Leveraging digital infrastructure - making schemes deliver desired outcomes

Nandan Nilekani praises 2018 budget for leveraging the digital infrastructure. He could have faulted the government on many policies which can be modified now that identifying and targeting beneficiaries is possible, but the same are being continued or will be continued mindlessly.

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/economy/policy/data-oil-to-help-run-the-economy-on-the-digital-highway-nandan-nilekani-non-executive-chairman-infosys/articleshow/62747902.cms?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=ETTWMain

Here are a few schemes that can be improved with the help of sophisticated systems designed to  leverage the digital infrastructure available today.

1. Crop insurance – farmers and fields can be identified by using Aadhaar and GIS (satellite imagery – Geographical Information System); in case of crop failure, right compensation and timely disbursement can be made directly into the farmer’s account. The system will eliminate duplicate and ghost claims which have thwarted the crop insurance schemes leading to large scale farmers’ suicides across India. The cost – benefit of such a “sophisticated” system will be far better than loan waivers (last year Modi Government made loan waivers in excess of Rs.74K Crores; Rs. 34K Crores in UP alone). This system will be far more efficient than any insurance company’s systems and processes –the scheme can be implemented without bringing any insurance company in the loop!
2. Healthcare provision of Rs.5 lac per family – there is no need of bringing insurance companies in the loop. Using Aadhaar, families can be defined with non-duplicate members and direct cash transfer effected to empanelled (healthcare) service providers upon submission of their bills; the bills approval processes may be outsourced to insurance companies claims departments (efficient BPOs will come up and compete for claims processing). Big data analytics can reward efficient healthcare providers by directing more patients to them.
3. Free power to farmers should be stopped. Instead, DBT (Direct Benefits Transfer) based on scientific assessment can be made into farmer’s account. This will lead to avoidance of excessive water usage which is bad for the soil productivity and worse for the ecology (rapidly depleting water table).
4. Every child, using Aadhaar can be granted DBT for school fees – s/he can go to any empanelled school and receive credit for predetermined amount towards the fees. This will encourage competition among schools for higher quality education as the students will exercise choice.
5. Every individual entitled to low cost ration through the PDS should be free to buy the ration from any empanelled shop; the “sophisticated” system will make the payment to the shop to the extent of entitlement of the buyer. Shops will compete to provide better quality and low cost rations to customers as they will exercise choice; corrupt PDS shops will mend their ways very quickly.

One can think of many more examples of leveraging digital infrastructure and smart applications for disintermediation and creation of efficient and merit based ecosystem. In India we have enough talent to design and develop such systems.

Leaner not fatter government

Linguistic differences or "cultural" differences, whether minor or major, have been flogged in India to hive off new states. Latest aspirants are people agitating for formation of "Telengana". Many believe these as genuine arguments for demanding separate states. These arguments are not justifiable for many reasons.

1) Democracy does not mean fatter government nor does local governance mean multiple layers of government. We can have more "Panchayats" or urban local bodies like municipalities, municipal corporations without creating more state government positions. Creating a new state, after netting out adjustments of reorganising some departments, is bound to add lacs (not thousands but hundreds of thousands) additional government apparatchiks (babus and clerks) - a new state does not create a single new panchayat or a single new urban local body. Such a massive administrative burden is not only costly, it is completely counterproductive as these new positions will work to increase the transaction cost of doing things. Everyone knows more government means more friction.

2) Today, using ICT we can completely restructure the government - delayer it - cutting out better than 70% of positions - we can make a much leaner, far more efficient and FAR MORE RESPONSIVE government; a government that is more democratic and capable of listening to and responding to people's wishes.

3) Pandering to so called linguistic and "cultural" aspirations encourages parochialism. It does not help the cause of national integration. It does not encourage labour mobility. It does not encourage optimal usage of natural resources for the country - it encourages selfish usage of natural resources for "sons of the soil". It serves to reinforce the value system that suggests that "sons of the soil" is the right policy - chauvinistic forces like "Shiv Sena" draw strength from people who subscribe to this value system.

COMMENTS:

We need to train our legislators and babus to behave in an even handed manner. To balance the demands of people belonging to different ethnic groups and the larger good. This is also what politics is about. 

We are slaves of the system that British left us. [Even the laws are archaic - why don't we have our "legal luminaries" agitate for changing so many ridiculous laws?] We hardly innovate - apart from suffering from "human inertia"; we as a society are still under-confident of devising more efficient systems.  Rather than re-engineering the government structure and processes, many governments have slavishly copied the existing system while commissioning "work-flow" systems that cost billions of rupees - these systems help in moving "tapal" (i.e. a letter) from the top officer's desk to the lowest officer (or clerk) and then the transaction flows in the reverse direction with noting of each babu or clerk. This serves no purpose except to continue the CYA policy and no analysis of issues or weight of public opinion can be assessed.

Today's news paper (DNA Ahmedabad edition -31st Jan'11) runs a story of municipal corporators joining the Face Book with the expectation of getting ideas for city's development or for engaging in discussions and debates with public. It is possible to design and implement a system for a fraction of the cost that our state govt spent (government of state of Gujarat) which will make the government more responsive and capable of re-engineering its structure. Here is the outline of such a system:
a) Build a business process model of the (panchayat or municipal or even state level - depending upon how ambitious you are) government
b) Build the organisation hierarchy (as it exists) of the government
c) Build a directory of people working in the government
d) Assign people to organisational units (created in step (b))
e) Build a communication system that allows people to log in and write a memo that points to one or more "processes", "organisational unit" or "babus/clerks". Allow the user to attach objects to the memo (like a document, scanned image, photo, audio or video clip or a URL)
f) Publicise the system, train politicians, babus and clerks to use the above system - one hour session twice a week for two weeks is sufficient.


The above is nothing but a knowledge management and intelligent communication system. We can build work-flow linked to the above system. We can generate discussions on "problems" and "issues". We can do referendum. We can address complaints and solve peoples' problems quickly. We can analyse the processes and organisational units and govt staffs' performance and frequency of complaints etc. which can serve to re-architecting the department, organisational unit and even the government.