In Driving Seat!

My credentials as a backseat driver are rather suspect, to say the least. Hence it is not easy for me to put on paper experiences of a motoring kind, but a Zen moment this Tue morning, amidst Cyber City rush hour traffic, did cause me to pause — hence this. (To make a full confession, one must add that it helped that this was also a week when Delhi formalised its intent to — finally — bid adieu to its dreaded Blue Line bus fleet.)

Now for the last few years, my chosen set of wheels has been a truck (actually two, both poor man's SUVs). Naturally, if for no other reason, this has put paid to any ambitions of one-red-light-to-the-next Formula 1 speed thrills that most Delhiites consider their bounden duty to practise. In fact, enough of them (any number exceeding zero is too many, in my book) take the killer-instinct facet of their nature too literally for anyone of sane counsel to refrain from indulging in pyrotechnics behind the wheel — unless desiring publicity as the day's victim in some horror tale of road rage. In such trigger-happy times, one is therefore left with little choice but to give the next horn-prone pup right of way, and enjoy the wafts of dhakchik-dhakchik music they leave in their wake. (Back in college, it was a source of much wonder for me as to how so much noise pollution was managed, till someone clarified that specialised — and naturally expensive — equipment was duly installed to create the jhankaar beat!) A show must be made if it can, after all.

Cut to 2007. With a good chunk of my motoring in Gurgaon, with roads that rivalled Laloo's Bihar for non-existence, one learnt new lessons in forbearance. The strip available to drive was narrow, the traffic unending, and the desire to be first in office all-consuming. With such an evolved mindset in the fellow driver, there was little to do but enjoy oodles of me-time stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic. (This of course rendered the no-handphone law quite redundant — too little a distraction in a sea of red that a million feet on the brake pedal and no street lights produce!) Yet, to go back to the question of road rage, two competing species were found in abundance — the Call Centre cabbie, overworked, underpaid and an embodiment of the what-me-wait credo; and the local agri-culture aficionado, sometimes on a tractor, often on an LCV, for whom a 4 lane road meant 2 opposing lanes on either side of the median. Ouch.

In such a setting of bad-road-worse-traffic, and caught amidst a Darwinian struggle for survival between might-is-right tractor and no-waiting-no-stopping Qualis, it would be rank dishonesty to claim that my patience levels, though infinite, were never tested! Faced with an assault of the senses, it would be a body a much worse conductor of heat and or electricity than most folks of my acquaintance, including me, that would not occasionally boil over. And so, unfortunately, we succumbed. Thankfully we survived too. Yet, my lasting memory of any such skirmish was no sense of victory in getting the better of it, but clenched teeth, muttered breath, foul mood, and worse.

The tale this Tuesday, though, is not of victory. Running a wee bit late to work, and at just the final turn into the office building, my focus was tested by two gentlemen who, though not out of nowhere, decided to forsake the median they were perched on, and jump right in my straight line path. The traffic having just cleared up, my newbie enthusiasm for an automatic was finding expression, when one had to resort to testing that other nouveau feature — the ABS. The steed responded well enough, bringing me up well short of the duo — who were in any case a study in indifference. Perhaps it was appreciation of the advancement in automobile technology (we do love instant responses, don't we!) or satisfaction at my holding my own against the vagaries of time (a split second reaction), but the three of us (yes, that's me included) each broke into a smile. To make matters more profound, and at my gesture bidding them to pass (one has to do a Cyber City cross-country to fully appreciate this) they responded by waving me on instead.

And so, where there might have been righteous indignation or early morning vocal cord exercise (on either side), but surely all-round frustration, we had smiles, thank you! (Looking back, one is thankful too for the pre-brake speed that precluded any of the following traffic getting too close for comfort!) A good start to the day, we say. Or, in effulgent Diwali spirit, hope for more!

The Game of The Name

It's official now. In a widely reported 'confidential' note, Cabinet Secretary KM Chandrashekhar has mandated against indiscriminate use of Indira and Rajiv Gandhi’s names for government initiatives to "prevent proliferation of such association". The directive has not come a moment too soon. By one count, over 450 schemes have been blessed with these prefixes since 1991 alone, a fact that drew frequent critique from Opposition benches. It was also the subject of a petition to the Election Commission last year, suggesting the practice was in violation of the Model Code of Conduct. That the Government has finally chosen "to be sparing and selective" is, therefore, at best a case of better late than never.

