Technical Concept Note

Title: The Digital Guthi: An Open-Source Framework for Rural Economic Sovereignty
Project Name: Gaun Ko (Translation: “From the Village”)
Author: Classic Neupane, Full Stack Developer
Location: Bhojpur, Nepal
Submission For: DRAPAC26 Fellowship Selection Committee
Date: February 10, 2026

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1. The Cultural Context: From Bayanihan to the Guthi

Across the Asia-Pacific, our societies have survived not through individual accumulation, but through communal resilience. In the Philippines, this is Bayanihan—the spirit of communal unity and cooperation. In Nepal, we have the Guthi system—a socio-economic trust where land and resources are held in common for the welfare of the community.

However, as we migrate our lives online, we are leaving these values behind. The current digital landscape is architected around hyper-individualism and privatization. “Gaun Ko” represents a technical intervention to reclaim these values. It is an attempt to translate the Guthi—a trustless, decentralized, community-first protocol—into code. We are not just building an e-commerce platform; we are architecting a Digital Guthi where the infrastructure is a collective common resource, maintained by the community, for the community.

2. The Technical Problem: Digital Feudalism

The current interaction between rural Nepal and the global digital economy can best be described as “Digital Feudalism.”

• Extraction over Empowerment: Platforms like Facebook and Daraz act as absentee landlords. They provide the “land” (infrastructure), but they extract maximum value (data and margins) from the “serfs” (rural farmers), while retaining total control over the rules of the marketplace.
• The Data Sovereignty Gap: A farmer in Bhojpur generating data on crop yields or pricing has no ownership over that data. It is harvested to refine algorithms that often work against their local interests.
• The Connectivity Divide: Modern web architectures assume persistent 4G/5G connections. This assumption structurally excludes villages like Patlepani, where connectivity is intermittent and bandwidth is scarce.

3. The Solution: ‘Gaun Ko’ as Digital Public Infrastructure

“Gaun Ko” is a proposed Open Source Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) designed to dismantle these extractive patterns. It is a decentralized commerce engine built to operate in the unique constraints of the Himalayas.

A. The Technology Stack

The platform is being architected using the MERN Stack (MongoDB, Express.js, React, Node.js). This choice ensures a unified JavaScript environment, reducing the barrier to entry for future contributors and allowing for efficient handling of JSON-heavy inventory data.

B. Offline-First Protocol for the “Last Mile”

To address the “Digital Divide,” Gaun Ko treats connectivity as a luxury, not a given. The architecture prioritizes an Offline-First design pattern suitable for 2G networks:

• Service Workers & Caching: We utilize advanced Service Workers to intercept network requests. The application shell and critical inventory data are cached locally on the device using IndexedDB. This allows farmers to manage their shops, update stock, and view orders without an active internet connection.
• Asynchronous Synchronization: The system employs a “Background Sync” API. When the user enters a zone with connectivity, the application automatically synchronizes the local ledger with the central database, resolving conflicts via a timestamp-based heuristic.

C. Community Governance & Open Source

The code for Gaun Ko will be released under a permissive open-source license. The vision is to allow any community—whether in the terraced hills of Nepal or the archipelagos of the Philippines—to “fork” the project and deploy their own instance. This prevents vendor lock-in and ensures that the infrastructure remains a true common good.

4. Project Status: Architectural Design Phase

This project is currently in the Architectural Design Phase.

• The core database schemas for agricultural inventory have been drafted.
• The UI/UX wireframes for the “Voice-First” interface (for low-literacy users) are being iterated upon.
• The initial MERN boilerplate is established, but the offline-sync logic is currently being engineered.

5. Call to Action: Why the DRAPAC26 Fellowship?

I am a Full Stack Developer, not a policy expert. I can write the code, but code alone cannot dismantle systemic inequality.

I am applying for the DRAPAC26 Fellowship to bridge the gap between technical implementation and digital rights policy. I need the mentorship and network of this fellowship to ensure that “Gaun Ko” is not just a functioning application, but a sustainable model of Data Sovereignty. By supporting this project, you are not investing in a startup; you are investing in the potential of a “Digital Guthi”—a model where technology serves the collective, honoring the spirit of Bayanihan in the digital age.