India Elections 2009 – Why we need Outlandish Visions ?

The Mint has described the BJP’s I.T. Vision as “outlandish”, saying it was full of glamorous I.T.  fixes.

While the Mint echoes in the passing questions raised by Offstumped on funding and aggressive timelines, its the derisive tone and shallow content of the Mint editorial that is troubling.

Rather than offer an informed response to the intent behind specific elements of the I.T. Vision, the Mint has dismissed the Vision in its entirety as bordering on disbelief.

The credibility of the Mint’s criticism is further eroded with this a rather cheap shot at the BJP

As its rural base is eroding to populist coalitions, it would do well to focus on meaningful rural schemes—not an IT mirage. What will be dreamt up next?

The core of the Mint’s contention is that

#1 IT is a distinctly urban phenomenon that has limited roots in rural India.
#2 Until Indian urban and rural markets are better bridged, the IT projects proposed by the BJP may prove unsuccessful.

The Mint may have unwittingly made the case for the BJP’s outlandish vision by taking this line.

To better understand this let us look at something which was not supposed to be an urban only phenomenon.

The DNA on March 5th 2009 carried this piece on rural teledensity in India despite the Mobile revolution

rural teledensity (phones per 100) is still quite low at 12.62%, against urban teledensity of 81.3%. The overall teledensity as of end of December 2008 was 33.23%.

The piece also gives further details on the rural subscriber base of the major carriers

Reliance Communications and Idea Cellular, the rural user base is around 31%, 34%, 19% and 30% of their respective wireless pie.

Out of an all-India mobile subscriber base of 347 million as of 2008-end, the rural India contributed around 92 million, or 26%.

Here is the irony though when one considers the utilization of the Universal Service Obligation Fund which was created to improve  the phone penetration in rural parts

While Rs 20,404 crore has been collected as USO Fund since the FY2002-03, only Rs 6,723 crore has been allocated and disbursed till now

So here we have nearly 14,000 crores languishing unused over a period of 6 years doing little to spur the rural telephony market.

Clearly something is not working with the rather inlandish idea of a Universal Service Obligation despite benefitting from the luxury of funds to the tune of 14,000 crores and the luxury of a 6 year time period.

Now suddenly the BJP’s outlandish idea of subsidizing smart mobile phones to rural BPL families, doesnt seem all that outlandish after all.

With the attendant benefits of accessible Banking to rural families and Direct Cash Transfer in lieu of welfare schemes, this single outlandish idea has the potential to help stimulate the rural economy in ways the moribund USO Fund could not even imagine or concieve.

That is not only, Prof Anil Gupta of IIM Ahmedabad writing in the Indian Express has another idea that can meaningfully recast the NREGS to create rural entrepreneurial opportunities.

Thousands of local varieties preserved in the National Gene Bank are supposed to have descriptive information about local uses of such varieties. However, the relevant column either doesn’t exist in the descriptors of the gene bank or are blank. The employment guarantee programme can be used to generate such data from different households and put it in the gene bank. The food processing industry will get a fillip in the process.

The opportunity for recasting the employment programme requires moving away from a colonial legacy of treating people as worthy of only menial labour. India deserves better. Indian labour deserves even better because it has such an intimate knowledge of resources, environment, climate change and other factors of survival.

There could not have been a better argument against the Mint’s assertion of rural illiteracy than this for where the Mint sees grey clouds in rural illiteracy, Prof Gupta’s idea looks at traditional rural knowledge as an opportunity that can be exploited to create Intellectual Property Assets through the NREGs.

But it calls for a mindset change or in other words an “Outlandish Vision”.

In closing let it be said that unless we raise the bar and think the unthinkable and dream the impossible we will neither shed the baggage of failed ideas nor will we spur the creativity and out of the box thinking that is essetial to bring transformational change.

So yes, Mint, we need outlandish visions and impossible dreams, after all a few months back you were second to none in toasting the “audacity of hope”.

Filed under: Chattisgarh Polls 2008, Chhattisgarh Polls 2008, Delhi Polls 2008, Dharmayudh-2009, Gujarat Polls 2007, India Elections 2009, Karnataka Polls 2008, Lok Sabha Polls 2008-2009, Madhya Pradesh Polls 2008, Rajasthan Polls 2008, betrayal of aam admi, jeetega-bharat