Thoughtscapes

Refer net neutrality to Competition Commission

2015-04-18T23:32:00.000-07:00

Responses to violation of net-neutrality will highlight our values on non-restrictive practices and free markets.

NEUTRALITY

In just 10 days net-neutrality has become a household word. Neutrality is not a technology idea, it is an ethical idea. It emphasises that access is not unfair, unjust, restricted or monopolised. Protecting neutrality shows the values of a society and the character of business. Neutrality is a non-negotiable to deliver justice and fairness. It is a principle for minimum government.

Almost everyone recognises the absurdity of altering the access, speed or tariff based on the website, service, content or media you consume on internet. It is not only unfair but also unjust, restrictive or monopolistic to do so. Almost everyone would recognise this is just as absurd as your cab wanting to charge you differently to go to work or home, for entertainment or shopping. Almost everyone would be angry if their milkman demanded a different pricing for milk used for tea, for making ice-cream or for milkshake. Would you think it is fair if your bank were to charge you a different fee to pay your phone bills, book air-tickets or to pay for your holiday? Would you think it fair and unrestrictive if your newspaper were to give you zero plans for paid-news? Neutrality is not restricted to a domain, it cuts across domains.

The responses to violation of net-neutrality will highlight our values on fair play, justice, non-restrictive practices and free markets. It will highlight the character of our governments and businesses in not only the digital world but also the physical world.

RESPONDING TO VIOLATIONS

Sadly, the reputation of TSPs (telecommunications service providers) after moving from 2G spectrum scam to zero-scam, has taken a huge beating. With it the reputation of the Telecom Regulatory Authority (TRAI) also took a beating.

Citizens responded to the zero-scam with a huge outcry of over 300,000 emails to TRAI and by some reports possibly more than 800,000. The hashtags #netneutrality and #savetheinternet spread virally on social media. Print media wrote many column centimetres and launched campaigns in support of net neutrality. TRPs of news channels shot up as they launched campaigns supporting net neutrality. Clearly, internet users were not pleased with TRAI's failure to protect public interest.

Rahul Khullar, chairman of TRAI, is a 1975 batch Union Territory cadre IAS, who was the private secretary to then Finance Minister Manmohan Singh between 1991 and 1993, before taking up an economist's post in the Manila-based Asian Development Bank. During the NDA regime, he took up various assignments in the Delhi government, and then in May 2004, joined the Union Commerce Ministry as a joint secretary. Khullar is a batch-mate of R. Chandrashekhar, A. Raja's Telecom Secretary during the 2G scam and currently the industry representative as NASSCOM's president. Khullar has reportedly described the citizens' response as a big corporate war between a media house and a telecom operator.

The present telecom minister, Ravi Shankar Prasad (@rsprasad), has already been accused by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) of having a conflict of interest with telecom companies. AAP has produced receipts of the minister allegedly receiving retainer fees from Reliance group company Fine Tech Corp Pvt Ltd, between April 2013 and March 2014, when he was a member of the Joint Parliamentary Committee on Telecom. It is surprising that the minister did not recuse himself from the charge of this ministry given his leanings to telecom that are already public knowledge.

Furthermore, instead of referring the matter to the Competition Commission (@CCI_India), the minister took to maximum government by announcing a six-member committee to submit a report on net neutrality by mid May. The minister neither divulged the composition of the committee, the Terms of Reference for the committee, nor offer any immediate response on the part of the government.

Mark Zuckerberg, whose internet.org was among the earliest to violate net neutrality, defended the violation by arguing that net neutrality prevents access of the internet to the most disadvantaged in society. He has avoided pointing out that internet.org offers 38 websites of his choice, not the internet or websites that the disadvantaged would choose themselves to gain advantage from.

Clearly, the government and TSP responses are inadequate and not even the right thing to do. They leave a lot to be desired.

THE WAY FORWARD

The most common reaction is to ask for new laws. Do we really need yet another legislation to deal with neutrality?

The Consumer Protection Act, 1986 (CPA) restricts telecom companies from engaging in unfair and deceptive practices. It prevents falsely representing the 38 websites as the internet or zero plans as free access. It prevents representation that the internet plans have sponsorship of the World Wide Web Foundation or are as per the standards of internet defined by the WWW Foundation. It prevents misleading representations concerning the need for, or the usefulness of, the internet for the disadvantaged. It prevents materially misleading the public concerning the price at which internet is ordinarily sold. It prevents providing false or misleading facts about apps or web services.

CPA also prohibits restrictive trade practice. It prohibits raising the cost for some websites to reach out to the world causing unreasonable costs to consumers to access these sites. It further prohibits plans that would require a consumer to buy, hire or avail of any services as condition precedent to accusing the entire internet. CPA also prohibits manipulation of prices, or conditions of delivery or supply of the internet in such manner as to impose unjustified costs or restrictions on the consumers of internet.

Consumers can file complaints with the consumer court against violating TSPs and ISPs (internet service providers) as they can against anyone violating neutrality in a different space already.

The Competition (Amendment) Act, 2007 prohibits any agreement to produce, supply, distribute, store, acquire or control services, which cause or are likely to cause adverse effect on competition within India. It also prohibits any agreement to produce, supply, distribute, store, sell or price, or trade with a tie-in arrangement, exclusive supply agreement, exclusive distribution agreement, restrict to whom services are sold or from whom services are bought, resale price maintenance if such agreement is likely to cause adverse effect on competition in India. It also prohibits unfair or discrimi ry price or condition in purchase of the internet and its services. It prohibits TSPs and ISPs from using their dominant position as TSPs and ISPs to enter into, or protect, other markets like e-commerce, e-banking or other internet based services.

Instead of forming committees, the government should refer the matter to the Competition Commission to investigate the TSPs and ISPs, if the Commission has not taken suo motu cognisance already.

Under the Prevention of Corruption Act the exercise of influence to favour private interest constitutes an offence. The government should call for investigation by the CAG and CBI of the gross violation of public interest by those who are required to protect it.

ENSURING MINIMUM GOVERNMENT IN DIGITAL INDIA

When net-neutrality was threatened in the United States, President Barack Obama himself took a stand and did all he could to ensure net-neutrality was not compromised.

Violation of net-neutrality is looting India of its entrepreneurship, innovation and digital future. It is excluding India from the internet.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi (@narendramodi and @pmoindia) needs to assert the character of his government by stepping in and referring the matter to the Competition Commission, CAG and CBI. He needs to assert that his government stands for fairness and justice.

The then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's failing was his silence on matters where his voice mattered the most. If UPA has become synonymous with scams it was because of Dr Singh's silence as the nation watched the loot of the country by private interests.

PM Modi has to show that the NDA is different and not only speaks but acts in public interest. He should immediately reconstitute the TRAI and the Ministry of Telecom and IT to incorporate those who are not burdened with private interests, better still with those who represent and promote public interests. The PM needs to assert that Digital India cannot be a collection of initiatives driving private interests. Digital India has to ensure minimum government and serve the public good. He has risen to many challenges, will he use this to assert fairness and justice?

First published at: http://www.sunday-guardian.com/investigation/refer-net-neutrality-to-competition-commission

Net Neutrality: Will Modi act to save the internet in India?

2015-04-09T23:21:00.000-07:00

The heart of Net Neutrality debate is simple. It is not the pipe, but that which moves through the pipe, that creates value. Will the 'digitally empowered' Modi government apply its mind to the issue?

In a country where the Prime Minister is using every social media platform to reach out to his people and crying out aloud about his intention to empower every Indian through digital initiatives, his government is working very hard to do everything to kill digital India. Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad’s Ministry of Telecom and the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has put aside public interest and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s call for “minimum government” in how people access the internet on the issue of “Net Neutrality”.

The internet is a network of networks linking billions of devices, including all your computers and mobile phones to those of others across the world. However, the TRAI in an amazingly creative initiative, in a consultation paper on Regulatory Framework for Over-the-top (OTT) services released on 27 March 2014, is redefining the internet as over-the-top (OTT) communications, OTT media, e-commerce, internet cloud services, social media and web content. The TRAI, left to itself, plans to slice up these into individual parcels and license and regulate the internet. This means TRAI and the telecom industry want to favour one kind of content or media over the other on the internet.

The internet industry has grown because it has remained agnostic to the media and content consumed by its customers across the network. This unique property of the internet was first described by Prof Tim Wu as net-neutrality. Net-neutrality enabled a symbiotic relationship between those who produced content and media with those who merely transmitted it. Had the internet chosen to be parasitic to content and media creators by censoring, throttling or restricting the media or content transmitted through it, it would not have grown to the extent it has today.

To consider content and media creators as customers is confusing the Business Model. Content and media creators cannot be customers of internet service providers (ISPs) and telecommunications service providers (TSPs). Rather, they ought to be partners who help them grow the internet.

The Business Models

Telecommunications service providers or TSPs and internet service providers- ISPs offer access to internet to those who pay them subscriptions. At different costs, subscribers can gain faster access to any media or content on the internet. Suscription plans provide you choice to access “unlimited” content or media or restricted by a volume per month. However, your choice of speed already restricts the maximum volume you may consume per day.

For those of us who have low budgets, there is a plan of slower speeds and restricted volume. For those who needed the speed or larger volumes, there are pricier plans. For many of us, internet has become a way of life, and we have different plans from different service providers to match the needs to access internet across our multiple devices from laptops to mobile phones. For many, who barely use internet, affordable access at cybercafes or on mobile phones is all that is needed.

The internet access has penetrated across India slowly but steadily as it brought value to those of us who consume it. The value has come from the content and media that various devices connected to networks on the internet have to offer. This value has been the nectar that attracted us to the internet. It is not the pipe but that which moves through the pipe that creates value. Just as access to anyone you wish to speak to being at the other end of the phone and not the phone line that creates value.

Just as your use of Gmail brings business to Google, or your posting videos brings revenues to YouTube or your profiles on social media sites earns them revenues, the content and media on internet created by developers of various websites creates revenues for the TSPs and ISPs. Those who created this value have therefore, caused the internet to grow. If the number of websites on the internet is caused to shrink to a few dozen or even a few thousand, the internet will lose almost all of its value.

The business model of ISPs and TSPs offers the value of internet to us by creating and delivering net-neutral access to the internet. To ensure revenues beyond the costs, they can either offer internet access to the few, who pay huge subscription costs or offer the value proposition to the many, who pay small or nominal costs. Those creative and entrepreneurial ISPs and TSPs, who want to build the internet and increase the market pie, might even consider offering free hosting of content or media much the same way as Gmail offers free email. Those subscribing to access the internet would more than adequately compensate their costs for this.

What happens when ISP’s and TSP’s fail to recognise their customer, what value they offer them, or what is their business model itself? What happens when the ISPs and TSPs fail to recognise the content and media creators as their partners to grow the internet? Such ISPs and TSPs, who either are misadvised or have become greedy, will kill the goose that lays golden eggs, by providing access to a few websites rather than to the internet as a whole. The offering of internet.org or Airtel Zero in India is exactly like this. They promise free access to sites of their choosing under the guise of digital inclusion.

What they are doing is killing the internet, site by site and ensuring the digital exclusion of India from the internet. They are ensuring that the websites they exclude will no longer be able to reach out to their audiences in India or in fact anywhere across the world. They are ensuring that the goose that laid golden eggs for them as well as the rest of the economy is destroyed in one stroke.

The Law and Public Interest

It is strange that Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, a distinguished lawyer himself, has missed to see the ISP’s and TSPs violating the provisions of the Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices Act, 1969 (MRTP) and the Consumer Protection Act, 1986 (CPA).

Restrictive trade practice under Section 2(1)(nn) of the MRTP means any trade practice, which requires a consumer to buy, hire or avail of any services as a condition precedent for buying, hiring or availing of other goods or services. Any requirement to make any payment to any TSP, ISP or any other intermediary in order to allow your website to become accessible to all on the internet on equal terms constitutes restrictive trade practice. Any requirement to make any payment to any TSP, ISP or any other intermediary in order to view any website of your choice on equal terms is also restrictive trade practice.

Unfair trade practice as defined in 36A of the MRTP and 2(r) of THE CPA. Unfair trade practices include:

★ false representations that the services are of a particular standard, quality or grade;

★ representations that services have performance, characteristics, uses or benefits which such services do not have;

★ representations that the seller or the supplier has a sponsorship or approval or affiliation which such seller or supplier does not have;

★ false or misleading representations concerning the need for, or the usefulness of, any goods or services;

★ materially misleading the public concerning the price at which services, have been or are, ordinarily sold or provided, permitting the sale or supply of goods intended to be used while knowing or having reason to believe that the goods do not comply with the standards prescribed by competent authority relating to performance, composition, contents, design, constructions, finishing or packaging as are necessary to prevent or reduce the risk of injury to the person using the goods;

★ refusing to sell the goods or to make them available for sale or to provide any service, if such refusal is intended to raise, the cost of those or other similar goods or services.

Making representations of “free” or “zero” internet plans when providing a boutique of websites are unfair trade practice. So is providing a few websites while creating misleading representations of providing internet access or about the utility of the free plans is also unfair trade practice. Display of “internet” in the domain name (internet.org, for example) when the organisation neither owns nor administers the internet is unfair trade practice. Offering websites knowing they are not the internet or slicing up the internet based on content or media, knowing that such does not comply with the standards placed by the World Wide Web (WWW) Foundation or the founder of the WWW, Tim Berners Lee, is also unfair trade practice. Refusing to sell the full internet knowing well that such refusal will raise the cost of internet packages is unfair trade practice.

Section 2(1)(g) of the CPA provides that, “deficiency” means any fault, imperfection, shortcoming or inadequacy in the quality, nature and manner of performance, which is required to be maintained by or under any law for the time being in force or has been under taken to be performed by a person in pursuance of a contract or otherwise in relation to any service.

