FIRST STEP TOWARDS DIGITAL INDIA

Bikash Choudhury

In 2014 people generally thought; if, we replace the corrupt, inefficient and indecisive fractitious UPA Govt. with a more decisive Govt. with majority support in parliament then our economic recovery could be just an instant noodle away. In the summers of 2014 2^nd NDA Govt. took office under the dynamic leadership of one of the most popular political leader of recent times, Sri Narendra Modi; and, his govt. did surprise many political analysts as he and his Govt. started ground running from the day-0 with his foreign policy master stroke of inviting the SAARC leaders to the swearing in ceremony; and, many others progressive socio-economic policies followed from his stable like Jandhan Yojana, Mudra Bank, Gold Monetization, Make in India, Namami Gange and Digital India. However, calling spade a spade; our economy has not bounced back as it should in spite of a very responsible and proactive govt. with much faster decision making at the political level. One popular argument was that the last decade under Manmohan Singh was so bad that our economic automobile is now making loud noise before actually starting up and marching with acceleration. And, other view point was the volatile Global economic condition is taking a heavy toll of bouncing back of Indian economy. Can we console ourselves with this hypothesis; while Indian Industry, Investors and Consumers do not display enthusiasm or optimism for so long? What is that our union and state government should do that would build a tempo in our economy with starting of a fresh investment cycle, employment growth and consumers returning to the markets for repeating the circular spin in the economy that could genuinely lift the spirits and momentum of our economy.

                 A simple policy prescription could be to cut cost, improve efficiency, leverage assets, mobilize the surplus in bottom of pyramid and the cycle should return a very vibrant economy in the short term—again, these are one of those ‘cetris paribus assumptions’ meaning other things remaining unchanged or equal, just a simple technique to let off the poor economist. However, this author would stand by his suggestions either way.     

          Digital India program alone has the capacity to make good with our economy in the short run. By one stroke we can change the way our bureaucracy functions, decisions and executions takes place in our Govt. system where discretions are abused, executions have plenty of time over runs with attendant cost escalations and valuable information stored in the silos which can’t be used effectively to create value for those on whose money our government system runs—that is our poor peoples money. World over is using Indian prowess for Software Development and IT infrastructure management that has seen an export of over $ 80 billion USD. However, our union or state govt. has not utilized our inherent strength to design and develop proprietary software for the use of our all State Govt. and the central Govt. so that all governmental transactions from Delhi to District Head Quarter could become paperless digital operation that could cut time, cost, leverage data bank for optimal decisions and manage the resources of Government that would create huge surplus for deployment at bottom of pyramid. For that to happen; our central govt. should out source the task of developing a “Government Resources Planning Software” to our private software services companies as National Informatics Centre (NIC) is not equal to the task. Further, each Govt. office from Delhi downwards could become part of one single computer network in just 18 months time if left to private hardware vendors of our country and govt. could pay the service providers on number of transactions or number of terminals for month that could save huge capital expenditure for the Government. This exercise need to be taken up in war footing to capture its benefits in its entirety. Once this task is completed; our Governmental system could use sophisticated technologies like Data Analytics, Project Management and many others that could bring huge improvement in efficiency at much less cost. It could also release 25-35% of Government personnel for redeployment or VRS while pruning the salary bill of all Governments in the country. This could be the first step towards “Digital India”.        

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