Sam Pitroda: A time to update

In my judgment, India8217;s primary challenge is innovations in organisation and execution. It relates to our weakness in management, execution and implementation. We all know what the problems are. To some extent we even know what the solutions are. What we often lack is the ability to bridge the gap between the problems and the solutions through effective execution.

As a result we haven8217;t been able to provide basic infrastructure, health services and education to a large part of our population. This has led to the creation of separate classes: the very rich and the very poor, the very intelligent and the illiterate, the rural and the urban.

It is true that disparities will always exist everywhere; they exist even in a rich country like the US. However, it is the degree of disparity that exists in India that should make us all uncomfortable. On the one hand you have debt-ridden farmers committing suicide barely 500 kilometres from Mumbai, India8217;s economic nerve center. On the other hand you have the rich in Mumbai buying apartments for Rs 25 crore. No one is expecting the rich to sacrifice all their luxuries in order to bail out a farmer8217;s family buried in modest amounts of debt. But it cannot be denied that somewhere along the system has failed to reduce so much disparity.

The problem is one of organisation, management, delegation of power and dilution of central authority. We still remain comfortable with many processes and procedures which were put in place by the British whose purpose was to control and subjugate a population. The time has come for India to not just completely overhaul the system but even get rid of the outdated processes, procedures, and rules. If we want to capitalise on the full potential of information and communication technologies, it is imperative that we update our institutional mindsets to the 21st century.

This necessarily means significantly diluting and delegating powers and authorities at all levels of government, from the very top to the bottom. It also means dramatically increasing public-private partnership, laying down clear roles and responsibilities and creating many autonomous bodies. It is not just ridiculous but even counterproductive to require the head of a Rs 2,000 crore government enterprise to seek New Delhi8217;s permission to travel abroad and by what class. By all means enforce accountability at all levels but give people enough freedom in order to implement and execute plans. One effective way of enforcing accountability and putting checks and balances in place is to extensively use the Internet. There is no reason why the functioning of all government departments cannot be made transparent by putting everything on the net within the purview of national security concerns. We need to use IT and the right to information to create openness, transparency, accountability and access for general public.

We have 600 districts with roughly 2 million people per district and yet we continue to focus only on Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore and few more metros. We have to push development down to the bottom of the pyramid through district level implementation. The only way we can ensure that development spreads evenly is by empowering people at all levels both by giving them specific rights and responsibilities. The idea of government doing everything is so outdated it does not even need stating. I believe one effective way to address the challenge of disparity is to make people direct stakeholders in the country8217;s progress. Rather than regarding those in government as rulers, we need to view them as mentors who would facilitate and not obstruct.

This requires creative ways of developing public, private, and NGO partnerships in education, health, infrastructure etc. with trust and confidence in the private sector and NGOs to expedite the process of development. This also requires a large number of local leaders with commitment to public service.

Unlike any other country in the world India8217;s 550 million people under the age of 25 offer unique opportunity to introduce large scale institutional changes. This population is free from the conformist ideas of the decades before the 1980s. There has never been a more willing and open-minded constituency in India to carrying out generational changes that India so badly needs. We need to bring our young into the mainstream of decision-making and implementation with new technology and new tools.

India 1947 and India 2007 are fundamentally different. Unless our institutions recognise this underlying reality we will not be able to unleash and capitalise our creative energies fully. For this to happen perhaps a few among the top leadership will have to understand and appreciate the urgent need for innovations in organisation with focus on decentralise decision-making, autonomy, freedom, flexibility, etc to local management for speedy implementation and a move away from a feudal and hierarchical mindset to more egalitarian systems.

Chairman of the National Knowledge Commission, Sam Pitroda is widely credited for spearheading the communications revolution in India