BOOK REVIEW
Title: REBOOTING
INDIA-Realizing A Billion Aspirations
Authors: NANDAN
NILEKANI & VIRAL SHAH
Research: Swapnika
Ramu
Illustrations: Aparna Ranjan
Publisher: ALLEN
LANE/PENGUIN BOOKS, 2015
Price: Hardback,
Rs. 799/-
Applying IT To Fast Track India’s Development
Nandan Nilekani, famed as one of the team of founder
entrepreneurs from Infosys, retired as its CEO, only to go on and spearhead the
making of the famous AADHAR Card.
Nilekani is clearly an incandescent man of transformational
ideas that can be implemented, judged from his corporate career, the success of
AADHAR, involving over 900 million card holders, and this, the second of his
visionary books.
The first, Imagining India, marked his advent into
doing something for the country, and was expressive of his zeal. And this one, Rebooting
India, is also full of practical and
far reaching ideas. Nilekani truly should be in parliament, though he lost his
maiden Lok Sabha election bid from Bengaluru, even if it is via the indirectly
elected or nominated route to the Rajya Sabha.
While there have been many government sponsored identity
cards, rivalling each other, duplicating effort, and sometimes working at cross
purposes, nothing has come close to the biometric AADHAR Card. It is the first
one that may become and possibly remain the definitive identity device for
Indians.
That it aspires to becoming the link pin for social
security schemes, subsidies, government services, e-KYC, the soon expected GST
administration, electronic toll services, voter roll reviews, electioneering,
fraud and embezzlement prevention, and even voting itself, alarms some who
benefit from the present confusion. There is a potential to save the government
about Rs. 100,000 crores per annum or about 1% of GDP if it is used
extensively. And so, the universal use of the AADHAR Card is opposed by many
vested interests including those who cite an invasion of privacy, and others
who say illegal immigrants who manage to get hold of this card become thereby
legitimised.
But still, the potential of this one-stop device to
simplify identification, speed-up processes, and save money, is indeed immense.
Nilekani and Viral Shah, his young techie collaborator
and co-author of Rebooting India, both worked together in the Unique
Identification Authority of India(UIDAI), chaired by Nilekani.
Given the authors’ backgrounds and achievements, the duo
are eminently, qualified to suggest the acceleration of India’s development
using information technology. And this, in a country and administration
traditionally riddled with red tape and extreme bureaucracy.
This book is also something of an unabashed collaborative
effort. Apart from its easy readability, despite the complex and intricate
subject matter, assisted by senior journalist Samar Halarnkar; it is also
remarkable for the meticulous research done by Swapnika Ramu. And then there
are the profuse illustrations, with their easy to grasp graphics, by Aparna
Ranjan. If one were to just follow all the illustrations and graphics, it would
be possible to form a thumb-nail sketch of the contents of this primer of a
book.
Many new and emerging technology devices are cited as the
horses fit for courses: micro ATMs, via a handheld wireless device, plus an
AADHAR card number and a thumb-print, for hey presto rural banking, for example.
There is a discussion on the burgeoning Ali Baba
style eCommerce revolution, borne on the Internet, backed by a warehousing or
supplier inventory management programme, that can be used nowadays to purchase
a plethora of goods and services. Items and services that come to the consumer,
quickly, sometimes instantly, often at far more competitive prices than in
brick and mortar facilities. And the process is minus the travel, the crowds,
the queue; not to mention the consequences of real -estate costs and location
costs/ rents/utilities/salaries, and the unavoidable, resultant retail mark-ups.
India will become the world’s youngest country by 2020,
with 64 per cent of its population, some 800 million people at present count,
of working age. This huge mass of humanity will be consuming all manner of
goods and services against a long list of demands. This, even as its ‘online
footprint’ grows towards becoming amongst the biggest in the world. And also as
per capita income levels rise.
Despite being even the fastest growing major economy in
the world from a modest base of some $2 trillion presently, at a projected 9% per
annum in GDP, this extra money in the economy, by itself, is not going to be
able to deliver every need for all. Especially if expensive, wasteful and tardy
systems are not thrown over. India will need technological efficiencies and
constant innovation to make its rupee stretch, given its massive population.
India is also likely, given the intelligence and dynamism
of its youth, to become the Start Up Capital of the world. But this, only if
the regulatory and financial environment encourages such entrepreneurship. In
other words, it is likely to spontaneously stand up and meet its own demand
opportunities given the chance.
But, the delay and complications imposed, by sometimes
necessary and often outdated government permissions, left over from another
era, has to be overhauled and speeded up
to cope.
The Modi government is not only highly appreciative of
the work done by UIDAI but is moving towards digital locker systems for
important documents, direct transmission of subsidies, bank accounts for the
people at the bottom of the pyramid, electronic payment of income tax, stamp
duties, money transfers online, agricultural marketing systems, and other electronic
governance processes, and this too, quite rapidly.
And then there are the reforms in the infamous sarkari
benefits, misdirected and siphoned off by contractors and middle-men, over
these long years, and with impunity.
Without a direct and transparent transmission plank
between the giver, usually the government, under its many welfare and poverty
alleviation schemes, and the recipient, aka the impoverished, the
situation cannot get better. And this is being both recognised and addressed,
often using AADHAR, even though the Supreme Court has refused to make it
mandatory.
The broad idea in the medium term is for every Indian to
have an AADHAR Card, a smartphone and a bank account.
Beyond the potential of the AADHAR Card, this simply
written but brilliant book does short sketches of how vital areas of governance
such as health, education, energy, the legal system, agriculture, can all be
transformed, with the efficient use of IT.
In the end, Rebooting India envisages a new governance
paradigm shift, via access to a data grid that has every single Indian on it.
For: The BOOKS Page in The Sunday Pioneer
(1,032 words)
December 2nd 2015
Gautam Mukherjee
No comments:
Post a Comment