Apart from displaying a singular lack of imagination, this publicity overkill was farcically counterproductive. It is one thing to name the most prominent road in every town in the country after the venerable Mahatma, once anointed as Father of the Nation, and another to affix Nehru-Indira-Rajiv (not in that order) to every government program impinging on all walks of life. As the journalist fathering the EC petition pointed out, from child-bearing, rearing, education, employment and marriage — schemes across the citizenry's entire life-cycle were blessed! Of course, the patronage extended to national challenges too: food, drinking water, shelter, electricity, destitution, handicap — you name it and ye had it, pardon the pun. State governments and central ministries seemed to fall over one another to appropriate these prize prefixes, hoping to curry favour with Congress's First Family. It is only natural that some of these schemes exist only in name: National Water Mission, Fellowship Scheme, Gramin LPG Vitrak Yojana, Creche Scheme, Empowerment of Adolescent Girls (all Rajiv); Old Age Pension, Matritva Sahyog Yojana (ditto Indira), to name but a few.

Faced with this assault of the ubiquitous, the aam aadmi, purported mascot of our ruling dispensation, could only respond with characteristic nonchalance. Unfortunately, this resignation meant even actions bordering on the absurd went unprotested. For instance, the powers-that-be were obviously unimpressed with the globally recognised Brand IIM. What else explains the desire to add 'Rajiv Gandhi' to the moniker for the Indian Institute of Management's fledgling Shillong edition? At least the hue and cry over the MoST use of Sonia Gandhi’s visage on NH signboards had the good lady herself ask its able minister to desist. (In any case, in the Congress scheme of things, few would have dared suggest removal, for fear of inviting questions on 'loyalty' that all party men wear on their sleeves.)

Perhaps one could explain schemes of a developmental nature needing such heavy-handed government guidance. However, even spheres like sports went rarely untouched. Tournaments of note carrying Gandhi-Nehru nomenclature ranged from cricket and football, through beachball and kabaddi, down to the Kerala Boat Race! In a nation short on sporting achievement (an odd CWG notwithstanding) this was surely a frittered opportunity to set examples from within the pantheon. Against this backdrop, is the apparent concern over potential "devaluation of the national leaders" anything but eminently laughable official-speak?

Think larger picture, and this name-rename obsession remains a quaint Indian construct. Having once had 'San 1942 August Kranti Marg' as my mailing address (read it aloud if you don't find it funny; it went by Hardinge Road in popular parlance), my acquaintance with this wasteful pastime is old (we moved to MacDonnell Road a.k.a Madhav Shrihari Aney Marg next!). In fact, contemporary India has been the stage for many puerile efforts over the years. Witness agitations to cleanse Bombay, Madras and Calcutta of their colonial past (more Ban-galores are in store for sure!); a facelift for Odisha and Uttarakhand; or name surgery for thousands of roads, lanes, and bylanes, and it is easy to understand why the Great Unwashed rarely care. Almost without exception, these cosmetic changes are shrugged off with the indulgent disdain Indians typically reserve for the political ilk and their shenanigans. At any rate, even if some such interventions have been accepted, they have done little to enhance the respective denizen's self-worth or quality of life.

It is, therefore, incumbent on us to actively protest such name games beyond the issue of wastefully "associating names of national leaders". As a nation with superpower ambitions, taxpayer money and political interest are better served in actual pursuit of schemes like NREGA (pronounced Na-Re-Ga in the heartland) than its rechristening four years post-launch, apparently in tribute to his dedication to Gram Swaraj, after Mahatma Gandhi. Else we will end up with MREGA.

For Bettor or Worse

One more scandal. In Cricket. And with origins in our north-westerly neighbor. Before you yawn and throw the newspaper away, cursing them for rehashing old copy, pause a moment. Media-baiting apart, recycling strategy does not sell newspapers, at least on a sustainable basis — and mine certainly wears its readership high on its sleeve. If this be the truth, there must be more to it, including a reason why Cricket has kept company with controversy with striking regularity of late.