Promising the internet and delivering a few sites is deficiency. Claiming net-neutrality and providing differential pricing, speed or access to different websites is deficiency.

Telecom service providers in India and now the TRAI with them are in violation of fair trade practices.

Public interest would be protected, as per the Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices Act, 1969, if the ability of the public as purchasers, consumers or users of the internet is protected. Public interest would be protected when no unfair terms of supply or schemes that prevent or restrict competition are allowed. Public interest is protected when it is impossible for private interests, either alone or in combination with any other such persons, to control any part of the market for internet based goods or services.

What should be done?

The government should be slapping the MRTP and Consumers Act on both TRAI and those TSPs and ISPs indulging in monopolistic or unfair trade practices. It should be reconstituting the TRAI and the Ministry of Telecom to incorporate those who are not burdened with private interests, better still with those who promote public interests. It should initiate an audit by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) and an inquiry by Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) into the serious compromise of public interests by the regulator who should have upheld the public interest.

As consumers of the internet, you should file a consumer complaint with the District Consumer Forums in your district. State in your complaint what service you consume from your service provider. Use the description above to identify and specify the unfair trade practice, a restrictive trade practice and the deficiency in service provided by your TSP/ISP. If you would like to ensure fair practice of being able to access any website on the internet on equal terms or to be able to make your website be visible to anyone in the world without any restriction, it is time for you to stand up to the unfair trade practices of the TSPs and ISPs.

When net-neutrality was threatened in the US, President Obama himself took a stand and did all he could to ensure net-neutrality was not compromised.

You can reach Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on twitter @rsprasad and by email at ravis@sansad.nic.in. If you are moved to report to the Prime Minister, his twitter handle is @narendramodi and @pmoindia. Help the Prime Minister to protect his dream of digital India.

First published: http://www.moneylife.in/article/net-neutrality-will-modi-act-to-save-the-internet-in-india/41198.html

Maximum government, death of digital if TRAI has its way

2015-04-04T23:30:00.000-07:00

Just as the internet spread across the world at its own developmental rate, it is important to allow it to spread across India at its own developmental rate.

The internet is a network of networks linking billions of devices, including all your computers and mobile phones to those of others across the world. Tim Berners Lee, the man who invented the worldwide web believes that the value of the internet is in the ability of anyone to communicate with anyone using any media and any content.

To the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), the internet is over-the-top (OTT) communications, OTT media, e-commerce, internet cloud services, social media and web content. To the TRAI, you can slice up these into individual parcels and licence and regulate them, while still having an alive, vibrant and valuable internet. According to TRAI, doing so would be in the public interest, and an example of "minimum government". If they were to have their way they will slice up the internet by content and look at ways they can licence and regulate it. In a consultation paper on Regulatory Framework for Over-the-top (OTT) services released on 27 March 2014, the TRAI, a body responsible to uphold public interest, argues that overwhelming content is burdening the private telecom service providers (TSP), who provide you access to the internet on your mobile phone. TRAI also argues that OTT applications and services are not subject to the same licensing that the TSPs are subject to.

PROTECTING PRIVATE INTERESTS

This strange love for the TSPs makes one wonder who the TRAI serves. No TSP provides access to the internet out of charity. If the recent spectrum auctions are any indication, TSPs continue to see huge value in remaining in the business as TSPs. No TSP provides internet access without having subscribers pay for plans that are carefully tailored to make money for the TSP. In fact, if the revenue graphs are any indication, TSP revenues through the internet have been rapidly growing over the last several quarters.

Comparing OTT applications and services with TSP licensing is much the same as saying teachers and colleges should have the same business mode. Or theatres and actors or even movie producers should have the same business model and licensing.

The internet has become the nervous system of the global economy. If you censor, throttle or restrict signals passing through your body, it will malfunction, be diseased and die. If you censor, throttle or restrict signals passing through the internet, it will cause malfunction, disease and death of the global economy.

The burdens and costs of each business model are different as are the rewards. To impose the same licensing and regulatory requirements and costs across different business models is absurd, if not foolish. You do not feed humans with fertilizer and spray pesticides on them. You do not license plants to photosynthesise and grow, or regulate their plantations. You cannot impose the same restrictions on actors or musicians that you do on theatres.

The growth of each of these businesses and the industries they are a part of has been driven by their business models. It has also been enhanced or restricted by the ability or failure to forge symbiotic relationships between different business models that do not impose censorship, throttle or restrict each other.

VALUE OF INTERNET

The internet industry has grown precisely because it has remained agnostic to the media and content transported across the network. This unique property of the internet was first described by Prof Tim Wu as "net neutrality". This enabled a symbiotic relationship between those who produced content and media with those who merely transmitted it. Had the internet chosen to censor, throttle or restrict the media or content transmitted through it, it would not have grown to the reach it has today. Had the content and media providers restricted their content or media transmissions through only a chosen few TSPs or ISPs, the internet would not have grown to what it is today. It would not have impacted the global economy in the phenomenal ways it has.

Spreading the benefits of the internet to rural India is often used to justify providing a collection of websites "free". Proponents of this approach forget that they are not providing the internet. They are providing a few websites of their choosing and interests. If you recognise that the internet is a nervous system, this is a defective nervous system, one that is censored, throttled and restricted, and therefore will cause malfunction, disease and death of the economy it claims to enable.

Just as the internet spread across the world at its own developmental rate, it is important to allow it to spread across the country at its own developmental rate. The infrastructure is of no use with the value stripped away. It is important to provide and protect the value, not the infrastructure without the value. It is important for the TRAI and the government to ensure public interest, not private interests.

PUBLIC INTEREST, MINIMUM GOVERNMENT BURIED?

Instead of asking what public interest needs to be protected and how, the TRAI consultation paper asks how to regulate that which should be left alone.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi promised minimum government and digital access to all. The TRAI paper foretells a picture of maximum government and the death of the digital. It fails in protecting public interest as also the interests of the telecom industry while attempting to protect the interests of the TSPs by slicing the internet into parts and attempting to regulate and license it. Perhaps Prime Minister Modi will himself step in to ensure the vision he promised to the country is not destroyed by TRAI.

The consultation paper asks for your comments to be emailed to TRAI by 24 April and counter comments by 8 May to advqos@trai.gov.in. I wonder why they never ask what public interest needs to be protected. Do ask them that, if you care about the internet as your nervous system in a global economy.

First published at: http://www.sunday-guardian.com/investigation/maximum-government-death-of-digital-if-trai-has-its-way

Internet.org will finish internet the way we know it, hurt India’s growth potential

2015-03-14T23:28:00.000-07:00

You will have to pay to access Google, Gmail, Yahoo; MSN; banks like SBI, HDFC or ICICI; Flipkart and Amazon; Skype and Twitter, or any apps requiring internet access.

Free Internet

Facebook and Reliance Communications Ltd have tied up to bring internet.org to India in an initiative described by Mark Zuckerberg as one to "bring connectivity for everyone". What this means on-ground is that Reliance customers in Mumbai, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Chennai, Tamil Nadu and Kerala will have "free access" to 38 websites with zero data charge across both the 2G and 3G platforms. Any access to any other website will incur charges.

Among the 38 websites and services users will access are Facebook and Facebook Messenger, search (via Bing) or Sports (ESPN Cricinfo), Olx, Cleartrip, BBC, Reuters, ESPN, India Today, Hungama, news aggregator NewsHunt, Wikipedia and local government relations site AP Speaks. Other general services include travel, weather, sports and parenting information.

This means you will have to pay to access your favourite search engines like Google; email accounts such as Gmail, Yahoo or MSN; banks like SBI, HDFC or ICICI; insurance companies, e-commerce sites like Flipkart and Amazon, social networking tools like Skype and Twitter, or any apps requiring internet access.

This is like a phone company telling you that they will give you a free phone, but you can only talk to 38 phone numbers who have partnered with them to draw you to their services. It is like going to a library and being told you can access books for free as long as they are on the list of the pre approved 38 that are made available. Such a service is not net neutral or does not treat all content on the network identically.

The cost of free

Nothing in life comes free, and nor does internet on internet.org. In fact the cost of internet.org is too high for India to bear. It destroys the ability for you to allow your website to be accessible to the whole world, ensures a start-up can never have a level playing field, and can even disable a small business from reaching to their customers. This will mean that, for example, a freelance journalist will face a barrier in reaching out to a wider audience via her blog, or stop an e-commerce website from reaching its market.

The many small businesses that provide service to a few are called the long tail of business. The long tail can reach out to their customers through a net-neutral internet. Research over the last 15 years has shown that the long tail of business generates at least as much revenue as the few large companies that provide services demanded by the many. This means that the long tail of business doubles the economy. This long tail is exactly what has the potential to double India's GDP.

Unless internet.org is checked from ending net-neutrality, it will not be long before other ISPs follow internet.org in ending net neutrality by making exclusive deals with websites for access, speed, pricing or bonus features. In the absence of a net neutral internet, the long tail of business cannot reach out to their customers. Without the long tail of business earning revenues the economy can no longer double.

Clearly internet.org will kill what Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has claimed is India's potential of more than 9% growth rate.

The business models of ISPs

Traditionally, consumers of the internet are customers of ISPs. The ISP serves the need of their customers to access any website on the internet. It is this value proposition that has caused the internet to grow rapidly. The internet did not grow because someone gave it for free. It grew because it provided value to the customer.

No ISP is a charitable institution. Not even internet.org. Without revenues that exceed the costs they would not be in business. So how can internet.org be in business? It is evident that they no longer look at the consumer of internet as their customer. Instead they look at the business wanting to reach out to customers as being their customers. They are not here to give the poor or the excluded internet access. They are not here to bring connectivity to everyone. They are here to provide their customers with customers. They are here to bring customers to the few who can offset the costs of reaching to the customers through them.

In this case, internet.org customers may well join for "free" access. As customers access the "free" 38 sites, Facebook will shrink its own user posts as a large chunk of them are drawn from other websites on the internet, which will no longer be accessible. internet.org's customers will no longer reach the network of networks, but the network of internet.org. As internet.org grows, the internet will shrink. So while internet.com will attract customers in the short run, they will shrink the industry in the medium term. Their own private interests will be better protected if they protect access to all websites on equal terms.

It is clear that internet.org is misguided or is working under the assumption that they do not care if the size of the internet shrinks as long as their share in the pie is bigger than when the internet is larger.

Business models using internet channels

If you are a financial institution who hoped to use the internet as a channel to deliver financial services you should be seriously worried. How many ISPs are you going to pay to ensure your websites are available to your customers?

If you are an e-commerce company providing services or goods you should be prepared to shrink your business or even fold up. It is surely not possible to pay all those ISPs to keep your business afloat as some of them may even begin claiming a percentage of your transaction.

If you are an entertainment, media or education organisation, you will no longer be on a level-playing field, as not only will you have to pay to reach your audience but your audience will face hurdles of cost, speed or preference in reaching you.

Start-ups can no longer hope to have a flat world as they need to work across countries with their own ISPs to access customers across the world.

Governments cannot assume that their websites are equally available across the country or perhaps even display identically.

Unless internet.org and other similar projects are checked, the end of internet as we know it may have begun.

Options for the government

Selective free access to certain websites is against the principles of net-neutrality. This is a suicidal step for the Indian economy, India's IT and telecom businesses, the government's ambitions of Make in India and disenfranchises and excludes every Indian in the information era.

FB founder Mark Zuckerberg met Prime Minister Narendra Modi in October 2014 and is said to have discussed internet.org as a means to "bring connectivity for everyone". What he meant was bringing 38 websites to everyone. internet.org also constitutes monopolistic and restrictive trade practice under the Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices Act, 1969 and unfair trade practice by providing misleading advertisement and making false representations. Under this Act the government cannot only prohibit the concerned undertaking(s) from continuing to indulge in a monopolistic trade practice but also regulate the service to ensure net neutrality.

The government must rise to the occasion to protect public interest by ensuring that in order to continue its activities internet.org is made to offer equal access to all websites on identical terms.

38 websites Mark Zuckerberg believes "bring connectivity for everyone"

1. Aaj Tak: Read news in Hindi

2. AccuWeather: Get updated weather information

3. amarujala.com: Read news in Hindi

4. AP Speaks: Engage with local government

5. Babajob: Search for jobs

6. BabyCenter & MAMA: Learn about pregnancy and childcare

7. BBC News: Read news from around the world

8. Bing Search: Find information

9. Cleartrip: Check train and flight schedules & buy tickets

10. Daily Bhaskar: Read local news

11. Dictionary.com: Search for meanings of words

12. ESPN Cricinfo: Get cricket updates

13. Facebook: Communicate with friends and family

14. Facts for Life: Find health and hygiene information

15. Girl Effect: Read articles and tips for girls

16. HungamaPlay: Listen to music

17. IBNLive: Read news

18. iLearn: Learn from Women Entrepreneurs

19. India Today: Read local news

20. Internet Basics: Learn about the basics of the Internet

21. Jagran: Read local news

22. Jagran Josh: Get education and career information

23. Maalai Malar: Read news in Tamil

24. Maharashtra Times: Read news in Marathi

25. Malaria No More: Learn about malaria

26. manoramanews.com: Read local news

27. Messenger: Send messages to friends and family

28. NDTV: Read news

29. Newshunt: Read news in English

30. OLX: Buy and sell products and services

31. Reliance Astrology: Read your horoscope

32. Reuters Market Lite: Get farming and crop information

33. Socialblood: Register to donate blood

34. Times of India: Read news

35. TimesJobs: Search for jobs

36. Translator: Translate words and phrases

37. Wikipedia: Find information

38. wikiHow: Find information

First published at: http://www.sunday-guardian.com/investigation/internetorg-will-finish-internet-the-way-we-know-it-hurt-indias-growth-potential

Digital roadmap to build liveable cities

2015-02-04T23:19:00.000-08:00

For good governance, the first step is to reform our information system, not our infrastructure. Here is a roadmap to improve information in our urban centers to make them liveable and to ensure we move from bad governance to good governance

There are five Nagar Panchayats, seven Cantonment Boards, 23 Municipal Corporations, 221 Municipal Councils, and 278 Gram Panchayats that govern 537 urban centers in Maharashtra. Most of these were created post independence. Not one of them is livable.

