About vMumbai
Open deliberation
for a city of 21 million
vMumbai is a civic participation platform that brings citizens, civil society, and government together to build genuine consensus on the issues that shape Mumbai.
Inspired by vTaiwan
vMumbai is directly inspired by vTaiwan — Taiwan's pioneering digital democracy initiative founded in 2015 by the g0v civic tech community after the Sunflower Movement.
vTaiwan famously resolved the Uber regulation debate in Taiwan using pol.is-driven consensus-building — a process where over 4,500 citizens voted on 145 statements, producing recommendations that became law. Of the 26 national issues discussed on vTaiwan, 80% led to government action.
We adapt that process for Mumbai: a city with enormous diversity of opinion, neighbourhood, language, and economic class. Our goal is to surface real consensus — not majority rule — on issues that affect Mumbaikars.
"The platform's design hides divisive statements, provocation and trolling. Eventually, a group of consensual statements emerge."— Democracy Technologies, on vTaiwan & pol.is
The four stages
Each issue on vMumbai moves through four structured stages. The process is adaptive — some issues may skip stages, others may loop back.
Propose
Any Mumbaikar can raise a civic issue. vMumbai facilitators review submissions, help frame them neutrally, and identify which stakeholders to invite — government agencies, affected communities, domain experts.
Deliberate
Citizens vote on statements using pol.is — an open-source opinion clustering tool. Participants vote agree, disagree, or pass on each statement, and can submit their own.
Pol.is uses machine learning to cluster participants by voting similarity. Divisive statements are deprioritised; statements that find agreement across all clusters rise to the top.
Reflect
Voting data is analysed and summarised. A live-streamed, face-to-face meeting is held with representatives from all stakeholder groups, guided by a neutral facilitator.
The meeting reviews the consensus statements and the divergence points. Its purpose is not debate — it is to confirm the findings and determine next steps.
Act
Government agencies are required to provide a formal, public response to issues that reach 1,000 participants. The response must address the consensus statements directly.
Outcomes — whether policies adopted, further review required, or reasons for inaction — are published on the issue page and logged permanently.
Why pol.is?
Most online debate tools are designed to capture attention, not produce consensus. They reward the most divisive statements, silence moderate voices, and produce noise.
Pol.is works differently. Instead of threads and replies, it shows each participant one statement at a time. You can only vote — not argue. The platform maps all participants into opinion clusters based on their vote patterns.
Statements that score high across all clusters — meaning both pro- and anti- groups agree — become the consensus statements. These are the ones that can actually become policy.
Pol.is is fully open source, free to use, and was purpose-built for this kind of civic deliberation. vMumbai uses the official pol.is embed, with each issue linked to its own pol.is conversation.
Opinion clusters from a pol.is deliberation. The centre dots represent participants from both groups who agree on consensus statements.
Common questions
Who runs vMumbai?
vMumbai is a community-run civic technology initiative. It is not affiliated with or funded by the BMC, MCGM, or any government body. Government agencies are invited to participate and required to respond to eligible issues, but they do not control the platform.
Is this affiliated with vTaiwan?
vMumbai is inspired by vTaiwan's model and open-source ethos, but is an independent initiative. We use the same pol.is technology and four-stage process, adapted for Mumbai's context.
What happens to my vote data?
Votes are anonymous. Pol.is does not collect personally identifiable information by default. vMumbai uses the XID system to allow you to resume voting across sessions without creating an account. All voting data is published as open data once a deliberation concludes.
What languages does vMumbai support?
The platform is currently in English. We are working to add Marathi and Hindi support. Pol.is itself supports multiple languages for statement input.
Can I use this for my organisation or ward?
Yes. The codebase is open source. You are welcome to fork it and deploy a version for your ward, neighbourhood, or organisation. See the GitHub repository for setup instructions.
Ready to participate?
Browse open issues and vote, or raise a new issue for Mumbai to deliberate.