My brush with the purported gentlemanliness of cricket came from pages of the same newspaper, years ago. The mid-80s, newly launched HT Patna edition headlined "It's Not Cricket" for some fiasco on the ground — the kind that’s hardly likely to cause you to blink in our more cynically evolved times. A question to the Pater elicited an etymological explanation in the game's history and tradition-rich lore. Not sure if it significantly altered my on-field behaviour (or lack of notable achievement), but much before Atticus Finch, it was an excellent introduction to that intangible called sportsman spirit.

Those wistful memories, though, are not the only reason to grieve the morass of modern Cricket. Mind you, the actual charges the tainted trio from Pakistan (and Akmal D’Artagnan) stands in the dock for are neither unique nor original. More than a few of India's own, including our Hon'ble MP from Moradabad (though his erstwhile tarnished reputation has lately been alight with some other flame!) have shamed cricket and left even its diehard fans wondering whether on-field exploits are driven by sporting acumen or Mammonic influence. One can go so far as to argue that this skepticism; and an exposure overdose have led to Cricket's (relatively) flagging following — and the gradual rise of other sports.

In any event, no nation has made such inseparable acquaintance with controversy as Pakistan. Go back but a few years and Pak cricket has been newsworthy more for unsavoury dealings and repeated individual misconduct than genuine cricketing reasons. If unconvinced, try and picture best-batsman-of-generation Inzamam (thus spake Imran; move over Lara, Sachin!), Peter Pan cowboy Afridi, sex-n-speed (pun intended) posterchild Shoaib Akhtar, twice-named Yousuf (more pun intended) and check if images of occasional glory are not tainted interminably with talent-wasting notoriety. Indeed Pakistani cricketers come and go (often for multiple voluntary and forced retirements!) but despite several efforts to clean their Augean stables, the muck refuses to wash off.

Perhaps the internecine bickering and dubious (on- and off-field) debacles in Pak cricket could be brushed off as symptomatic of the rot in that country. The world has, after all, been comfortably numbed to bad news from Pakistan. Nor is it easy to mourn the absence of sporting events there, given what transpired when the Lankan Tigers last dared to venture. Yet, history shows that existence of exclusion begets politics of hate. An economically challenged, educationally backward, and socially fragmented state is fertile ground for unleashing the worst within. If no other, then this is good reason to shed a tear for Muhammad Amir. Not from the country's oligopolistic elite (on whose doorstep lies the blame for most of the mess that is Pakistan, and whose fiefdom the nation's cricket has traditionally been), Amir would not have had it easy. His was a long, heroic journey from the Swat Valley, now less famous for panoramic beauty than notorious for the war against Taliban, to match-winning brilliance at Lord's. For a nation short on inspiration, at least of the right variety, his fairytale rise was profoundly apposite. Those no-balls, alas, shattered that illusion.

At another level, we must ponder if too much is invested in the game in the sub-continent: the ridiculous shenanigans before, during, and after IPL ought to have triggered such thoughts anyhow. As a case in point, consider the pointless brouhaha over another no-ball and symphony of sympathy for Sehwag (he too woke up to it overnight!). For sure lament the decline in the spirit of the game with such incidents, but let us equally appreciate the larger context of its commercialization where, indeed, we have played a leading role. And certainly go easy on ill-founded, frenzied waves of jingoism — it is, after all, still a game :)

PS: My vote too, for legalizing betting. Like the war against tobacco teaches us, one plays them best when allowed out of the closet. Viva Transparency!

Damp Squib

Months ago, the draft of a new Direct Taxes Code for India had drawn much public acclaim, including in these pages. This was not without reason. For starters, the existing system was visibly knocking on the doors of obsolescence. Hence, any review intended to simplify its archaic tenets (thereby reducing repeated recourse to judicial interpretation) was hugely welcome. Next, a forward-looking document shorn of its predecessor's dotage could enable the taxman to better engage and deploy New Age tools. This promised a sea change in efficiency and effectiveness of Direct Tax administration (on counts like evasion detection, internal security etc) making it a progressive legislation worthy of a budding economic superpower billing. Last and not least, the very idea of promoting larger debate prior to finalization bespoke intellectual honesty and inclusiveness rare in our policymaking experience. A thumbs-up for this wiki approach was much in line.