Problems relating to food, water, energy, mobility, opportunity and even shelter plague our urban centers. They lack self-sufficiency of resources and need to mobilize more and more resources from further and further away. They generate waste at an exponential level, which they barely treat, reuse or recycle. Our civic services frequently break down, plaguing residents every day. Increasing hours are spent in commutes, as urban centers get denser and chaotic.

Less than 30% of our city plans are implemented. Worse, the urban areas continue to expand like unstoppable cancer. The life in our urban centers lacks dignity; in fact, it erodes the dignity of all who seek to make a life in it.

Our urban centers are increasingly plagued by global problems too. They are increasingly targets of terrorism. Global pandemics bring our urban centers to a halt. The global energy crisis has been paralyzing economic activity in our urban centers. Global environmental challenges are destroying the buffers of fresh air, water, food in our urban centres.

Our urban administrators are increasing the costs of living in urban centers at compounding rates. They create infrastructure projects that are not in the city plans, not within the budget or even completely counter-productive to making the city livable. They are also schizophrenic or have different responses at different times; they have no integral principles; no clarity of purpose, no commitment to public interest. They are also non-collaborative, attention deficient, indifferent, exclusive. They have completely eroded the trust citizens placed in their intentions, competence, incorruptibility and ability to protect public interest.

Unfortunately, we are continuing to make our urban centers increasingly unlivable, and building even more based on the same broken model. Our urban governance creates silos of information making them fragmented with multiple independent interaction points; no unity of direction; no shared practices. It is therefore little wonder that the result is bad governance.

How can we begin to reform this model?

Information is the basis for life, sustainability, resilience, anti-fragility and livability itself. For good governance, the first step is to reform our information system, not our infrastructure. Here is a roadmap to drive information in our urban centers to make them livable and to ensure we move from bad governance to good governance.

Budget

Currently multiple agencies and departments create and spend money on similar projects at the same locations. Besides, there is a disproportionate distribution of money across different administrative or electoral wards. A simple requirement to geotag each budget item before funds can be allocated or released will help bring in transparency in local government spending. The budget should then be made public on a ward wise and urban-center wise google map at a website, such as localbody.gov.in/budget. Government assets, particularly offices, land, equipment, and vehicles owned by various government agencies should also be geotagged so that they are public at localbody.gov.in/assets, simplifying the process of auditing them.

Land Use

One of the biggest failures in cities is the inability to implement their respective Development Plans (DP), the cities blueprints to ensure proper land use, create livable cities, and safeguard public spaces (open grounds, gardens, hills, streams, lakes, bus-stands, schools, hospitals etc.). To ensure that the DP’s are implemented, the local bodies need to display the survey maps with ward boundaries, land-use desired as per the DP, ownership details, and any legal issues on a single website, localbody.gov.in/survey to overlay on Google maps and Google Earth. The maps should additionally display the project approval and completion details for each project on the corresponding survey number or road on the Public Google Map. A link to a Floor Space Index (FSI or how much you can build on a plot of land) and Transfer of Development Rights (TDR or where your additional building rights have been transformed from) database should highlight congestion and decongestion effected by the FSI/TDR. The site should provide a means to receive anonymous feedback on violations of DP for each survey number.

Environment Protection

Most of our streams and rivers are being converted to gutters in land grabs and sewage disposal scams. Hills, hill slopes and trees are being razed to ease congestion in the name of development. All stream, river, lake, mountain and forest area boundaries should be geotagged with physical markers at their boundaries to ensure a public alert on any alteration. Trees must be tagged with a RFID (Radio frequency ID, or a small chip that stores information that can be read from a distance by a RFID reader and can be used to do a periodic tree census) along with its geolocation to protect the trees and ensure the country’s valuable assets are not stolen or destroyed.

All these assets should be displayed on a Google Map at localbody.gov.in/assets. The maps should also display in color-coding survey numbers, roads and waterbodies with inadequate trees as per the Maharashtra (Urban Areas) Protection and Preservation of Trees Act, 1975. The maps should show an alert for trees that are under consideration for transplanting or removal, with reasons, requestors details and a means to raise objections and also provide a means for citizens to add untagged assets or to alert anonymously about exploited, encroached or missing assets.

Mobility

Public transport routes are frequently poorly laid out. The routes are often barely known to citizens. It is difficult or impossible to have busses ply to and from locations of demand. Not only should public transport route and timetable be available on google maps and through sms query, but a website localbody.gov.in/publictransport should allow route and time scheduling for bulk users to schools, work-place, and markets.

RFID based prepaid bus passes for the whole year, month or day that help build real-time origin-destination demand data and make traveling by busses accessible. The website should allow citizens to log failure, breakdown or inadequate public transportation or inadequate pavements and display them on Google map at localbody.gov.in/failures in order to facilitate amelioration of the situation.

All public vehicles – buses, trucks, heavy machines, cabs, autos, should have a GPRS to track and show their movements on localbody.gov.in/security.

Water distribution

Inequitable and irregular water supply plagues the cities. To ensure that the water supply is equitable and regular, IP based motorized valves for water distribution and monitoring of water released in various parts of the city are necessary. Ward-wise water availability and demand should be on maps at localbody.gov.in/water. Citizens should be able to log failure, breakdown or inadequate water supply and display on google maps at localbody.gov.in/failures.

Waste Management

There is no feedback about the amount of waste generated or collected in each ward. A ward-wise map of the wet and dry waste generated and collected should be displayed at localbody.gov.in/waste.

There is no mechanism currently to ensure waste is collected before it overflows. Local bodies should be required to enable IP based bins with sensors that alert the collection system when they are ¾ full. Citizens should be able to log failure, breakdown or inadequate waste collection and display on Google map at localbody.gov.in/failures.

Civic works

Each ongoing project should be displayed on localbody.gov.in/projects with budget code, in addition to its purpose, details, status and citizen comments. Each department should be made to update the projects status every week so that there is a common shared map of the projects on in the city.

Resident Registry and Passbook

It is common knowledge that the UID is merely a random number assigned to unverified and unaudited data submitted by third parties paid per record. Since the UID is not a proof of identity, address or even a proof of existence, the use of such unauditable, unverifiable and unauthentic-able number to authenticate identity, to serve as the basis for governance, to be used to deliver benefits, rights and entitlements, to be used to open bank accounts and transfer money, to create citizen registers or electoral rolls is seriously compromising governance, national security and the rule of law.

The government can enable a Shared ID at localbody.gov.in/sharedId, as was designed in Pune to allow citizens to create, own and share their own ID with complete control on who can see or use the ID and logs of access by third parties to their information. They can also access information on demography, energy use, water use, land use, mobility and other details in their neighbourhood after logging in to their account on localbody.gov.in/sharedId. Citizens can also track the taxes paid, services, benefits available and availed from the local body. They can also access to their certificates and documents issued by the local body.

The opportunity

Will the Chief Minister of Maharashtra seize the opportunity to make Maharashtra’s urban centres livable, usher in good governance and improve the lot for all of us?

First Published: http://www.moneylife.in/article/digital-roadmap-to-build-liveable-cities/40395.html

The mystery of a sudden rise in LPG connections

2015-01-27T23:18:00.000-08:00

Almost 5.2 crore connections were added after Aadhaar was linked to LPG purchase for getting Direct Benefits Transfer. The newly added accounts means more than a third, or Rs15,725 crore, of subsidy at 12 cylinders per consumer per year

For the last several years, domestic consumers of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) have been put on gas with repeated changes in the delivery process. The latest is named PAHAL (for Pratyaksh Hastantarit Laabh) and was earlier also known as direct benefit transfer (DBT). Most LPG consumers have lost sleep over the heat each change has generated.

Direct Benefit Transfer or DBT is an initiative to replace subsidised goods or services with electronic transfers of subsidy amounts to beneficiary bank accounts. Under the DBT-for-LPG subsidies (DBTL), households are required to place an order of LPG cylinder from their LPG distributor, pay the full (unsubsidized) market price for the cylinder in cash on delivery, and then receive a payment equivalent to the current subsidy amount via electronic transfer to a bank account registered with their gas distributor.

Why should the existing process be changed in favour of the DBT?

According to the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, the scheme was created in order to remove incentive for diversion of domestic cylinders for commercial use, protect entitlement and ensure subsidy to the consumer, improve the availability/delivery of LPG cylinders for genuine users and to weed out fake/duplicate connections.

The business process

1 Consumer Books the Cylinder

Gas Refill booking XXXXXX for Con XXXXXX Booking Cleared till 01 Dec.14 at ABC AGENCIES. Ask deliveryman to weigh cylinder before delivery

2 Consumer intimated of Cash Memo

Gas Booking No XXXXXX subsidized Cash Memo XXXXXX; Dt 06.12.14 Rs.450,Refill will be delivered shortly. Ask deliveryman to weigh cylinder before delivery.

3 Consumer intimated of Delivery

Gas refill delivered on 06.12.14 vide Cash Memo no.XXXXXX.If not received, provide your feedback on XXXXXXXXXX. Use of smaller Burner Saves Gas.

SMS messages received by domestic customers at each step of the current business process
(Dates used for representation only)

Pre-DBT, the domestic consumers were required to book their refills with oil marketing companies (OMCs). The OMC would generate a Cash Memo and the Distributor would then deliver the cylinder. The OMC would ask the customer to report if the cylinder was not delivered.

If the customer was within the limit of 12 subsidised cylinders a year, the cash memo was at a subsidised rate; else it was at the market rate.

If the consumers registered with the distributors were all genuine, this scheme provided little opportunity to distributors to divert cylinders without collusion from consumers who did not consume their quota of 12 subsidised cylinders. However, consumers who were not genuine could enjoy the benefit of subsidised cylinders and any supply of cylinders to them was in effect a diversion of subsidised cylinders to those who did not qualify for them.

The re-engineered process post DBT

Post DBT the domestic consumers are still required to book their refills with the OMCs. The OMCs are still required to generate a cash memo and the distributor is still required to subsequently deliver the cylinder. The OMC is still required to ask the customer to report if the cylinder was not delivered.

The cash memo, however, is now to be at the market price. The OMC is now required, each day, to generate a file based on the refill orders delivered and send it to a “Sponsor Bank” (currently State Bank of India-SBI) for transfer of subsidy amounts to eligible consumers. Consumers, who are Cash Transfer Compliant customers, or those who have a bank account linked to their LPG consumer number, will now receive subsidy into the bank account, they linked with their consumer number.

Does the reengineered process post DBT meet the objectives the government set to fulfil?

Diversion of domestic cylinders for commercial use

This change in the process of providing the consumer subsidy does not alter the ability to prevent diversion. If distributors were diverting cylinders in collusion with consumers who did not consume their quota, they can continue to do so. If non-genuine customers were claiming subsidised cylinders, nothing in the reengineered process has altered the ability to recognise genuine consumers from non-genuine. The non-genuine customers can, therefore still continue to consume subsidised domestic cylinders, thus diverting them from genuine consumers.

The reengineered process, thus, does not prevent the diversion of domestic cylinders for commercial use as desired by the scheme.

Protect entitlement and ensure subsidy to the consumer

Almost 96% of those surveyed in a pilot project by the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) found the DBT required too much paperwork, requests from multiple authorities for a range of documents including electricity bills, ration cards, bank passbooks and identification cards. This represents a non-trivial cost to access the reengineered process.

It is therefore evident that the reengineered process actually makes it more burdensome for the consumers and in particular the poor and marginalised, to claim their entitlements. It does not protect the entitlement without having to pay a significant cost.

The paperwork, requests from multiple authorities for a range of documents are barriers easily overcome by those in organised claim of cylinders beyond their own entitlements. Therefore, by increasing the barrier for genuine consumers, the reengineered process actually ensures the subsidy for those who may be fake or duplicate consumers. In fact, with the process it may be possible to draw subsidy without needing to consume LPG (and pay market prices) as long as the file of orders filled sent to the sponsor bank can include desired consumer numbers.

Furthermore, consumers now have to pay the full market price upfront. Despite the claim that there will be an advance after joining the scheme, participants have reported varying experiences, ranging from excess receipts, no receipts, to under receipts of the advance and subsidy amounts. DBT, therefore, does not ensure subsidy.

To handle the new process more government and non-government agencies are involved. To deal with issues involving the delivery of LPG and DBT more government is required, not less. It is clear that the DBT ends up increasing government, rather than minimising it, as the Prime Minister has repeatedly avowed to do.

Improvement of the availability/delivery of LPG cylinders for genuine users

The IISD study also found that households reported a shift in expenditure and an increase in short-term household borrowing—especially by poorer households— in order to facilitate purchase of LPG cylinders at the new decontrolled price. There were also attempts to limit the consumption of LPG, including substituting it with firewood or other biomass for some heating and cooking tasks. This means the reengineered process will definitely improve the availability of LPG, but by forcing the poor or marginalised to reduce their uptake of cylinders or by obliging those who can no longer access the subsided cylinders to opt out.

Needless to say that it is actually any fake or duplicate consumers who will benefit from any improvement of availability/ delivery of LPG cylinders from the reengineered process.

Weed out fake/duplicate connections

To participate in DBT, the reengineered process requires the consumer provide their Aadhaar number using “Form 2” and to Bank details using “Form 1” to the LPG distributor. If the LPG consumer does not have an Aadhaar number, they can give their Bank details in “Form 4” the gas distributor or their LPG ID using “Form 3” to the bank.

