, I mean, we don't have much context for the question. Yeah. I mean, there's supposed to be a lot more federalist and a lot more decentralized. And what has happened of late is it has become exceptionally centralized. So if you look back, what has happened? Most of the welfare schemes that are being run now are being pushed from the center by taking money from the states themselves, which becomes a problem for the states because at the end of it, being the closest to the people, the states are responsible for delivery. And the center usually writes down policies. That's the way it is. I don't know. But even ECI is supposed to be much more decentralized with state commissioners and so on and so on. So that is with the other thinking, that is also becoming more centralized. So what do you have as a problem in the sense that policies are being more made in the center and implementation has to be done to the states. But here, both implementation and policies are basically made by the center, which fundamentally means states don't have much, say not just on policy, but also implementation, which makes governance much, much worse overall. Another question that we had was, don't the current or imminent personal data protection laws exempt government agencies from processing personal data? It seems like agencies invested in voter ID, other linking for targeted voter profiling, for example, in Telangana, are retroactively immune from legal consequences. And in a similar way, what are we to do when legislation infringing on our rights are passed without any meaningful discussion and robust oversight mechanisms, especially with the elections around the corner? Well, I think, see, we have a larger problem in general, which is if you look at all democracies all around the world, there had been severe regression steps on the rights framework, okay? What it fundamentally means is that you have to think about rights framework as a means to ensure there is accountability built in into government itself. Now we are seeing increasingly that accountability checks being absent. Most of the government policies are actually not getting the results. I mean, which is supposed to be like you saw about GST and all the whole bunch of stuff. What it really means, I think is if you look at historically, as a nation state, we would be much poorer, much less competitive and much more pluscited compared to the liberalization era. That's really what is going to happen. Well, what is the outcome of that? Things change sometimes 50 years, sometimes 20 years, sometimes five years, you don't know, maybe when things change and then maybe there is a bend back towards the arc, but that may probably take a while and until then you just have to end your, that's usually how I've seen most of the democracies manage it. Like some never come back, some come back with a lot of limping, some come back faster, we don't know. So I think related to that, in case we do manage to move forward, there's a question that asks, since you spoke of unfair advantage and information asymmetry, what would fair play and symmetrical access to information look like? I think there should not be access to information by political parties. And that might be a harder one for the ECI to think about, but one thing they can definitely do is stop publishing pulling both data and use totalizer machines. People have talked about using totalizer machines. I mean, the unfortunate problem I see is our courts are usually the worst place to litigate any constitutional issue, particularly not just the Supreme Court and particularly if it is technology, I think they just don't get it. So we have a larger problem in the way in which technology itself is understood in the country, forget about governance. And I think if you're able to manage at least the totalizer problem by ensuring that at a pulling both level, the number is not published. I think that will go a long way towards removing the information asymmetry compared to what it is, at least towards the voters. Like I'm pretty sure political parties would be pretty unhappy about it, but as voters, they will be a lot more happier.