However, implicit in all these arguments (in fact providing them overall credence) was the game-changing nature of actual changes proposed to the tax framework. If it were to fall prey to back-room intrigue and lobbying, as the more cynical amongst us foretold, it would be a real pity in the face of path-breaking promise. Even as these fears lurked, the revised discussion paper one heard of a few months back also sounded headed in a compromise-riddled direction. And sadly that is exactly what has finally come home to roost in the proposal formally introduced in Parliament this week.

So how has the cheer of the finest toast for Pranab-da soured into old-wine-new-bottle despair? Selfishly or otherwise, my first disappointment is in the largely superficial personal taxation changes. In fact, perusing the reams of newsprint dedicated to laud the 'extra income' (a princely INR 24,000 at the upper end) through marginally tweaked tax slabs, one wonders when our mainstream media will mature beyond cliché. (To avoid sounding like a stuck record, we steer clear of media-bashing — richly deserved as it may be. There is zero surprise in our Fourth Estate's centrist and arguably pro-Congress slant.) In any event, basic math of inflation on the cast-in-stone slab values itself beats hollow the DTC's pithy positioning as a taxpayer windfall.

Going beyond this, one must rue the lost potential of a truly simplified tax framework. With 6.5% incidence sacrificed at the altar of exemptions and political expediency, the Government had a clear shot at reducing cost and complexity. Removal of potentially distortionary criteria would have improved investment decision-making for aam aadmi and HNI alike. Equally, a move to EET could have boosted long-term savings (PF withdrawal is an example). All that has been belied. Perhaps most importantly though, the survival of the exemption regime has reduced the leeway to lower rates and punt on increased adherence, ultimately limiting the ability to fund GOI's ambitious developmental agenda.

The saving grace has been the refusal to tinker with Capital Gains Tax that would have created an artificial portfolio churn opportunity (en masse profit-booking in March, followed by resumed longs in April, a cost minus any economic value add) that has been avoided. (In lighter vein, the DTC is also the government's first assertion of having achieved its gender equality goals. So the deduction differential allowed for woman taxpayers stands withdrawn, unless merely saved for a subsequent budget to reinstate!)

Elsewhere, the other notable revision in the Bill versus its draft is the compromise on corporate taxation. It is an easy argument that GOI frittered a chance to overhaul capital allocation in our economy. The erstwhile proposal to predicate MAT on gross assets vs book profits represented a fundamental change in the much-misused play of lowering tax liability via investment-led depreciation. From being a tool to manage tax, investments could have emerged into the light, to be evaluated for true CBA. The Big Business lobby however (including relatively genuine voices in its capital-intensive cohort) ensured we are left with Photoshop-type interventions to lower tax rates through elimination of cess, surcharge etc. If these were temporary inclusions in our tax regime, as successive FMs gave us to understand, it hardly needed a large-scale DTC exercise to get rid of them. Equally, there is no surety that some other flavour suiting the incumbent political mood will not 'force' the government of the day to resurrect these ostensibly stopgap devices.

All told, this residual pot of half measures still sets the Taxman back 1% of their INR 5.8 lakh crore annual kitty, without any redeeming expectation of increased adherence. A solitary hope remains — with the suspense of end-Feb Budget jitters gone, we could leverage a long-term Tax structure come 2012. If only the redoubtable Mr Mukherjee had been inspired by the spectacular doomsday caper of the same name, the changes would be a bit more appreciable...

Leave 'Em Kids Alone!

An article, tucked away in the inside pages of the newspaper two Sundays ago, rekindled some of my fondest childhood memories (with a twist). It bespoke an impending rewrite of ten bestsellers from the 'Famous Five' series originally authored by the iconic Enid Blyton. Yet, news of the tweak, planned to better their appeal to contemporary pre-teen palates, left me somewhat disquieted.