The provision of this information does not identify a customer as fake or duplicate. The absence of this information does not mean a customer is fake or duplicate either. However, it is trivial for fake or duplicate consumers to provide any of this information. Thus, this linkage with the bank account does not serve to weed out fake or duplicate connections. Furthermore, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) notification of 28 September 2011 made it possible to open bank accounts without verification. Such accounts can easily be opened by anyone, and in particular by entities that have been enrolment agencies for Aadhaar (since they are in possession of the Aadhaar number, demographic, and biometric details of those real or non-existent persons they have enrolled) as well as anyone with micro ATMs.

It is therefore evident that despite citing it as an objective, there is no step that can weed out fake or duplicates envisaged in the DBT scheme. The DBT obviously fails to protect public interest and deliver good governance.

The reality of connections

LPG consumers increased to 1,387 lakhs in 2011-12 from 845 lakhs in 2004-05 or an average annual increase of about 68 lakh consumers. Between June 2012 and December 2013, over 437.58 lakh new connections were added and 6.51 lakh multiple connections were surrendered (Lok Sabha Starred question No. 401 Dated 21.02.2014). This is 6.4 times the average annual increase of consumers. Between April and November 2014, there were 94.27 lakh new connections and 58.44 lakh Double Bottle Cylinders (DBCs).

This indicates that almost 5.2 crore connections were added after introduction of Aadhaar linkage to LPG consumers and DBT. The newly added accounts, with current practice of calculating subsidy, amount to more than a third, or Rs15,725 crore, of subsidy at 12 cylinders per consumer per year.

It is a well accepted fact that the Aadhaar number is merely a number assigned to unverified and unaudited data submitted by private parties (including banks and LPG distributors) who were paid per record. According to the UIDAI’s own affidavit filed in the Supreme Court, “The implementation of the UID Scheme which inter alia, include generating and assigning UID numbers to residents, defining mechanisms and processes for interlinking UID numbers with partner databases, framing policies and administrative procedures relating to update mechanisms and maintenance of UID database are continuous process involving interaction with agencies, public as well as private and also individuals.”

Nowhere does this involve certification of identity, address or even existence of individuals.

This gives rise to the possibility that the new connections and linked bank accounts actually include a huge number of fake and duplicate connections. If anything, it is these new accounts that need verification and audit before any reengineered process is effected.

Furthermore, the possibility of diverting subsidies using the Aadhaar Based Payment Systems (ABPS) for money transfers is real. Even if the government now allows regular bank accounts for making money transfers under DBT, it will still be using the ABPS and this can well allow subsidies to be diverted to fake consumers in bulk. DBT thus appears to serve no public interest but rather stands to benefit private interests who may be involved in organised diversion of subsidy.

The subsidy

How much money is involved?

The total subsidy budget has risen to Rs46,000 crore for 2013-14 from Rs3,500 crore in 2004-05. This is a 13-fold increase in subsidy. By comparison, the consumers have increased from 845 lakhs to 1,600 lakhs or 1.9 fold in the same period.

How is the subsidy calculated? Public sector OMCs participating in the PDS Kerosene and Domestic LPG Subsidy Scheme, 2002, get to claim a subsidy from the government by submitting data of the confirmed sales. They are expected to pass the subsidy on to the customers.

As per this Scheme, the subsidy amount given to OMCs was to be equal to the difference between the cost price and the invoice price per selling unit (excluding state surcharge, excise duty, sales tax, local levies and delivery charges) computed ex-bottling plant for domestic LPG. The cost price was to be determined on import parity basis as specified in the Scheme and any changes in the cost were to be passed on to the consumer by making changes in the invoice price, which was to be revised periodically by the OMCs.

By calculations implied by this Scheme, it is apparent that only Rs22.58 per cylinder is currently available as subsidy. Additional amounts provided as subsidy beyond this are obviously added to the subsidy claim in deference to government directions that are not in the public domain.

By allowing any such increase in subsidy by orders of magnitude, contrary to that allowed by the Scheme, has increased the subsidy that is available to divert from genuine consumers.

It is evident that the reengineered process post DBT does not meet any of the objectives the government set to fulfil. What then are the alternatives open to a government that desired minimum government and good governance?

Alternate processes

The OMCs could require consumers to enroll with them, and not with distributors, and have distributors to verify and the government to authenticate such domestic consumers. This would make the process of fake registrations significantly difficult. This one time process would help clean up the consumer database.

Alternately, to ensure that no one is denied subsidised LPG, the government may require that each distributor delivering any entitlement or right will create an ID of the family benefiting from the subsidised cylinder. Such a record would be maintained to identify the beneficiary for future transactions for the delivery of LPG without any hassles as well as to allow any audit of the delivery of LPG. All those having taken benefit would be listed on a public website, beneficiaries.gov.in, for government authentication and public audit. Each distributor’s list of beneficiaries would be visible on public maps.

Yet another alternate process would be to move subsidy to a tax rebate. It makes little sense to collect the money and then spend it again on a leaky system to give it back. Those who do not want the subsidy will not take the benefit of a tax rebate. This eliminates any cash transfers and registration of fake/ duplicate beneficiaries by different agencies involved in administering subsidies.

Those who do not file returns could be given a subsidy account linked to their NPR/BPL card by the Finance Ministry to allow them to receive all the subsidies they are eligible for. All such account holders would need physical verification by Branch Managers or Post Masters (if these were postal bank accounts). These accounts would not allow any cash transactions and would only allow claiming the subsidised service at the subsidised price. The Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana should actually be this, not the creation of non-operative bank accounts. These beneficiaries too would be listed on beneficiaries.gov.in for a public audit.

These alternate processes will allow the government to provide good governance with minimum government and thus protect public interest. Is the Prime Minister listening?

First published: http://www.moneylife.in/article/the-mystery-of-a-sudden-rise-in-lpg-connections/40291.html

Net neutrality makes internet valuable

2015-01-10T23:26:00.000-08:00

Net neutrality is being threatened in India by mobile phone companies

Your telephone is valuable because it is phone neutral

Won't it be distasteful if your phone company refused to connect you to your bank if your bank had not paid up a special subscription to allow you and its other customers to talk to it? What if your phone company insisted that you talk only to the bank that is their partner company or has paid them for customers to call them? What if your phone company insisted that it was paid a percentage of the transactions you made over your phone, just as your credit card company does? Or it simply decided to charge you different rates for different calls based on whom you called; or whether it was casual, commercial, to call centres or an automated recording?

Absurd, you might say. I would not subscribe to a telephone company that does this. That is just because you are used to the idea of phone neutrality.

As long as your telephone company regards you as their customer it will make no sense to them to indulge in this behaviour. By indulging in such tactics they would simply not fulfil your need to access your bank, or for that matter anyone. It would be an act of charity, or complete incomprehension, on the part of any customers to subscribe to such services.

Any violation of phone neutrality simply means giving up on us as customers, either through ignorance or through intent. No phone company has provided phone neutrality out of charity to its customers; they simply serviced our need because while doing so they could continue to make profits from satisfying our needs. In fact, phones would not have penetrated the market as fast and as much had phone neutrality not existed.

Your Internet is valuable because it is net neutral

Won't it be distasteful if you are prevented access to a whole lot of websites if those who host the websites had not paid your Internet Service Provider to carry their content? Or if your ISP insisted you use their search engine or one their sister company owns, because Google or Yahoo or Duck Duck Go have not paid them for traffic? Or they insisted that for all bills you had paid online, you needed to provide them with a percentage, just as your credit card company does? Or it decides to charge you different rates for data, audio, video, geographical information, encrypted traffic or commercial transactions?

Now, that is exactly what is at stake when, right at our doorstep in India, net neutrality is threatened by mobile phone companies and global partnerships seeking to make the Internet accessible to everyone. In the case of the former, the argument is loss of revenue from telephony and in the latter the argument is cheap Internet for all. Did we ban cell-phones because they ate landline revenues? Also, is it not true that many of the mobile players complaining loss of revenue are actually making up by charging for the Internet? Would you like a cheap phone connection that connects you to a bank you do not wish to bank with? Or one that connects you to telemarketers but not your friends and family?

The ISPs that are promoting to end net neutrality are giving up on us consumers of the Internet as customers. They no longer wish to serve our need to access any website, consume any content or transact on any website. They suddenly see the website hosts, content hosts and e-commerce and e-government hosts as their customers, who must also pay to allow consumers access their websites.

Clearly, the ISPs pushing to end net neutrality do not understand its business value.

The long tail of net neutrality

One of the most interesting fallouts of net neutrality from an economic standpoint is its ability to open a huge market of niche services and products that have very low demand. This has been recognised as the long tail and as being larger than the market of a few services or products that are in high demand. A homestay in Gadchiroli? Amateur music from a remote and hardly known artist? An exotic fruit from Meghalaya? Home-made pickle from a family outlet? A fruit-picking festival in an unknown farm? Including this long tail in the economy can potentially double India's GDP. The net neutral Internet provides a level field to those who offer such niche services or products.

Rural India, when connected, would really have many niche services and products on offer that have low demand. The net neutral web opens up possibilities for millions.

An Internet without net neutrality will make niche markets unviable and restrict the economic growth to the growth of the traditional few services and products in high demand.

Phone penetration

Telephones spread in India not because banks wanted to reach out to their customers. They spread because customers wanted to reach banks, retailers, friends, relatives and participate in a remote conversation.

If somewhere in the early years of telephony, phone neutrality had been compromised to allow telephone companies to earn more revenues from banks, retailers and other commercial interests in telemarketing, telephones would not have penetrated to even half as many people as they have. If phone neutrality had been done away to make cheap telemarketing devices be available to the masses they would have lost their value and significance long ago. Through wisdom or chance successive governments have preserved the value of phone neutrality.

Internet penetration

As the government toys with an ambition to reach Internet to the masses, there could be one best way to kill the plan. End net neutrality. Without net neutrality the value of Internet collapses rapidly to negative. The Internet is valuable not because your bank can reach you but because you can choose which bank to access.

The Internet serves the need of providing a level-playing-field in a world that is full of unequal opportunity. Without net neutrality there is no level playing field. While a Netflix can pay an ISP to stream its videos, the amateur film-maker from Kankona cannot. While the Amazons and Flickrs can pay the ISP from their e-commerce, the garage start-up from Dindori or Cherrapunji cannot.

Without its ability to provide, protect and nourish the level-playing field, the Internet would surely lose its value. As long as the people are customers of the Internet it would be a mistake to forget this need that the Internet serves.

A government strategy to reach Internet to the masses would clearly need to focus on protecting net neutrality. For the masses, Internet access will continue to mean mobile Internet. For the privileged, it will be Internet on the move. Without net neutrality, neither have any value. As was done by the Dutch, post offices offer a terrific way to provide Internet access to those who are occasional consumers seeking equal opportunity to connect to a level-playing field.

Technologies of broadband over power lines (BPL) have shown promise in the US, Europe and even South-Asian countries to reach Internet to every home. Industry experts have highlighted that BPL holds great promise as a ubiquitous broadband solution that would offer a viable alternative to cable, digital subscriber line, fibre, and wireless broadband solutions.

Powerline Internet highways to rural India ensure that it is not just Internet connectivity but reliable power is available to every family across India. If it is government power

lines rather than the fibre of ISPs that carry broadband, net neutrality can be protected.

Irrespective of the broadband technologies deployed the protection of net neutrality will be the deciding factor of the expansion and value of an information superhighway.

First published at: http://www.sunday-guardian.com/investigation/net-neutrality-makes-internet-valuable

Time to think of Aadhaar’s alternatives

2014-11-22T23:24:00.000-08:00

In place of Aadhaar, the government should enable a Shared ID at oneid.gov.in.

The Aadhaar does not serve any purpose of governance. It does not protect public interest. Since it has failed to convince anyone of its benefits, except the private interests served by its implementation, it's time to look for alternatives to Aadhaar.

In place of Aadhaar, the government may enable a Shared ID at oneid.gov.in. The idea of "Shared ID", as designed in Pune, is to allow citizens to create, own and share their own id. They have complete control on who can see or use the id.

If the Shared ID is shared with a government agency, it will allow the owner of the id to verify and associate their government records like birth, marriage, etc. These records will then remain associated with the Shared ID. Any requests to link the same government record to multiple owners will trigger an alert or even an audit of the owner's id. This is exactly the opposite of what the Aadhaar does. Unlike the Aadhaar, which makes every id have Aadhaar as a primary key, the Shared ID associates other ids as verification and does not expose them to any modification.

The citizens who submit their Shared ID to any government agency can access information on incentives, schemes, and programmes they automatically qualified for, or availed, based on their profile. They can also access information on demography, energy use, water use, land use, mobility and other details in their neighbourhood after logging in to their account on oneid.gov.in. Importantly, the Shared ID is not necessary for delivering any entitlement, but rather allows those who create a Shared ID to keep a track of all the entitlements they receive. This id serves the purpose of allowing the citizen to manage their id and contact sharing, and keep a passbook of services, rights, benefits or entitlements qualified for or availed during their lifetime. For those digitally excluded, the local post office may create and manage Shared ID accounts that would be subject to audit.

Although the government has information on every citizen, it does not have a mechanism to identify beneficiaries proactively without requiring those who wish to benefit from a scheme to fill various forms and submit many documents providing information that the government itself issued or already has. This is both a waste of resources as also a way to exclude those who may really qualify.

The government can overcome this by internally connecting the birth, marriage, address registrations and death records without requiring any form, id numbers or id from citizens to create a National Population Register (NPR). This would then be used to identify the benefits each citizen is entitled to. This would also ensure that no citizen would need to submit to government any document issued by the government itself. While automatic entitlements and benefits could be provided to beneficiaries identified by the NPR, manual benefits should continue to those not automatically included in NPR.

