Bangalore needs a few Quick Wins!!!

A few decades ago, a mention of Bangalore would have extracted comments like nice town, peace ful town, pensioners paradise etc. Go back just a few years, and Bangalore earned itself new adjectives like IT City, Silicon Valley of India. It even managed to add itself to the Oxfored dictionary as a verb.

Today, the mention of Bangalore, will only generate clamouring for Infrastructure, roads, pollution and so on.

But you may think this is despite the fact that Bangalore has quite a few Mega projects being rolled out. But this is not so. I feel this is because of the fact that Bangalore has so many Mega infrastructure projects that are going on together, with no end in sight.

The only win Bangalore has to show is the International Airport, which was itself delayed by several decades.

What Bangalore needs is a cohesive Mega Plan, which includes all the large Mega projects like the Metro, and several small projects.

The government has to bear in mind that people can put up with only so much. If we wait for all the Mega Projects to end, it may be too late and Bangalore may lose its stature as the IT Capital to nearby cities or even countries.

It is important that a small win is planned every 6 months, that people can celebrate. It will earn the government the support and backing it requires from the public over the next 5 years.

The plan to move the Race Course outside the city and building a World Trade Centre means yet another mega project that will not have anything to show for 3-4 years. Where as converting the Race Course to a Park, can be a quick win. It will also give Bangalore much needed lung space in the heart of the city.

Similarly, the Metro will take a few years to complete. However, something like a mono rail may be easier to implement. Kicking this off in parallel, will ensure a few monorail successes in between every phase of the Metro. This will give the public, a much needed boost while Bangalore undergoes this phase of rapid transformation.

We will get a National ID Card Again!!

The move to invite the Infosys Co-Chairman Mr. Nandan Nilekani to take charge as Chairperson of the Unique Identification Authority of India, in the rank of Cabinet Minister is indeed a very promising move and augurs well for the future of this nation.

Now, this is certainly not the first time that we have set out on the task of issuing a National Identity Card, but its certainly the first time that we seem to be involving the right people to get the task done.

This is certainly a huge challenge and making it a reality will certainly require a lot of conviction and drive.

The possibilities, once this is a success are innumerable, from improved security, better controlling and tracking of financial transactions, control over black money, better and more effective rollout of subsidies by reducing overhead and leakage to name a few. In general it will give the government the ability to link actions to consequences. This is a necessity in a huge country like ours that can otherwise go berserk.

But there are several issues like authentication, validation, duplication and roll out to such a huge population.

Today there are several solutions that technology offers to solve some of these problems. The use of biometrics - fingerprints, retina scans etc can ensure that we avoid some of these issues.

The other issue is Bureaucracy. To get anything in our country from a Ration card to a passport or anything that is a necessity, will mean having to deal with all the babu's enroute. We have to find an alternate route to this until a basic level of integrity gets ingrained within our social sensibilities. We should consider having a public-private partnership, where in the private partner would be responsible for the actual rollout, biometrics etc. The database itself can be maintained by the government for obvious security reasons. The idea is to somehow solve this problem, however that may be.

The other issue is the type of rollout. We seem to have been obsessed, previously, with issuing physical cards with chips that hold all the information. The problem I have with this is with the cost of implementation this will entail and the risk to security.

a) Supplying physical cards with chips are costly.

b) People tend to lose things. And every loss will mean replacing the card, which will translate to additional costs and overheads.

c) Handing over cards with chips provides a window for a security breach.

We do not need cards. People just need to know the number that will identify them. They can chose to memorize it, write it down or use any method they may deem fit.

Challenges are plenty, but under Mr Nandan Nilekani's leadership, this is a success story thats waiting to be scripted.

Jai ho!

Its time for IT IN India...

For long this country has earned its name for the high quality IT Services delivered FROM its shores. Its time some of these are delivered IN its shores now.

The global recession has expectedly had its impact on the Indian IT Services industry as well. With the IT Budgets being slashed across the US and Europe, the industry is looking to reinvent itself.

The huge IT Talent pool in the country needs to continue to be productive. What better time than now to deploy this talent pool to develop a NATIONAL IT INFRASTRUCTURE.

Its time we think about Centralized Identities to track citizens. i.e linking licenses, PAN Cards, Bank Accounts, Property documents, Insurance etc to a single identity.

The absence of this ability to track has been the root cause for most of the problems our country faces today. The basic premise that one can get away easily, even if one does not follow a rule, even if it is the smallest or most insignificant like parking in a No Parking Zone, has given us a Freedom thats more akin to what animals experience in the wild.

It is not that we lack discipline. Its just that when we defined "Freedom" for ourselves in this country, we seemed to have forgotten the duties to our fellow citizens that this freedom demands. For 60 years now we have experienced "Freedom" in the truest and wildest sense of the word.

This can change if every action has a consequence, even if it is minimal. And this is not rocket science, it has been done elsewhere. Yes, we do have challenges in terms of scale of implementation and we have to keep this in mind when try to solve this problem.

National Identity Cards with chips in it that store everything from one's DNA are probably not the best solutions for us. Is it feasible to deploy such a solution to a billion people?

What we need is a simple, clean solution. For example, Assign a number to every citizen and make sure that number is mandated on every legal document like a license, property, bank account, PAN Number or insurance.

This solution, in whatever form, if scalable, will be an investment whose ROI can be boundless.

The Bangalore Buzz...

My association with Bangalore dates back to the early 1980's, a quaint lazy little city, a pensioner's paradise. For the futcha's in Bangalore, you may be wondering if I am talking about our Bangalore.

Indeed the city has exploded in the last 10 years. This unprecedented growth coupled with our city planner's myopic vision and bureaucracy have brought the city down to its knees.

This city is still capable of attracting millions of visitors, immigrants and businessmen, with its delectable mix of great weather, great cultural mix and snazzy new businesses, offering something that meets every taste.

However, this may not be for too long. The effects of this growth are beginning to show. And unless we take this seriously, it will not be too long before the damage becomes irreparable.

Over the last 10 years there has been a lot of clamour from the media, the public, social welfare groups and the government about improving bangalore. Sadly though these voices dont seem to be complementing each other. Worse still, they seem to be detrimental to the overall growth of the city. There needs to be a holistic approach to city planning. Yes, there will be many issues and concerns and all steps taken will not benefit everybody, but so long as we make progress we have to push for these initiatives.

For example, we need infrastructure. There is no doubt about that. Now this will not come without losing some green cover. But at the same time, we need to make sure that we are compensating this loss with adequate planning for green cover going forward.

The challenges are immense on all fronts : education, public health, transportation, infrastructure, public amenities and even basics like water and electricity.
And we do not have a bottomless exchequer either. So this demands proper prioritization and planning so that our money is not wasted. We are not a rich nation like the united states. But we can still afford to leave our street lights on during the day time, while the Americans cannot do it still.

Its time we mend our ways. We, the citizens, the government, the bureaucrats, NGO's need to pull up our socks and back each other up to deliver.