To talk joys first, my acquaintance with the four kids and their canine cohort (hence the Five) arose in rather happy circumstances. An infrequent happenstance of academic achievement led my father to gift me one of their novels as reward (likely expecting an encore!) from the neighborhood bookstore. The Five were thick with me in but a few pages. For the uninitiated, three were siblings: the eldest, Julian, an early introduction to 'first among equals'; the spirited and fun-loving Dick; and archetypal kid sister Anne. Accompanied by their feisty cousin George (never Georgina), their wondrous tales of adventure made them much more than adolescent characters on elegant typeface. And Timothy, Tim, or mostly Timmy, mongrel pet of supernatural gifts and even higher loyalty, was the dog's dog. If more was needed, he was added motivation for many a young boy to yearn for Man's Best Friend about the house. (No doubt an almost equal number of mothers held the ruthlessly opposite view, and we know how such debates conclude!)

In any event, Ms Blyton’s words and (albeit in smaller fashion) my animated imagination conspired to lend myriad hues to the sketched images. Convenient neighbourhood landmarks and sights from memory were cheekily appended, Rushdiesque, to suffuse them with vividly pulsating life. The Five were my friends next-door, yet magically faraway, in a subliminal construct that only childhood innocence and suitably stimulatory literature can produce. My love affair with the written word commenced with them (and a flock of the prolific Enid’s finest); kept alive thereafter by assorted characters from Fiction and more.

Imagine then, to have editorial scissors run amok this merry company! Guided by the singularly insipid beacon of market research to light the way, a team is attempting to "sensitively and carefully" reconstruct the original. The primary onus, one is given to understand, is to correct an ostensibly antediluvian slang. Unfortunately, such a stance sits well with spin-doctors, not purveyors of young adult literature — but it is perhaps symbolic of our analysis-paralysis times.

To begin with, the charge that today’s young are shying from Five's idiom, while not incredible, sounds frankly tenuous. For it to stick, one must believe that the set of 21 penned over a like number of years ending 1963 — amazingly alive and kicking for many of us through the mid-80s — has managed to age significantly over the succeeding two decades. Equally, it surprises me enormously that a generation at least a thousand times brighter than ours at an equivalent age, needs editorial crutches to understand Blyton’s oeuvre. One can dismiss mine as a jaundiced eye, but such misconceived research may be better illustration of testing biased hypotheses than allegedly passé language or deficiency of acumen.

Of course, true to spin-doctor form, the author's name has been invoked in justification of the exercise. We are reminded how a "passionate" advocate of child literacy as Blyton would appreciate the need for her immortal characters to mouth appropriate conversation-style dialogue. She was, in any case, famously disinterested in the views of critics over 12!

One wonders where such surgery would end, however. Would one, for instance, make George try less hard to be a boy in case not setting the politically correct example to today's youth? Or perhaps have in Anne not the occasionally tear-prone, timid young lady that she was, for fear of hurting Women's Lib? One ought to cleanse the precocious Ju of his 'girls will be girls; boys, boys' elder brother complex. The inappropriately named Dick must need drastic repositioning, surely. Persisting, we could turn our attention to plots and paraphernalia: highlight dangers of presenting camping out as fun; review gypsies’ portrayal lest they take umbrage; check for animal rights violations in Timmy's caricature; evaluate Uncle Quentin’s absent-mindedness as endangering the scientific community; and more!

Incidentally, there would remain a profusion of Blyton waiting to be tackled. Secret Seven, Barney, Mallory Towers, St Clare's — we could be at this for some time (thus keeping certain unnamed cash registers ringing)! Perhaps the indefatigable Blyton preordained the dangers she was flirting with - she had not one but two sets of Five adolescents solving mysteries around England. Now if only she had not let the other group be led by the redoubtable Fatty...

PS: The last named, Frederick Algernon Trotteville, has already been blessed with a trim nouveau visage last year... Who blames Kareena Kapoor for Size Zero fixation?

Animal Farm

One of India's more watched news channels and its leading English daily recently ran an exposé on the pitiful state of our food distribution system. Given the sheer emotive value of rotting grain in a nation home to the world's largest concentration of the hungry, yet with superpower ambitions, public interest was bound to get fired up. Again, the backdrop of runaway food inflation (that has under its spell more than a trifling percentage of our Great Unwashed) provided the outrage with a tinge of rare immediacy. A call to action, so to speak, seemed immanent in the wave of national indignation.