For those who have a Shared ID, their entitlements would be visible on their Shared ID account. In order to ensure full inclusion, all those eligible for various benefits would be listed on beneficiaries.gov.in for public audit. Such a system serves the purpose of enabling inclusion of all citizens and not that of exclusion from services, as does the Aadhaar.

To ensure that no one is denied any service, right, benefit or entitlement for want of an id, the government may require that each agency delivering any entitlement or right will register anyone not already in their registry, who benefits from their service, right, benefit or entitlement. Such a record would be maintained to eliminate the need to re-register the beneficiary for future transactions and ensure the delivery of rights without any hassles, while at the same time permitting any audit of the delivery of entitlements and rights. In order to ensure full inclusion, all those having taken benefits would be listed at beneficiaries.gov.in for public audit. Those who have some records with the government would already be on the beneficiaries.gov.in list. For those who are not on the list this would ensure inclusion to receive benefits. On receiving benefits they too would be listed on beneficiaries.gov.in for a public audit. Such a system, then, serves the purpose of enabling audit for the government and not that of blocking services, as the Aadhaar does.

The unbanked may access cash entitlements, loans and grants at the nearest post office branch across the country. The post office would create a Shared ID of the beneficiary to enable audit of the entitlements delivered and to ensure the next time round the person does not have to recreate the id.

Any change of address would be updated by the new post office. The post-office savings account will encourage the unbanked to save through the Shared ID. It will also enable a way to deliver insurance to the beneficiaries.

These alternatives to the Aadhaar will fit Prime Minister Narendra Modi's minimum government vision and ensure good governance.

First Published at: http://www.sunday-guardian.com/analysis/time-to-think-of-aadhaars-alternatives

How Aadhaar linkage can destroy banks

2014-09-11T23:14:00.000-07:00

Even if Aadhaar numbers were proof of identity, which it is not, its use to make money transfers make financial transfers un-auditable, propagate money laundering and financial fraud. There is no justification for introducing an unverified and un-audited number to allow payments and settlementsThe Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is empowered by the Payment and Settlement Systems Act, 2007 to regulate various payment systems in the country. About 59 organisations are authorised by the RBI under this Act for setting up and operating payment systems in India. In its vision document 2012-15 the RBI states its mission is “to ensure payment and settlement systems in the country are safe, efficient, interoperable, authorised, accessible, inclusive and compliant with international standards”. In compliance with international standards, therefore, all key systems should be secure (that is, have access controls, be equipped with adequate safeguards to prevent external intrusions, and provide audit trails), reliable, scalable and able to handle volume under stress conditions.

A payment can be effected through electronic funds transfers and includes point of sale transfers, ATM transactions, direct deposits or withdrawal of funds, transfers initiated by telephone, internet and, card payment.

When you use your banks online banking to transfer money from your account to a recipient you use a system called National Electronic Funds Transfer or NEFT. NEFT is RBI’s own electronic money transfer system. Your money is transferred to the recipient's account in the hourly schedules to settle the payables and receivables from each bank that result from all the NEFT transactions in the hour. In case, your transfer fails, your money is back in your account. If you make larger transfers, say Rs2 lakh and above, then you will have to use RBI’s Real Time Gross Settlement or RTGS system to make the transfer. In this case the gross amount is moved from your account to the recipient account directly. In case the transaction fails your money is reversed back to you.

You need to be logged into your bank account to initiate an NEFT or RTGS transfer. Only a valid bank account can receive funds making electronic transfers the bank. The transfers leave a permanent audit trail that inhibits money laundering.

NPCI’s electronic money transfer system

The National Payments Corp of India or NPCI, a section 25 company, also runs its own payment system. The Aadhaar-Enabled Payment System or AEPS, as it is called, facilitates the deposit of money to and withdrawal of money from Aadhaar-Enabled Bank Accounts (AEBA). AEBA accounts are bank accounts where an Aadhaar number is mapped to the bank account. This is done by a process called as “seeding” an Aadhaar number to a bank account with designated banks.

After receiving the Aadhaar number from the customer, the bank uploads such numbers’ into a “NPCI mapper” or a repository of Aadhaar numbers used for the purpose of routing transactions to the destination banks. The NPCI mapper contains Aadhaar number along with an Institution Identification Number or IIN, a unique 6-digit number issued by NPCIto the participating bank. If you or anyone else change the bank account associated with your Aadhaar number only the current banks’ IIN will be associated with the Aadhaar number.

Now you are all set to make deposits, withdraw money and even make money transfers from the Aadhaar Enabled Bank Account by providing the source and destination IIN and Aadhaar number.

Financial Inclusion?

Banks can appoint a “Business Correspondent” to provide access to basic banking services using a micro-ATM. These include the ability to take deposits, dispense cash for withdrawals, process funds transfers, or answer balance inquiries. The Banking Correspondent is the “last-mile” to replace the village money lender. The Banking Correspondent only collects money or hands it out from his own account with a parent bank. The Banking Correspondent may issue a receipt for the transaction. There is no passbook for AEBA. There are only receipts of transactions. The parent bank has nothing to do with payments to or from individual accounts. It only settles payable and receivable to the Banking Correspondent.

The UIDAI explains that “The resident would be allowed the option to either open a new bank account or link an existing bank account to Aadhaar at the time of enrolment. Also, the person can always approach the bank concerned for linking the existing bank account to Aadhaar”. Such accounts are not subject to the requirements of the Anti-Money Laundering Rules. The banks have been pushed to open AEBA accounts repeatedly by the RBI. Through its circular no 17015/14/2012/FI dated 06 February 2014 the UIDAI enabled the process of opening new bank accounts through micro ATMs or linkage of existing bank accounts with Aadhaar.

Rupay Cards

The Rupay card, a pre-paid debit card, was launched as the Dhan Aadhaar card in December 2011. It has been co-branded with different financial institutions with differing operational requirements and fees . Some of these cards are branded as pre-paid cash cards and do not require a bank account. Since all Rupay cards would require the ABPS it is no surprise that all banks were pushed to enable biometrics and Aadhaar to enable the Rupay. When there was some resistance to burden all account holders with this new infrastructure pin-based Rupay have been introduced.

From the limited information available on the specifics the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana launched on 28 August 2014 promises an Aadhaar Enabled Bank Account (AEBA), a Rupay Debit Card and the Accident Insurance cover most banks were offering with the Rupay Debit card.

It is therefore surprising to learn that that 2.5 crore accounts have been opened without any website that details the eligibility, benefits and operational details; unless the procedure was no different from the Dhan Aadhaar card and AEBA of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA). The Prime Minister's Office (PMO) appears to have been misled completely.

The risks of Aadhar-enbaled Payment System (AEPS)

The AEPS is based on the following premises.

1. An existing account number and IFSC code that uniquely identifies a branch of any bank are not sufficient to do a legitimate transaction.
2. An account not linked with an Aadhaar number lacks the KYC or may be a fake account.
3. An account linked with an Aadhaar number is genuine and cannot be a fake one.
4. Auditability of Aadhaar number to Aadhaar number bank transfer is identical to an account number to account number transfer.
5. The costs of ABPS are less than the costs of NEFT or RTGS.

The RBI should close down RTGS and NEFT if assumption 1 is true. It is completely unclear why a third party number should be associated with a genuine account for identifying the account or the branch.

If assumption 2 holds and accounts not linked with Aadhaar are fake ones, or lack KYC, the RBI should be closed down for having enabled such accounts and money transfers within and between them in India. It is surprising that the Government of India does not trust these accounts when it comes to transferring any benefits when its Income Tax department has used them all along to assess income and even make refund payments.

Let us examine assumption 3. When the Aadhaar number is merely a 12-digit number assigned to demographic and biometric data submitted by private parties; it cannot be a proof of identity, address or even existence. There has been no verification or audit of the Aadhaar database and therefore it is very conceivable that, as was the case of Satyam, huge number of non-existent persons is assigned an Aadhaar number. There is no basis to regard any bank accounts linked to an Aadhaar number as belonging to genuine or even existing individuals.

Let us examine assumption 4. It is impossible to change the beneficiary in an account number to account number transfer. It is however possible to re-associate an account associated with an Aadhaar number. In fact it is possible to create different accounts and is link them to the same Aadhaar number at different times.

If you have the demographic and biometric details of various real persons, as you would, if you were an Aadhaar enrolment agency, it would not be impossible to create an account linked with their Aadhaar numbers without their knowledge. If you were a financial institution enrolling people it would not be impossible to open multiple accounts in different branches and link the same Aadhaar number with them at different times.

Why would one do that? Different accounts can “park” money at different times or even become conduits for laundering money. Considering that the RBI suspended the requirements of anti-money laundering rules to Aadhaar based bank accounts and enabled the opening of such accounts in the absence of a branch or an audit infrastructure makes this very plausible. Such accounts can also become conduits to claim undeserved benefits from Government that would never be traced once released. This is a recipe for embezzling government treasury with no complaints, no audit trail and no punishment.

Clearly Aadhaar number to Aadhaar number bank transfer is not identical to an account number to account number transfer. Since the NPCI maintains no log of the previous account numbers associated with an Aadhaar number it makes such transfers completely unauditable.

Let us examine the 5th assumption that transactions on ABPS cost less than other payment systems. In making such a claim the NPCI does not do an actual end-to-end cost comparison with any alternatives. The costs of ABPS that NPCI ignores are the cost of the Aadhaar infrastructure and maintenance. It ignores the costs of fraud and leakage. It ignores the cost of the infrastructure of micro ATMs and having banks switch to enabling their accounts for Aadhaar. These costs would ultimately be passed on to the customer.

Even if Aadhaar numbers were proof of identity, which it is not, its use to make financial transfers, is the best way to make financial transfers unauditable, propagate money laundering and financial fraud. There is no rational justification for introducing an unverified and unaudited number to allow payments and settlements.

The way ahead

There is no doubt that the future may hold several disruptive business models for payments and settlements many of which may be enabled by technology. While encouraging innovation, it is the role of the regulator to ensure that these do not bring ruin to the nation’s financial system.

In an NYU paper titled ‘The Precautionary Principle: Fragility and Black Swans from Policy Actions’, Nassim Taleb argues that taking risks is necessary for the functioning and advancement of society. However, all risks are not equal. Taking into account the structure of randomness in a given system can have a dramatic effect on which kinds of actions are, or are not, justified.

With the help of probability theory, Taleb asserts that when impacts are not localized and non spreading, interdependence increases propagating impacts resulting in irreversible and widespread damage and the probability of devastation, ultimately to the point of certainty. The interdependence of the NPCI, IBA, RBI, UIDAI and the various government departments are engineered for what Taleb characterizes as “ruin”.

By enabling ABPS and Aadhaar linkages with bank accounts, the RBI has enabled fraud propagation across the entire banking industry that will result in widespread and irreversible damage. It is evident that the RBI has failed to protect the nation’s banking system from an increased probability of devastation.

In the interest of financial prudence the RBI governor, the IBA and the various banks must invoke the precautionary principle and immediately suspend all linkage of Aadhaar to any financial instrument. The RBI governor ought to declare a financial emergency and freeze all Aadhaar linked bank accounts and reverse these transactions.

The PMO must revisit the UPA projects that have been allowed to be carried forward. Given the multiple institutions involved, it would be fitting to set up an inquiry commission that will include voices that have raised caution in the interest of the nation and have a mandate to minimize the damage to the country and suggest the way ahead. In the meanwhile, it would only be prudent to suspend all linkages to the Aadhaar number.

The Supreme Court of India has several pending public interest litigations (PILs) on Aadhaar linkages and it would prudent to have a special court to issue a stay on all Aadhaar linkages till the cases are heard and at the same time hear the PILs expeditiously given the extent of financial ruin that Aadhaar can bring to India.

The banking system in India is becoming extremely complex. Complex systems increase risks disproportionately to the increase in complexity. If this investigation into a small part of the banking system - electronic money transfers - is not sufficient to make a prudent banker lose sleep, we may not have any prudent bankers left anymore. It is evident that our policy makers have neither the time nor inclination to apply themselves to the implications of their actions nor to seek counsel to protect the nation and its assets. Embroiling the unbanked into this mess is no financial inclusion - it is a debt warrant.

Some important Dates

Date	Particulars
Dec-08	Incorporation of National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI)
28-Jan-09	Planning Commission of India Notifies the UIDAI with mandate to create a UID.
Apr-09	Certificate of Commencement of Business issued to National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI)
14-Dec-09	NPCI takes over ATM switching service to banks in India through National Financial Switch from Institute of Development and Research in Banking Technology (IDRBT)
Apr-2010	UIDAI whitepaper: From Exclusion to Inclusion with Micropayments
13-Dec-11	The Standing Committee on Finance and urged the government to reconsider and review the UID scheme and also the proposals contained in the Bill in all its ramifications.
27-Jan-11	RBI Notification RBI/2010-11/389 DBOD.AML.No. 77 /14.01.001/2010-11 making anti-money laundering rules applicable for bank accounts opened with Aadhaar.
28-Sep-11	RBI Notification 12/207DBOD.AML RBI/2011. BC. No. 36/14.01.001/2011-12 relaxing anti-money laundering rules for bank accounts opened with Aadhaar.
Dec-2011	Dhan Aadhaar Yojana launched
17-May-12	RBI Notification RBI/2011-12/566 DBOD. No. BL. BC. 105/22.01.009/2011-12 on financial inclusion and banking correspondents.
12-Mar-13	RBI Circular RBI / 2012-13 / 436 A.P. (DIR Series) Circular No. 89 on revised guidelines for money transfer schemes.
1-Jul-13	RBI Master Circular RBI/2013-14/1 Master Circular No.1 /2013-14 on money transfer service scheme.
1-Jul-13	RBI Notification RBI/ 2013-14/31 UBD.BPD. (PCB).MC.No.16 /12.05.001/2013-14 specifying obligations of the banks under the prevention of money laundering act of 2002.
6-Feb-14	UIDAI Notification 17015/14/2012/FI enabling opening new accounts through micro ATMs
28-Aug-14	Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana launched

First published: http://www.moneylife.in/article/how-aadhaar-linkage-can-destroy-banks/38736.html

3 Simple Features that can create an impactful ‘Planning Commission’

2014-08-21T23:11:00.000-07:00

Scrapping of the Planning Commission is an opportunity to make governance totally result-orientedThe Planning Commission of India was notified on 15 March 1950 with the belief that the function of the government was to simply utilise resources, identified through a periodic assessment, as decided in a periodic plan produced by the Commission. The notification expected that its work will “affect decisively the future welfare of the people in every sphere of national life”. It did not specify the mission of the Planning Commission, or the missions of the government that it will support, or even any mechanism to identify the impact of its actions.

