How We Launched EmpoweredIndian.in

Before I begin, I should admit something that will not surprise anyone who knows me. Writing has never come naturally to me. I would rather wrestle with broken scripts or chase down strange bugs than sit with a blank page. I never planned to tell this story either. EmpoweredIndian was supposed to remain one of those projects that lived quietly in my memory, meaningful but unspoken. But then came the gentle but persistent push from Dr Malpani, who believes some journeys deserve to be shared even when the person living them would prefer to stay behind the screen. So here I am, doing something I usually avoid, trying to put into words a project that changed me far more than I expected.

When people visit EmpoweredIndian.in today, they see a clean website. Tables. Maps. Numbers about public money.

What they do not see is the fear behind it. The parked domains. The late night shaking hands. The email that had my full home address in it. The days where friends told me to erase myself from the internet. The feeling of being one small person poking a very large system and waiting to see what pushes back.

This is the real story of how EmpoweredIndian was born. And why, even in its half paused state, it still means something very deep to me.

It began with potholes and garbage

The seed of EmpoweredIndian was not EmpoweredIndian at all. It began with two other names.

IndianPotholes.com had already taken off. People were using it. Tweets were flying. Civic tech suddenly felt real to me.

So when Dr Malpani suggested building IndianGarbage.com, I was excited. It made sense. Garbage, potholes, broken roads, all part of the same daily frustration that people quietly absorb.

We even bought the domain. It still sits there, unused.

But another question began bothering us.

Why should people have to visit separate sites for every civic problem they face? Why should their suffering be split into domain names when their lives are not?

We realised we did not just want another complaint box. We wanted something larger. Something that made citizens feel less alone and more in control.

Naming it, the birth of EmpoweredIndian

One day, during our usual conversations, Dr Malpani said, "We should buy EmpoweredIndian.com."

The name struck me instantly. This was not about potholes or garbage. It was about identity. About a citizen who is not helpless, but informed and strong.

The domain was taken, so I bought EmpoweredIndian.in instead. Then I parked it quietly. A dream with no shape yet.

We still did not know what it would become, but we knew what it should feel like. It should shine a light on how public money is spent, clearly and truthfully.

The late night idea that brought it to life

For weeks, the domain sat untouched. Life went on. Work went on. Other projects demanded attention.

Then one day, it clicked.

EmpoweredIndian should not be another system for complaints. It should be a mirror.

Not opinions. Not outrage. Just numbers. Real, dry, factual numbers that finally let citizens see how their MP or MLA used the funds entrusted to them.

We found the MPLADS and MLA fund portals. Buried inside clunky PDFs and confusing interfaces was a story the public rarely got to see.

So we built.

Scripts. Scrapers. Data cleaning. Interface design. Tables that ordinary people could read without stress.

And yes, as always, I delayed the launch. One more bug. One more detail. One more round of polishing.

Until one night.

The launch at 1 a.m. and the email that shook me to the core

Around one in the night, I deployed EmpoweredIndian.in.

The world outside was quiet. My room was quiet. It felt like I had just lit a small candle in a very large dark room.

Some time after launch, everything changed.

A threatening email arrived. Not a vague warning. Not a random insult. It included my complete address, written perfectly.

I felt cold. For a few seconds, I could not even breathe.

I did not know if it was a prank or a real threat. The fear did not care about that distinction.

Over the next few hours and into the next day, my friends began calling and messaging me. Some told me to take the website down immediately. Some told me to delete my social media accounts. Some even suggested I remove every trace of my identity from the internet. One friend advised me to search the web for my address and erase it from every place it appeared.

Everyone was scared for me, and that fear washed over me too. I kept thinking, "What have I stepped into?" "Why do they know where I live?"

I shut the site down. I posted a vague tweet saying there were issues. My hands were shaking.

At some point, while sweating through my shirt, I was fixing bugs on a project that no longer existed online. I did not know if it would ever return.

Relaunching and watching India respond

After days of fear, doubt, and endless what ifs, something inside me refused to quit.

I relaunched EmpoweredIndian.in.

And suddenly, everything changed again, but in a very different way.

People shared it widely. Twitter lit up. My follower count jumped by the thousands. Messages came in from strangers who said this was exactly what India needed. The site consumed seventy to eighty gigabytes of bandwidth in a single day.

For civic tech in India, that is enormous.

We continued building. We added MLA fund data. We filed RTIs where information was missing.

In Maharashtra, where information is decentralised, we realised how hard it is for a citizen to get clarity without filing RTIs district by district.

In Uttarakhand, we received around three thousand pages of RTI replies. We processed every page.

Some days I felt proud. Other days I wondered why the simplest accountability required this much effort.

The quiet heartbreak of civic tech

EmpoweredIndian was a success by every measurable number.

It pulled traffic. It sparked conversations. It made data that was once buried suddenly accessible. It helped people understand how their money was used.

But there was another side to the story.

People genuinely cared. They were curious. They were angry. They wanted answers. Yet beneath all that, something heavier sat quietly in their minds.

Even if I know the truth, what can I do about it?

That quiet belief is the biggest enemy of civic tech. Not apathy, but exhaustion. A deep sense that nothing will change.

EmpoweredIndian exposed this gap clearly. We showed the numbers, but we could not promise results. That hurt.

The unexpected afterlife of EmpoweredIndian

Then something happened that I never saw coming.

To this day, when people ask ChatGPT or Grok about MPLADS expenses, these AI systems often cite EmpoweredIndian.in instead of the official government portals.

A small civic project, built by one developer at one in the night, taken down in a panic, and revived through shaking hands, has become a recognised source for advanced global AI tools.

If that is not impact, then what is.

It means that whenever someone anywhere asks, "How is my MP spending public money?", the answer may come from the work we put into EmpoweredIndian.

That thought still surprises me. It still humbles me.

Where EmpoweredIndian stands now

The website is still live. The code is open source on GitHub. People still visit it.

The idea itself, however, is resting. There has not been active development for a while. Not because we stopped believing, but because life, time, and energy are limited.

Still, I refuse to call it finished.

EmpoweredIndian feels like a project that is sleeping, waiting for the right moment or the right hands to carry it further.

What EmpoweredIndian taught me

EmpoweredIndian taught me things no classroom ever could.

Courage rarely feels courageous. It feels like fear and trembling fingers while deciding whether to keep a site online.

Truth, even when presented as numbers, has power.

One person cannot fix a system, but one person can disturb the silence around it.

Public accountability is exhausting, but necessary.

Projects can rest without dying. Builders are allowed to be human.

A story I once thought was not inspiring, but now see differently

For a long time, I believed this story was not inspiring enough. No courtroom victory. No minister resigning. No dramatic moment of justice.

Just a website, an email with my address, a terrified young developer, thousands of citizens reading their own data for the first time, and AI tools now citing that same data to answer public questions.

But inspiration does not always shout. Sometimes it whispers.

In citizens who finally understand where their money went. In thousands of pages of RTI replies that refused to stay hidden. In a website that stands as proof that truth can travel far beyond its creator.

That is how EmpoweredIndian came into being. That is how it continues to live, quietly, in a corner of the internet.

And if you are reading this with your own civic idea, fear in your chest, and a domain name sitting unused, I hope you remember this.

You may not change an entire country. You may not even change one district.

But you can shine one small light into one dark corner. Sometimes, that is enough to begin.