ELECTION-ECONOMY AND DATA

Paradigm of thinking has changed in the present context. Information has already surpassed the value of Oil. Data has become the power and jobs which derive their energy from the data provide more remuneration. Microsoft, Apple, Amazon and Facebook which have roots in information are few of the highest valued equities. The information giants are now controlling the world economy as in a click they can take out investments from a country and make it go bankrupt. Such events already happened almost twenty years ago for elite countries of Asia called Asian Dragons.

World has witnessed four great economic revolutions. We mostly have studied first and second industrial revolution. They dealt with production, manufacturing and physical resources. Third revolution was the Micro-Chip revolution which automated the industries to a level. Now, we are dealing with the Data revolution. Data revolution is in a sense a psychological warfare where companies owning and controlling information use data to trigger your thoughts and actions. This might not make much sense but case studies of Cambridge Analytica which interfered in famously US 2016 elections and UK referendum shed much light to it. Cambridge Analytica psycho-reversed millions of population to vote using targeted ads, online games and what not. You won’t believe but they know more about you than you yourself. Beware! You’re being watched

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The stirring and landscape changes in the technology hasn’t left even the barren terrains untouched. The echo of this worldwide symphony can be felt in country like ours as well. The number of tech startups has risen exponentially. The number of academicians in the field of IT has increased dramatically. We can divide the entire population into two halves- tech friendly and tech unfriendly. The non-tech friendly weigh more. B ut the upcoming decades will show the seismic changes in this pattern. It might sound too optimistic for our country which never had any industrial revolutions but data revolution has already started. We have entered the fourth economic revolution without surpassing its predecessors it’s where I sense the trouble. Before talking about my opinions on economic conundrum, in coming paragraph I want to address perplex of Neplaese Election and Cambridge Analytica

 This subsequent changes in the population dynamics bred new voters. The impact is everywhere even in Nepal as well. Millennials who preferred crispy gossips on internet and didn’t bugged to look around the actual news where the newest brand to promote the tailored adult franchise of democracy. I don’t think Nepalese Politician didn’t recognize importance of these voters. But whether they sought for help from Cambridge Analytica or not is the question which has never sparked in the country’s mainstream as well as online media platforms. But international news has differed.

 

Highlighted countries have suspected to have used help of Cambridge Analytica in managing election campaign in some way (From Quartz).( https://qz.com/1239762/cambridge-analytica-scandal-all-the-countries-where-scl-elections-claims-to-have-worked/)

You can clearly see Nepal is as well highlighted among the countries whose election campaigns had been in some way aided. Nepal is included along with our neighbor India, UK and US has allegedly reported and their subsequent parliamentary committees have performed investigation as well. It was confirmed that the company had rigged the election in UK and US. A bunch of very influential voters, typically academicians, youth and foreign employees, are under influence by the social media. These voters influence huge bunch of others and thought of them psycho-reversed is really wrenching. But none of any questions at any level has been asked in Nepal at all. A simple picture of digital influence is when thousands of users dumped and boycotted ESEWA. I am neither defending nor alleging ESEWA but it is just a glimpse of this new force which made the company dumb millions to defend it. This already gave me sleepless nights as this debate never sparked in our country. Along with this impact upon revered institution of democracy, the question of how country manages our economy in these changing cosmos is interesting. In next paragraph, I have few of my opinions over this.

Our country called as agro-based economy is just a hypocrisy. We export manpower than any other agricultural products. The steps the country is taking and driving engine of the world all has favored service oriented economy for us. These steps look good, tourism and tech industry will surely flourish. But we don’t have the basic manufacturing and production capability to meet our own demands. The growth in these sectors is negligible. We import our food and medicinal supplies. The cultivation percentage has declined over the years as well. But the most important point of consideration is psychological denial and abandonment of these sectors. Investors don’t want to invest, youths would put their toil on foreign soil rather and government- I don’t know.

 As we are facing the greatest pandemic of our lifetime, this is high time to realize that we can’t eat computers and importing food is just like asking someone else to breathe for you. Until and unless government and authority intervenes and subsidizes the production of basic supplies in our own homeland it won’t matter what our rupee is worth. We will always be in verse of getting strangled by our two big brothers.