By declaring the end of the Planning Commission, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has taken a huge step forward to ensure that that the government’s objective would not be just to implement five year plans. How can Mr Modi shape the body that replaces the Planning Commission? By adding what has been missing right from the beginning: result-orientation.

The Planning Commission era had independent subject divisions: Agriculture, Environment and Forests, Water Resources, Power and Energy, Industry and Minerals, Transport, Communication and Information, Village and Small Industries, Rural Development, Education, Health, Nutrition and Family Welfare, Housing & Urban Development, Social Development and Women's Programme, and Backward Classes.

These divisions worked with concerned Central Ministries, State Governments, and various non-official agencies, to study and examine various problems and issues in relation to the formulation as well as the implementation of the relevant Five Year Plan, Programmes and Policies in their respective fields. They also organised research studies, deemed necessary either on their own or through competent external institutions/organisations. Each Principal Advisor or Advisor (State Plans) helped in liaising between the Central Government and a few States/UTs. The Advisor was expected to bring out the difficulties and problems of the states to the notice of the Planning Commission and Ministries/Departments at the Centre.

While the Planning Commission moved from addressing problem-to-problem there have been no missions. The country has therefore lacked a direction for integrated development ever since the creation of the Planning Commission. The Planning Commission also lacked an integrated model of assessing the cross-impact of the activities of one Ministry on another or on the Nation and its environment. In fact, there has been no model to assess the impact of policies besides the utilisation of funds. The Government had little clarity on what it was attempting to accomplish and for whom.

If a Planning Commission-like body were to truly fill the governance deficit in India and ensure that there is minimum government, the new body should take on the mission to empower missions for each ministry. Here are the three responsibilities this would entail.

1. Develop timeless missions for the government

A mission says what we do and for whom. Without a mission, all activity is ad hoc and its beneficiaries are arbitrary. Missions focused on a current challenge remain relevant till the challenge is overcome. For example: placing a man on the moon. Missions that identify what needs to be done over multiple generations are timeless missions. In the absence of a mission, the government departments become mere procedure pushers or ad hoc problem solvers.

Without a mission, the HRD Ministry, for example, would push procedures for licensing educational institutions, push for educational institutions in one or more streams, open new or close old programs, or move into problems and issues that catch the attention of the media or various interest-groups of the time. Changes in the government would alter what the ministry does and for whom.

On the other hand, No child left behind, is a an example of a mission addressing a problem of drop-outs and exclusion but not a need of education or learning.

Peter Drucker was once called to develop a mission statement for a hospital. After spending a lot of time listening to the stakeholders and observing the hospital he helped them to articulate their mission: to provide assurance to the afflicted. Everyone from the janitor to the surgeon can identify whatever they do everyday with this timeless mission. Generation to generation the afflicted will always need to find assurance in the acts of the receptionist, janitor, nurse and doctor.

The HRD Ministry could, for example, work with the new body to develop its missions.

Here a few examples of what the HRD Ministry’s missions may look like.

Provide education to each district: This would focus the efforts of the HRD ministry to people in each district. It would seek to provide a means of education to all in the district.

Now everyone in the Ministry would ask if their proposals, projects, policies or acts will serve to provide education to each district. This may not alter the model of education but will certainly alter the access and reach of education. It will shift the focus from national education to a balance of different streams of education based on the demography of each district.

Empower teachers in every village: This would focus the audience of the HRD Ministry to teachers in every village, focusing every action of all those parts of this Ministry in empowering these teachers. Every one in the Ministry would ask if each of their proposal, policy or act will empower the teachers in every village. This will not only alter the access and reach of education but also allow alternate models of education, pedagogy and institutionalisation to emerge.

2. Help Assess the impact of different options

There are many different actions one can choose, to pursue a mission. Which one would have the maximum impact? In the absence of a means to asses the impact of the policies, projects, procedures and actions of each Ministry in furthering its mission, no Ministry will be able to course-correct its activities. Without a compass, the ship cannot be navigated. Without a thermostat the temperature in a room cannot be regulated.

Feedback information systems, or information systems where action is driven by information about the impact of the action, are absolutely essential for ensuring that actions are furthering the mission.

Take for example the conversion of natural streams in urban or rural areas into storm-water drains or gutters. Does this impact the risk of flood and drought more than letting green corridors and biodiversity to protect the community? Which one will impact in the most desirable way?

The new body can work with each ministry to develop a means to assess the impact of their actions in furthering their missions. Such models would also help the ministries to share the scenarios of alternative actions with various stakeholders and align them to actions that result in desired impact.

The HRD Ministry, for example, could use the model to assess the impact of a policy to provide each person in a district a lifetime scholarship of three months education per year on the outreach, quality or other indicators of education.

The new body would also work with each ministry to develop a means to monitor the indicators of impact resulting from the acts of the ministry in real time. This would not only allow early course correction but also an effective way to accomplish results.

3. Help evaluate the cross-impacts of different interventions

No ministry can claim to be independent of the other. If, for example, surface transportation is promoted, urbanisation and industrialisation is altered. The power requirements, the resource needs and utilisation, the environmental impact, the employment generation, the fuel imports and the foreign exchange requirements, all follow the changes made in transportation corridors.

Similarly, the promotion of a few educational institutions of national importance alters the streams students choose, the cities that concentrate educational facilities, the attractors for industry, the distribution of wealth, the infrastructure and resource requirements of the country, the environmental degradation of the country, the migratory patterns of people, and even their travel habits.

Take also, for example, the impact of building new cities or industrial corridors. How will these impact mobility, transportation, fuel imports, pollution? How will these impact the resource requirements, particularly water, food, clean air? How will this impact land use and the environment? How does this affect the resilience, stability or sustainability of the critical functions necessary for the country?

In the absence of a means to examine the impacts of the actions of a ministry on the challenges before another ministry or the country, we will only experience cancerous growth of pointless infrastructure, unnecessary projects and purposeless legislation.

The new body would need to provide the Prime Minister and his Cabinet a model that would allow them to explore scenarios for simultaneous implementation of the different policies of different ministries, on indicators they propose to track. Such an exploration would not only ensure that policies work for the better of the country and impact various sectors in ways that further the missions they undertake, and also that the Cabinet works as a team to develop the country.

The new body would ideally have two main divisions: one for mission division and one for impact. The mission division would support the ministries in developing and executing their missions. The impact division would support the government in assessing the impact of programmes and the cross impacts of programmes. A 5-member board chaired by the Prime Minister would oversee the mission formulation and their impact.

The scrapping of the Planning Commission is the first step in the right direction, to ushering in good governance. It is an opportunity to bring a focus to what is done and for whom, by each government ministry and its departments. It is an opportunity to assess the impact of alternative actions of each ministry before listing desirable actions. It is an opportunity to ensure that the actions of one ministry do not compromise India’s potential for change, resilience, stability and sustainability.

It is an opportunity to undertake best practices and not merely emulate a current good practice that comes from a part of the world with a different context, different culture or a government with a different mission. It is an opportunity to put in place a mechanism that will transform the way the government works, to not only ensure minimum government but also ensure enduring good governance.

First published in: http://www.moneylife.in/article/3-simple-features-that-can-create-an-impactful-planning-commission/38536.html

10 Digital Solutions to Make India the Best-Governed Nation

2014-08-05T23:01:00.000-07:00

A 10-point digital roadmap for Mr Narendra Modi, that protects our assets, ensures that the right projects are undertaken, and delivers justice, equality, and liberty for all

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has inherited an India with major challenges: an economy that fails to distribute the needs but pushes the wants; an environment that is being irreversibly stripped off; a hassle-filled life where red tape, fraud, corruption and indifference are ever increasing; failed land-use management is destroying India’s forests, mountains, rivers, streams, and farms, and at the same time flooding its courts with disputes. Over and above all this, it is almost impossible to make the right projects happen in the right place at the right time wasting thousands of crores of tax-payers’ money

To remove all these ills, Mr Modi has to redesign the way governance works. What should he do to redesign governance quickly? Here is a roadmap that focuses on the need to protect the assets of the country, and to ensure that the right projects are being undertaken, where no one is denied benefits, where justice, equality, and liberty are within reach, the future scenarios are shared, and democracy is not a distant dream.

1. Budget.gov.in: Change the way money is spent

Every budget item on the central, state and local government is for some project, activity or event, at a specified location. By introducing the requirement to geotag, or display the location on the map, each item, in addition to its purpose, details, status and citizen comments, could be uploaded on a single website, budget.gov.in, a process that will change the way money gets spent.

Such a budget map would not only display where every rupee is going or has gone, but also show if the transfers from one agency to another, or from the central to state to local governments actually got spent on purposes for which it was intended. Such budget maps would ensure that the projects are not over budget, and run under different heads, or by different agencies. It would show how evenly funds are distributed for the governance of different regions and also identify purposes or budgets that are not equitable and fair.

All the PM needs to do is to implement a policy whereby no budget items will be included, nor disbursals be made without the location of the budget head being uploaded on budget.gov.in.

2. Survey.gov.in: Protect the country from land mafia

Today, the Survey of India protects the maps of the country, not its land. There is no public directory or map of all the survey numbers of the 32.87 lakh square km across the 595 districts in the country. There is no account of the changes happening in land use across the country. Land records and property records are not standardised across the country.

Requiring that all survey maps be geo-tagged, or their exact location on the district map be shown based on latitude and longitude, and display the survey land-use, ownership details, and any legal issues on a single website survey.gov.in will change the way land use happens across the country. Requiring that the North East point of every property have an official GPS device on it will alert a land use information system of any movement of this point.

Such a change will also allow Development Plans to be monitored and implemented. It will make land acquisition easier as well as partitioning property without violating land use. It can help find land for the landless, provide benefits to single property owners and prevent the speculation of land at the cost of the country’s land-use requirement.

Such a system could possibly allow authenticated account holders to search and view land-use, proposed use as per DP, encroachments, ownership, tenancy, and other claims by logging in to their account. The information they seek on individual properties will leave a trail for purposes of security.

All that the PM needs to do to initiate this is to require geotagging of every survey number by the Survey of India before any new land use activity is permitted on it.

3. Assets.gov.in: Protect assets of the country

While our national anthem boasts of our rivers, forests, and mountains, they are fast being lost to encroachment, mining and indiscriminate changes in land use. The indiscriminate felling of trees to make way for roads, real-estate or to use them as timber is wiping out India’s carbon absorption capacity, monsoon attracting potential, soil retention ability and even the flood buffering and ground-water recharge potential.

Requiring that every stream, river, lake, mountain and forest area boundaries are geotagged with physical markers at their boundaries will ensure a public alert on any alteration. Requiring each tree with a width bigger than 2 inches to be tagged with a RFID (Radio frequency ID, or a small chip that stores information that can be read from a distance by a RFID reader and can be used to do a periodic tree census) along with its geolocation will protect the trees and ensure the country’s valuable assets are not stolen or destroyed. This will also ensure that the forests, rivers, wetlands, fields and wastelands are better conserved as also the built-up environment across India.

A policy requiring all government assets be geotagged will enable identification of all the offices, land, equipment, and vehicles owned by various government agencies and the process of auditing them will be much simpler.

In this regard, PM needs to direct the Ministry of Environment and Forests and the Survey of India to work together to tag all the natural heritage of the country within a fixed time. He needs to ensure that the Finance Ministry does not release any budget for capital expenditure to any government agency that has not geotagged their movable and immovable assets.

4. beneficiaries.gov.in: Hassle free rights

An ID cannot be the enabler of an entitlement or a right; it can be a basis to audit the delivery. To ensure that no one is denied any service, entitlement or right for want of ID the government may require that each agency delivering any entitlement or right will capture the ID of the person benefiting from their service, entitlement or right. Such a record should be maintained to identify the beneficiary for future transactions for the delivery of rights without any hassles while permitting any audit of the delivery of entitlements and rights. All those having taken benefits would be listed on beneficiaries.gov.in for public audit.

Although the government has information on every citizen it has no mechanism to identify beneficiaries proactively without requiring a single form from those who wish to benefit from a scheme. This is both a waste of resources as also a way to exclude those who may really qualify.

The government would overcome this by internally connecting the birth, marriage, address registration and death records without requiring any form, id numbers or id from citizens to create a National Population Register. This would then be used to proactively identify the benefits each person is entitled to. This would also ensure that no citizen would need to submit to government any document issued by the government itself. While automatic entitlements and benefits could be provided to beneficiaries identified by the NPR, manual benefits should continue to those not automatically included in NPR.

To enable this the PM ought to create a separate beneficiaries department within the Registrar General of India’s office to proactively create and display the beneficiaries lists on maps.