Yet, it remains a moot question whether this will lead to tangible change. While a grandstanding media may have chanced upon its newsworthiness now, the issue has been hanging fire for ages. My personal recall is of (copious, if not compelling) lamentations on 'distribution losses' two decades ago, in the pursuit of an Economics degree — and the problem was not of recent vintage even then. Indeed, pithy 'mouths fed if gaps plugged' protestations brought academic glory to many (not me!) over the years — clearly, to little avail, as the sordid TV visuals testify. The agricultural supply chain was held hostage to political ambivalence for far too long. Such was the potency of notoriously enmeshed vested interests in every leg that one had to be content with a status-quoist survival play, with cynicism and not challenge being the dominant trope.

A quick dekko illustrates the extent of the rot in the entire ecosystem. Starting at the farm gate, the so-called farmer lobby (read: large agriculturists) cannot think beyond input subsidy retention and diesel price control. Interest in output is limited to pushing periodic MSP increases, with populist governments only too willing to oblige. Their small and marginal brethren are too fractured to wield any real political influence, clear from the typically lackadaisical, stopgap response to farmer suicides. A lack of organised credit confines their choices in any case — a fledgling microfinance revolution is still some time away. (This is not to undermine the fact that better contextual appreciation and economic timing help sustain local moneylender-cum-intermediary strangleholds.) In this extant reality of stagnant productivity, the otherwise laudable NREGA and mostly reprehensible Maoist violence add fresh undercurrents. It remains to be seen how these play out, but (at least for now) they have bred more questions than solutions.

Moving ahead in the chain, the picture alters only slightly. Higher investment continues to be a crying need in the storage and distribution of agricultural produce. Public sector agencies hold the key, but gunny sacks full of foodgrain don’t have a vote, and tackling post-harvest waste remains low on their list of priorities. Other logistics players, only occasionally different from middlemen, have little motivation to drive efficiency, given the infrastructure (and corruption) squeeze on margins, unless to profit from (artificially induced) supply imbalances. Lastly, wholesale through last-mile retail suffers from a lack of scale, subject to high rents, rising operating expenses, and limited organised investment, disadvantaging honest trade.

Fact remains that our nation also drove a Green Revolution. The erstwhile stage was one of stronger political will, with public memory fresh from ignominious PL 480 capitulations. In consequently sympathetic ears, AIR propagated research science prescriptions, and rural India took to HYV seeds, fertilizers, and irrigation in little time. (Incidentally, the most common critique of the Revolution centres around land degradation, showing little appreciation of R&D’s evolutionary nature — science is a process of constant churn, not a one-time infusion. Critics likewise gloss over the lopsided nature of fertilizer subsidies and the like.)

In short, we must lean on science again. Be it input optimisation, cultivation and processing practices, storage, or transit efficiency — each can benefit from the strides the scientific-industrial world has taken over the years. (Robust risk modelling too can help drive deeper microcredit penetration, but that science, alas, draws much derision in a post-Lehman world!) And our IT prowess can be brought to bear on information gaps that mess up cycle time, cost, and pricing across the value chain.

Of course, it would be naive to think one can solve it without social science. And no, this is not a call to the political class to miraculously conjure the will to lead the charge. Shorn of direct electoral gain, political commitment levels seldom multiply manifold — if it has not happened in years, a blog post or television theatrics won’t. (Our beloved Agriculture Minister is anyway planning to focus on his new ICC chair when not engaged in periodic one-upmanship exercises with his professed allies.) This is merely a plea not to wilfully muddy the waters. We cannot afford to continue ludicrous supply-pricing games, with ill-advised and badly executed (if not dubiously intended) market interventions lacking economic sense.

