[Reader-list] News Items posted on the net on Multipurpose National Identity Cards-117

Taha Mehmood 2tahamehmood at googlemail.com
Fri May 29 07:07:05 IST 2009


http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124244248889526369.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Dear UPA Government: Get Us Involved and Let's Get Going

By RAJESH JAIN

The verdict is in. A new United Progressive Alliance government is
expected to take charge of India next month. With it comes the promise
of a change for the better. The new government has the opportunity –
and the challenge – to outline a bold vision for India, a vision that
fires up the imagination of its people and the vitality of its
entrepreneurs.
[Rajesh Jain]

Rajesh Jain

The new government has to credibly signal its commitment to addressing
the major challenges facing India and enlist the support of the
private sector in creating innovations for achieving goals that are
big, visionary and bold. In the past, whenever allowed the freedom to
do so, the Indian corporate sector has risen to the occasion and
helped India's development. It is time once again for the Indian
government to present corporate India with a set of truly
transformational challenges.

Here is a small set of inter-related broad areas where change is
urgently needed and which, with proper government support, Indian
entrepreneurs and corporations will eagerly participate in.

    * Education: India needs a radically different education system as
the current one is dysfunctional and largely irrelevant in the modern
context. In a world of rapid and accelerating change, the foundational
skill is to learn how to learn. The education system has to produce
life-long learners, which the current setup does not permit.
Fortunately, a radical re-engineering is possible through the use of
powerful tools presented by the revolution in information and
communications technologies. To achieve this, institutional reform of
the type that encourages private sector participation in education is
necessary.



    * Energy: Any economic activity, like all processes in the
universe, depends on energy. Today's developed nations achieved their
level of prosperity on cheap fossil fuels, an opportunity not
available to India's 1.2 billion people. Fortunately, India is large
enough to be able to leapfrog the fossil fuel stage by investing in
the development and use of renewable energy sources such as solar and
wind. The required investment cannot be raised without leadership
which convincingly articulates the vision.
    * Urbanization: India's economic future depends on India's success
at urbanizing its immense rural population. No economy has achieved
even middle-income status without being mostly urban. What India needs
is to make its agriculture more productive. The labor released from
agriculture has to be provided training and opportunities in
manufacturing and services sectors. It is important to distinguish
between the development of rural areas and that of rural populations.
The former is neither necessary nor sufficient for development; the
latter is indispensable and can be achieved most effectively by
urbanizing them. This challenge is the creation of new, livable cities
that would lead the urbanization of the population needed for India's
transition to an industrialized economy.
    * Transportation: India is a large country with a large
population. For the economy to prosper, people and goods have to be
efficiently moved over large distances. India is approximately ten
times as densely populated as the US. It therefore cannot afford the
solution that works for the US for transporting people, namely, air
travel. What India needs is a land-based system and more specifically
a rail-based transportation system, both for goods and people. The
technology exists for super-efficient, super-fast rail systems. India
has to seriously invest in that and replace the century-old current
railway system. Furthermore, within cities, India needs to have an
efficient public transit system and not take the unsustainable,
car-centered approach.
    * Digital Infrastructure: Although India has one of the world's
cheapest and extensive mobile networks for voice communications, its
data networks are quite inadequate. India needs to make serious and
large investments to upgrade its digital wireline and wireless
networks to create a high-speed, ubiquitous envelope of data
connectivity across the nation. This is what will spur the creation of
the next-generation of entrepreneurial outfits creating world-leading
applications and services for the domestic market.
    * Governance: India has to make judicious use of its financial
capital. The problem is that the current leaky system does not allow
the most effective and efficient use of those resources. What is
needed is to leverage technology in better governance though citizen
participation. Technology can enable citizen oversight of public
spending and enforce accountability. Innovations such as smart
national ID cards and eVoting can increase participation in democratic
processes.

India has a limited window of opportunity for getting its policies
right so it can participate successfully in a globally very
competitive world. It missed many previous opportunities but cannot
afford to miss this one. The time has come for government and
corporate India to come together to Think Big and drive the disruptive
innovations that India so urgently needs to move rapidly up the
development ladder.
—Rajesh Jain is Managing Director, NetCore Solutions, Mumbai


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