5. oneid.gov.in: User managed shared ID

The UID is not a proof of identity. It is not even a proof of address. Nor is it is even a proof of existence: it does not prove that the person with a UID is a real person.

The UID is merely a random number assigned to unverified and unaudited data submitted by third parties paid per record. It provides no way to verify if the 12-digit number is one issued by the UIDAI, or even who submitted the biometric and demographic data. Worse, there is no way to tell if this number belongs to a real individual, or to the individual who submits the number, or is even a number generated through a diligent process, or by an authentic enroller, registrar, or the UIDAI. What is unbelievable is the identity solution cannot authenticate its own genuineness, the genuineness of its enrollers, registrars or of the UIDAI itself.

The use of such unauditable, unverifiable and 'unauthenticate-able' number to authenticate identity, to serve as the basis for governance, to be used to deliver benefits, rights and entitlements, to be used to open bank accounts and transfer money, and to create citizen registers or electoral rolls will seriously compromise governance, national security and the rule of law.

Just as the UK PM, David Cameroon’s, government kept their election promise and scrapped their National ID project PM Modi should ensure the UID and its database are completely purged in the interest of the governance, national security, the rule of law and justice.

In place of the UID a the government can enable a Shared ID at oneid.gov.in as was designed in Pune to allow citizens to create, own and share their own ID with complete control on who can see or use the ID and logs of access by third parties to their information. The citizens can access information on incentives, schemes, and programs they automatically qualified for or availed based on their profile. They can also access information on demography, energy use, water use, land use, mobility and other details in their neighbourhood after logging in to their account on oneid.gov.in.

The PM will need to declare the scrapping of the UID. He will need to create with the Registrar General of India a department to allow anyone to create and maintain their own Shared ID.

6. audit.gov.in: Audit of digital assets

Although the government creates, maintains and uses many digital assets there is no audit of the digital records or the processes that create the digital record. To ensure the authenticity of the digital assets the government would need to establish an audit cell with Comptroller Auditor General (CAG) to audit all digital records, processes to create the digital records and undertake annual audits of delivery of service, entitlement or right and seek the creation of a register of the excluded to ensure no one will be excluded from rights.

The PM would need to ask the CAG to create a special cell to audit the digital assets. The audit reports and a list of those excluded from rights would be displayed at audit.gov.in.

7. impact.gov.in: Monitor the impact of governance

The projects and budgets allocated as a result of the policies and legislation result in impacting the lives and environment of people in each of the 595 districts. Providing information that enables monitoring and correction of the budget expended and projects executed in each district at impact.gov.in would ensure that departments and ministries work to accomplish missions, not procedures. Various missions to ensure resource conservation, access, inclusion, peace, harmony, health, sufficiency, public interest, justice, liberty, equality, dignity would be monitored on this website.

The website would also project the need for workers in different occupations like agriculture, manufacturing and various services within each district and the required school capacity in the district to deliver bridge the gap. It would track energy demand and the current energy mix of coal, oil, natural gas, hydroelectricity, nuclear, solar, wind and other renewables to deliver to the district and beyond. It would track the agricultural produce and the districts deficit or surplus, the water demand and the sources to deliver the water. It would track the public transportation corridors and mobility within and between neighbouring districts. It would monitor the land-use and implementation of development plans. It would monitor the spread of habitats.

The PM would need to ensure that each project has to have a clear mission and a way to provide real-time impact to further resource conservation, access, inclusion, peace, harmony, health, sufficiency, public interest, justice, liberty, equality, dignity to accomplish the mission before being approved.

8. vote.gov.in: Anytime, anywhere voting

Ensuring democracy is an expensive, unverifiable and unauditable process. There is no way to ensure that your vote was cast for the candidate of your choice or if it continues to be till it is counted. There is no way to audit the votes counted against a candidate and certify that all the votes polled by the candidate are from real and legitimate voters and not from illegitimate rigging of EVMs. The voting process currently imposes elaborate barriers to being able to cast votes.

By enabling an indigenous mobile and internet-based anytime-anywhere voting system that is publicly auditable without compromising the privacy of the voter the government will take democracy closer to being real. It will enable freer, easier and auditable elections across the country at a fraction of the current cost.

9. future.gov.in: Exploring impact scenarios of policy and legislation

While the planning Commission of India has been making five year plans to match resource allocations to projected demands, there is no way to explore the impact of different policies or legislation on different sectors and over the long-term span of 50-100 years. This is particularly important as much of the critical nation building works over 20-30 year periods. For example it takes 20 years for a cohort born now to come into the working population. It takes about 20-30 years to build and commission power plants. It, therefore, stands to reason that the future scenarios over 50-100 years need to be studied.

By building and displaying such a long term projection computer model of India that allows to explore the consequences of various policies on the demography, economy, environment and resource challenges accessible to all on future.gov.in the government will create less policy resistance and greater alignment to shared goals.

Such a website would also allow the sharing of scenarios resulting from the implementation of various policies and acts that are in force and allow the stakeholders to comment and make suggestions for revisions of policies and legislation.

The PM will have to commission the development of such a model along the lines built by late Prof. Malcolm Slesser of Edinburgh and Strathclyde universities for various countries across the world, the World III model built by Prof. Donella and Dennis Meadows then of MIT, or the National Model being built by Prof. Jay Forrester of MIT. Such a computer model of India will allow us to explore the consequences of various policies on the demography, economy, environment, and resource challenges. The model will be accessible to all and provide standard scenarios of various policies and acts that are in force to allow stakeholders to comment and make suggestions for revisions of policy or acts.

10. justice.gov.in: Bringing justice to all

With over 3,000 plus central acts India is over-legislated. Even for those in the legal profession finding or knowing the applicable laws is non-trivial. By allowing search and discovery of applicable laws for a set of keywords on justice.gov.in the government will do great service in bringing access to the legal framework to all.

While the court system may continue to battle its challenges to provide justice in time the government could well provide a repository of elders in each district who will support alternative dispute resolution. This can reduce the delay in seeking justice and restore the confidence in the rule of law and delivery of justice.

Much of the justice process is today beyond the access of the common man. By enabling justice.gov.in for submission of cases of public interest violations as well as violations of justice, liberty, dignity and equality of which the courts take suo-moto cognisance. By enabling the issues submitted on this website and not taken up by the courts to be taken up by the elders of the district involved in alternate dispute resolution mechanisms, the government will ensure and entrench public interest, respect for justice, liberty, dignity and equality.

The PM needs to ensure that the Law Ministry takes up these projects on priority.

Henry David Thoreau believed “that government is best which governs least;” and “That government is best which governs not at all”. By implementing the roadmap, PM Modi can truly transform the government into the best government yet, not just in India but across the world.

First published in: http://www.moneylife.in/article/10-digital-solutions-to-make-india-the-best-governed-nation/38338.html

Questions I would love prospective MP's to answer

2014-03-25T23:52:00.001-07:00

On Governance:

# How do you and your party plan to simplify - even down-size - government?

# How will you increase the dignity and participation that the common man may enjoy in governance?

# How will you ensure the independence of different constitutional bodies as well as civil society and the media?

# What criteria will you use to ensure that various posts, positions and committees across government and society are not filled by sycophants, political workers, cronyism, persons with conflict of interest and with interests and agenda contrary to public interest?

# How will you ensure that various PPP arrangements do not privatise democracy or how the various projects do not make the democracy remain “contractor-driven”?

On urgent and important issues

# How will you reform the land records, transactions and ownership?

# How will you protect every water stream, pond, well and river above and below the ground?

# How will you protect the hills, mountains and forests?

# How will you reduce the rate of resource consumption and halt the rate of resource exports from India?

# What measures will you have in place to eliminate pollution of our environment?

# How will you and your party manage inflation, the rising gap between the rich and poor, the powerful and the weak?

# How will you transform education to build citizens for India?

# Will you consolidate the 4000+ Acts in India into a simple framework that is consistent and can be understood by all?

# How will you make justice, dignity, equality and liberty enduring, pervasive and ubiquitous in India?

# How do you and your party desire to contain urbanisation? Do you have a strategy to de-urbanise India?

# Will you support in Parliament the causes of various PILs filed by various NGO’s from Pune? Do you know of these causes? Could you list them?

Do we need to move beyond affidavit information?

On personal outlook

# Can you explain how you and your party identify public interest as distinct from private interest?

# How would you make yourself accessible to your constituents?

# What is your mission in life?

# Why and for how long do you propose to hold public office?

# What is your idea of justice, dignity, equality and liberty?

# How will you earn a living and support your lifestyle, particularly after you cease to hold office?

# Do you plan the use of MPLADS to strengthen citizen participation in governance at the local level? How?

# Will you commit to not use your MPLADS for any infrastructure that the government should anyway be creating, not put banners and plaques of your contributions, inaugurations etc?

Aadhaar: The number that makes a nation ‘Niradhaar’

2013-10-02T22:55:00.000-07:00

Is UIDAI’s Aadhaar, the same thing that it claims to be? Here is a simple analysis of the UID project from Dr Anupam Saraph, who designed and implemented identity schemes for government and private organisations

"In the meanwhile, no person should suffer for not getting the Aadhaar card in spite of the fact that some authority had issued a circular making it mandatory and when any person applies to get the Aadhaar Card voluntarily, it may be checked whether that person is entitled for it under the law and it should not be given to any illegal immigrant."

-Supreme Court Order in WP 494 of 2012 on September 23rd 2013

How safe is the UID?

1. Enrolment agencies, sub-registrars, registrars and UIDAI have no legal liability for any theft, fraud, crime, and compromise of your security or privacy that may be perpetuated through Aadhaar

2. The use of Aadhaar by various agencies will now expose all your IDs, information, properties, entitlements etc. to misuse in one go thus exposing you to unprecedented risk

3. You have neither control on who uses your Aadhaar nor any way to know or verify its use by anyone

4. Your entire data and biometric is handled by non-Indian companies

How safe is your money in the banking system with UID?

1. Banks have been directed to open accounts with Aadhaar numbers instantaneously—they can no longer verify if the number links to real and unique individuals

2. Money transfers from Aadhaar accounts will not be audited if there is less than Rs10 lakh transferred in a year. This means subsidy, bribes and black money may go to shell accounts that may never be traced!

3. Money can be moved from Aadhaar-to-Aadhaar electronically without your knowledge

How protected are your entitlements and rights with UID?

1. Aadhaar does not guarantee anything. It merely becomes yet another obstacle in obtaining services from the government

2. If your biometric verification fails, you will lose all benefits across the government till you re-establish your credentials. Re-establishing credentials may be at the mercy of netasand babus

How legal is the UID?

1. The Parliamentary Standing Committee on the Aadhaar card has rejected the Aadhaar exercise. There is no legal sanction or budgetary sanction

2. The Planning Commission has no mandate for such projects

3. The Executive order is bad law under the constitution as it violates fundamental right

4. Under the Citizenship Rules of 2003 it is the Registrar General of India who has to maintain a National Register of Indian Citizens and issue National ID cards

Some fallacious UID Premises

1. Each UID number corresponds to a unique real person

2. Each person can have only one UID

3. All issued UID numbers are genuine

4. No identity theft is possible with the UID

5. Existing identity databases are full of fraud and duplication

6. UID database made by the same agencies/documents has no fraud or duplication

7. Identity is the barrier to service

8. Cash transfer is more effective than the service it was meant to subsidize or deliver

9. Cash transfers will reach real beneficiary

10. Several trillion Rupees can be transferred directly without any scam

11. Financial inclusion is about having a bank account

12. 18,950 rural branches can service 593,731 villages or 31 villages to a branch or 40,000 persons per rural branch through UID

13. 38,592 branches can service 5,161 cities and towns or 7,500 persons per urban branch through UID

14. Corruption in India is because the common man fakes identity

15. UID will simplify the processes to access fundamental rights, entitlements and services

Additional References

1. http://uidai.gov.in

2. http://planningcommission.nic.in/sectors/index.php?sectors=dbt

3. http://bargad.org/2012/03/17/budgetary-allocation-for-uid/

4. http://openspace.org.in/UIDaadhaar

5. http://www.aadhararticles.blogspot.in

6. http://saynotoaadhaar.blogspot.in

7. http://www.rbi.org.in/scripts/BS_ViewMasterCirculardetails.aspx

8. http://www.rbi.org.in/scripts/BS_CircularIndexDisplay.aspx

9. http://www.rbi.org.in/scripts/NotificationUser.aspx

10. http://identityproject.lse.ac.uk

11. http://www.aclu.org/technology-and-liberty/5-problems-national-id-cards

First appeared in: http://www.moneylife.in/article/aadhaar-the-number-that-makes-a-nation-niradhaar/34718.html

The Green Development Plan Imperative

2012-04-04T03:52:00.004-07:00

Our cities, towns, villages and regions are testimony to the outstanding failure of our Development and Regional Plans. The National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) aiming to encourage reforms and fast track planned development of identified cities has failed miserably to formulate strategies and address this failure of design and implementation of planned development.

Even as the world struggles to deal with never before rates of exponential growth, huge environmental challenges and unprecedented energy crisis we are witnessing the folly of design of urban habitats that make the cities and the country more and more vulnerable to unmanageable exponential growth, increasing environmental disasters and a totally avoidable energy crisis.

The purpose of a development plan should be to create livable and sustainable habitats, not cancerous megapolis.

If our cities continue to be built on the rationale of driving growth we will have cancerous growth that is neither inclusive nor sustainable. It is no surprise that driving growth as an end in itself and poor and static designs have resulted in less than 30% of the Development Plans ever made being implemented. Among many things this approach has resulted in 3.7 million vacant houses in major cities in Maharashtra while large numbers still get attracted to these very cities and remain homeless. So much for market driven solutions for urban India.