Hypercritical of politics after a fashion? No. We must recognise the math by which 58 million tonnes of stock accumulates, double the actual need. Or how over a million tonnes are lost to storage and transit in just four years while at least as many parts of the country reported starvation deaths. (Yes, we did give folks with BPL cards TV sets in some state elections. Good — they can watch the tragicomedy live now.) So, if our political masters can just about manage to keep their gaming instincts under control, this can get off the ground well enough. And if we are really, truly lucky, perhaps they can think visionarily — and allow full mobility and free markets in the sector. Food Security would then move from policy shibboleth to proud reality.

Numb and Number: UID

Well into the 21st century, the first impression for anyone walking into a government office in India is likely an image of a deluge of paper, embodying its creaky infrastructure. A proliferation of overflowing cupboards, dusty files stacked wall to wall, cobweb-tangled piles kissing the roof, and reigning over every spit-stained corner; it is an ugly and telling sight. The obvious — a grim tale of bureaucratic sloth suggestive of callow indifference, busy adding to the karguzari paper mountain day by day. Equally, a sense of wonder how, in its midst and despite it, the business of governance carries on in our vast, parched lands.

Times are a-changing, though. Via some central initiative but mostly local effort, the Government is waking up to technology and convergence. While paperless is still a far cry, Indian officialdom is taking gradual, diffident steps to improve information management and productivity. This is only natural. Services, and specifically IT, offered a way out in a country beset by inadequate physical infrastructure. In tandem with corruption and lopsided left-leaning policy, these bottlenecks had leashed us to a stubbornly sluggish growth and economic has-been status. New Age technology enabled the emergence of a confident, vibrant India that is generously glimpsed today. Thus, it is only fitting that it provides the vehicle for our governance transformation, light in a pen-pushing, paper-gorging Black Hole where citizenry feared to tread.

Obviously, this goes much beyond paper. Of vital significance are technology's game-changing capabilities in delivery of governance benefits. Indeed, the Government has put no less than 27 mission-critical projects to this task. UID, or Aadhaar as it is now named, is arguably the most important of these: the core of our national e-enablement effort. The idea is simple - a unique identifier to serve as primary key driving the massive information repository that governance for a billion-plus populace entails. Naturally, the superstructure can only be as good as its edifice. And the UID ask is humongous — plan and execute a 12-digit numerical tag for a mindboggling 600 million records, including associated biometric and personal data. All this over the next 4 years, while staying true to the goals of building a robust and efficient system. If successful, this identifier and pathbreaking database of biometric permanent numbers and personal statistics would enable policy analytics and monitoring at an unprecedented scale. Frankly, it is nearly impossible to envision the full governance impact of the result. Yet, broadly speaking, its incisive segmentation and targeting ability would be a dream in terms of faster rollout, easier tracking, and better audit.

Of course, the picture is not all hunky-dory. The enormity of the exercise is perhaps equalled only by its complexity. For instance, potential private use is a double-edged sword. While it does wonders for, say, a financial services company for verification, marketing analytics, and the like, the risk in unfettered online access to personal information can be immense, especially for a terrorism-frontline state. To this extent, UID is much more than a technological challenge or design complexity. Imagine concurrent needs across multilevel security and ease of accessibility in a citizenry with varying levels of computer proficiency (safely assumed low on average). Then there are connectivity concerns (Mukeshbhai's opportunity can be Nilekani's bugbear). Revert to traditional paper census methods or a paper-hub-digital-spoke model and you open up data compromise risks in L1 implementation itself. Power can play spoilsport too — solar panels had to be used to fill gaps during proof-of-concept — and bear in mind that a Karnataka does not an India make. We cannot be blind to the bureaucracy's internal change resistance either — some of the flock do love a good drought, as we unfortunately know only too well! And so on.

Yet, the RTI experience shows that political will at the top goes a long way in overcoming what seems prima facie insurmountable. Similar commitment must be mobilised to tackle the issue of data privacy protection for citizens in post-UID India. Not only is this a checks-and-balances need, it is high time the GOI realised that potential for misuse in a nation with lax, ill-defined laws is not restricted to its Internal Security agencies alone. Take this train of thought forward, and one would love to see proactive public debate around Aadhaar's design and other postulates or concerns — beyond the self-congratulatory, world-hunger-solution posturing that has come by till date. Short of this, it will be another gamechanger that flattered to deceive!