A good ‘‘shake-up’’ of the present system is what Knowledge Commission chairman Sam Pitroda prescribed on Thursday while outlining a tentative roadmap for building a “new India through e-governance”.Members of the Commission had met for three days before making a presentation to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today on the plans they had in mind.Briefing the media after their presentation, Pitroda said the Commission would be working on ways to ‘‘shake up the present system’’ and would list a host of recommendations for the PM and his Cabinet.Hinting at some of the plans that could constitute phase-I, he stressed the need for a greater number of institutions like the Harvards and Oxfords of the world teaching liberal arts. Without undermining the importance of institutes like the IITs, he said such institutes were key to creating of tomorrow’s leaders.The Commission chairman pointed to what he called a dire need to standardise and streamline the 20 most important processes currently in use, including those for land records, birth certificates and ration cards. Citing the process of filing applications in triplicate, Pitroda asked: ‘‘Why do we need three applications that need to be attested by gazetted officers?’’ The application processes, he said, some of which were designed during the British Raj, need to be redesigned. Instead, he suggested a standard format for such processes and e-governance as the effecting tool.The Knowledge Commission, scheduled to submit the first set of its recommendations to the PM by October, will also look at wider issues such as ensuring e-mail security, building additional medical institutions, protection of traditional knowledge, and even putting in place a system encouraging innovation by the scientific community.Raising productivity and efficiency while cutting costs were the motives behind their recommendations, Pitroda explained. It was too early to estimate the cost of implementing their recommendations, he said, adding that it would take 20 years for their plans to bear fruit.
