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
2nd 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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