To create livable and sustainable habitats the Development or Regional Plan must first protect all natural heritage. This must protect our hills and mountains that create our local climate and weather and also capture, store and release rain water into nallas. This must ensure the protection of all water bodies: rivers, nalas, lakes, ponds, tanks for it is they that harvest, store and distribute rainwater and recharge our groundwater. They bring life to our lands and sustain all that is precious and living. They must protect the forests, woods, trees, all flora and fauna; it is these that make the local climate and weather livable and provide enduring sustenance.

To ensure that cities and regions remain sustainable Development and Regional Plans must ensure zero water imports, zero food imports, zero waste exports. Such a Development Plan will need to restrict the growth of habitats based on the water and food available within the city or region, on the waste that can be processed and utilized within the region. Such a Green Development Plan will create walk-size neighborhoods and communities. They will design the habitats to lower energy needs and satisfy increasing proportion of the energy needs through gas as a transition fuel. The Plan will drive at least an additional 5% increase in the energy need satisfied from renewable sources every year.

In order to ensure that the Development or Regional Plan is implemented the detail Plan for the region of the taxpayer will be printed on every tax claim from any government agency along with a list of the projects the agency is undertaking in this region for the financial year. School children will take up projects that report the violations of the green Development Plan for a region in their neighborhood. Agencies implementing the Plan will be required to produce a consolidated report every quarter on the progress in implementing the Pan.

A Green Development Plan is no longer a choice; it is the only option for a sustainable and livable future.

What should Maharashtra's e-governance Policy accomplish?

2011-01-30T21:37:00.000-08:00

The Maharashtra government is revising its e-governance policy. Lots of people have emailed and telephoned asking me what my recommendations are. So here are some points I suggest.

Purpose Statement

The purpose of this policy should be to further good governance by enabling transparency and participation of all stakeholders in governance.
In order to accomplish its purpose, the policy should also set common goals and standards in place for the e-Governance rollout in the state.

Common Goals

Within one year all government agencies in Maharashtra should:

Upload data they hold onto http://data.maharashtra.gov.in
Upload maps they hold onto http://maps.maharashtra.gov.in
Upload project information onto http://projects.maharashtra.gov.in
Upload budget information onto http://budgets.maharashtra.gov.in
Upload staff directories onto http://servants.maharashtra.gov.in
Implement wiki-based file systems for decision making on http://decisions.maharashtra.gov.in
Accept all government payments through a single payment gateway at http://payments.maharashtra.gov.in
List all government schemes and beneficiaries through a single site http://schemes.maharashtra.gov.in
Accept all service requests and grievances on http://requests.maharashtra.gov.in

Standards

In order to enable the government agencies to accomplish the common goals the IT department should develop, common standards for the Maharashtra government for the following:

Sharing and displaying data on the http://data.maharashtra.gov.in
Sharing and displaying maps on http://maps.maharashtra.gov.in
Sharing and displaying project information onto http://projects.maharashtra.gov.in
Sharing and displaying budget information onto http://budgets.maharashtra.gov.in
Sharing and displaying staff directories onto http://servants.maharashtra.gov.in
Sharing and displaying wiki-based file systems for decision making on http://decisions.maharashtra.gov.in
Accepting government payments through a single payment gateway at http://payments.maharashtra.gov.in
Listing all government schemes and beneficiaries through a single site http://schemes.maharashtra.gov.in
Accepting all service requests and grievances on http://requests.maharashtra.gov.in
Privacy, security, certification, storage and archival of data with the agencies that fall under the scope of this policy.
Identifying, sharing and protecting individual and business data.
Multilingual access to data and websites.
Mobile access to all information and transactions on http://maharashtra.gov.in

These standards should be enforced by the IT department through applications on the specified urls that will allow registered users from various government agencies to access and update the information on each of them. All stakeholders should be able to access at will the meta-information (the date of update, by whom, from where etc.) on update associated with each of the records on the websites. The applications should be developed on a high-priority basis and its beta versions be rolled out within 8 months of the release of this policy.

Capacity Building

Starting as soon as the draft version of the common standards are ready, YASHADA and other NGO's should provide capacity building workshops to all government agencies to implement and monitor the common goals. YASHADA should also create an audit and compliance cell that will audit every government agency for its adaptation of the government standards, implementation and continued use of the applications mandated in the egovernance policy.

Governing India: The need for alternate scenarios

2009-10-16T22:45:00.000-07:00

With 638,767 settlements scattered over 3,287,240 square kilometers governance in India is not quite the same as the Singaporean city-state-nation, the Vatican or Hong Kong. With a handful of people to 10 million plus inhabiting Indian settlements the constitution, lifestyle, life-purpose, needs and experiences are vastly different from anything the Indian Constitution gears up to address.

An altered context

From the nineteen forties, when the Indian constitution was drawn up, India has altered not just its constitution but also its very character. Its population, then a mere 340 million is now four fold larger[i]. Now over 20 percent of the people live in 4,378 urban settlements in contrast to less than 4 percent in fewer than 2,000 urban settlements[ii]. The rate and density at which services need to be delivered has exploded introducing an era of “speed money” as well as “chalta hai”. The water demand, for example, in these settlements has risen 10 fold, the energy demand between 10 and 200 fold.

The traditional joint-family, extended-family and religion-based information networks have given way to television soap-operas and internet. Instead of listening to nature India now listens to Barkha Dutts, Lallu Yadavs and the local sahebs. India has become disconnected from reality and wisdom through intermediaries who are busy in real-time drawing attention from the local realities, declaring the state of the world as well as declaring the rights and the wrongs. The rate and direction of change in India is significantly different.

The world too has changed; it is global, non-local, connected, ultra-mobile, highly material and very much faster. There is little or no feedback on the impact of decisions based on distant events for long periods of time. Increasingly decisions are further and further removed from those who are impacted by them the most. The issues of health, prosperity, education, culture, housing and resources have been tremendously altered. . The notions of access, ownership, democracy, empowerment and liberty have undergone radical transformations.

What do we need to govern?

The issues of access, ownership and use of resources are crucial. Who owns land, water, air, forests, minerals, and energy? How will the access of these to all be decided? What is the just way to use these on a local, regional and national or even international scale? How can fair decisions be made and issues be addressed without injustice, coercion and corruption?

The issues of identity and security are a very important agenda for a highly populated and mobile nation. Not only is it essential to build trust amongst people but also amongst its organizations – businesses, NGO’s, governments.

The issues of life-style and life-purposes range from social, cultural, educational to economic issues. The rights to live alternate life-styles, pursue different purposes, belong to diverse cultures, have varied social practices and subscribe to alternate business practices and economics has been the very essence of India’s diversity. The “flat-world” is flattening the diverse India and the wonders and wisdoms its people have cherished.

The issues of justice that recognize justice for the individual, the organization, the region and the nation need to transform from progressing redressal from local to national exclusive systems to more open and inclusive systems of justice.

Obsolete governance

The seventh schedule of the constitution distributes decision-making domains between the union and state government[iii]. This list is a long winding list of specifics, not one based on enduring principles of local, regional and national governance. There is no list for local governance.

The list does not define enduring domains for governance: ownership, access, settlement design, identity, local, regional, national and international transaction, publicly auditable decisions, open and inclusive principles of justice.

The over-governance of India is a sad reflection of the constitution of its government to procedural ends rather than purposeful means.

The huge machinery of the various governments of India drive procedures to fulfill procedures. Whether this be the subsidy, urban development, SEZ, river management or the creation of unique ID’s, all government programs cry for being meaningful to the people who they would supposedly service.

60 years of “independence” are witness to the self-serving machinery that makes the best of ideas die a meaningless death and the brightest minds of India waste as mediocrity watches on. The procedures are a testimony to cover-ups, conflicts-of-interest, lack of expediency and ad-hoc decisions rather than the absence of these.

Do we the people count?

Part V to IX of the Constitution of India describes the structure of the governments of India and its constituents. The constitution creates top-down governance by virtue of vesting controls of the various state governments in the Union Government and the local governments in the State Government.

With this structuring people have little determination on the decisions in their local worlds. This usurps the power of “we the people” in the preamble of the constitution to the machinery of government.

The disillusionment in the common man, as experienced in the indifference, lack of participation and even giving up the right to franchise, strongly signal the sleeping discontent of the populace. Does the constitution allow self-rule of even the very neighborhoods in which we live? Has the Nagar-Raj bill just created yet another mechanism for coercing we-the-people?

Lokmanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak demanded for swaraj or self-rule during British India. Swaraj is not about taking back rule from another country; it is about each person’s right to decisions in the country. While today we may wish to ask for suraj or good-governance the people are asking if they have swaraj itself. Is it time to ask back the swaraj?

[i] http://www.populstat.info/Asia/indiac.htm accessed on 4/9/09

[ii] http://www.slideshare.net/bmbks321/challenges-of-urban-growth-in-india-by-anumita-roychowdhury accessed on 4/9/09

[iii] http://lawmin.nic.in/coi/SEVENTH-SCHEDULE.pdf accessed on 4/9/09

Containing the H1N1

2009-08-09T23:13:00.000-07:00

H1N1 is spreading. The response is still uncoordinated, slow, confused, messy and lacking a clear direction. What could a coordinated, quick, focused response look like? Here is a first look at a better coordinated system.

What if you could help yourself?

If you’ve got flu, you should be able to register yourself on phone, through an sms or on the internet. A quick set of questions should be able to assess if you need to be tested for H1N1. If you do, then the information system should schedule you for test on one of the 15 mobile collection centers closest to your home. You should be intimated during your conversation the expected time when the unit will visit you and conduct the test. At the same time the mobile unit would be sent an SMS of your location. The blackberry on the mobile unit would indicate the google map of your location and allow them to update the information system as soon as the sample is collected.

The collection team would do a collection round for three hours and then shift to another vehicle as the first one goes to drop off the samples. The collection vans would be fumigated every day.

Can the patients get the right medical attention at home in time?

The diagnostic centre would log the results onto the website minutes after the results. You get a telephone call, sms or email from a dedicated team responding to the web-site updates. The google map gets automatically updated to track positive locations.

The closest of the 15 mobile rapid action teams of doctors gets an sms alert and a map of the address their blackberry. The new patients would now be under medical advice at home within 3 hours of diagnosis. A quarantine team would also visit and advise the family, neighbors set up waste disposal mechanisms, provide masks and advise about hygiene. The family physicians would be contacted and advised on a daily check and reporting. Patients needing hospital attention would be shifted immediately.

Can the spread be contained through information?

All airlines, railways, buses would log passenger lists to a health check site. All patients are checked in these databases and co-travelers in the city are visited by the containment team for a quick check-up and advise.

All the classes in schools of children in the families of the travelers who were exposed to a patient would undergo a check every morning after a class assembly. School assembly to be discontinued immediately. The school medical team to register a case of flu on the phone, through the mobile or on the net. A special team would visit the school for containment, hygiene and closure advisory.

All the co-workers of a patient would undergo a check-up and advice within a day. Periodic follow-up would be scheduled as needed.

What if there was a health monitoring team?

Instead of the central government, state government, local government and the dozens of associated agencies making different statements, there would be a single agency that would report on the health, the advisories and the action plans. Different agencies would have to agree to the directives of this single agency and implement them.

Containing H1N1

Undoubtedly there is more than this needed. This is just a glimpse at an alternate way of dealing with the crisis. Do build the ways to contain this virus. We need more coordinated, focused and simple action and we are running out of time. Coordinate your efforts on Pune H1N1 Wik i.

Driving Good Governance

2009-06-24T23:08:00.000-07:00

It’s already over a month of the new government in India. With less than 60 days to go for the first 100 days everyone is waiting for the first signs of initiatives for good governance.

What can the government do in the next 60 to establish a track for good governance?

Here are some of the ideas I’ve been sharing along with the IT Vision for the Next Prime Minister that I wrote earlier in the year.

Develop official tweeters in every Ministry to broadcast public information and event reminders
Implement Google Calendars across government for every "Office of Government" and “Project of Government” and create a common interface to access them across government
Implement Google Maps or better still Sadak Maps tracked through a mysql database to track all budget heads (and projects) at every budget level (local, state, national)
Implement a National Governance Wiki, along the lines of Giki, to build inclusive, open dialog for good governance. Particularly seek collaboration of all stakeholders for creating development agenda and track project implementation across the nation
Implement a demography wiki from Census of India database linked with Sadak Map
Implement a Survey of India map based wiki for the Land, Geological, Zoological, Botanical, Archeological surveys (for an example see the website of CIO, Pune city)
Design an educational wiki for the CBSE curricula for all teachers to register and contribute to and all students to discuss on discussion pages
Create a Sadkamap linked Giki as visioned in BeyondVoting to build a development vision for the constituencies that its representatives can track
Develop open-source secure community-card system as a person and property level information system. For a description of the idea see One-India Cards. See Life with Punecards for a description of the difference such a card can make to peoples lives in a city or a village.

Can you rank the list by desirability? Can you improve the list? Better still, can you make it happen?

Life with a Punecard

2009-05-04T04:28:00.000-07:00

Punecards is round the corner if you wish it. It may no longer be a dream of the distant future. But we need to desire it strongly enough before it happens. What will a Punecard world look like? What will you be willing to do to make this a reality?

I travel to Zensar. Ganesh has already intimated the security at the gate of my meeting with him and my Punecard number. When I mention my name the security pulls up my photograph retrieved from Punecard in the visitors expected list he has. I can just pass through as the picture matches. He can also quiz me with any profile details if he is in doubt.
I exchange my Punecard – my digital visiting card – with the people at the meeting. My visiting card is now current even when my mobile or email change.
At the admission desk of the university I provide my Punecard number- the clerk uses that to fill up my form. I could well have filled up the form online from home through Punecard. In one click I am able to provide all the details that are required by the admissions committee.
All educational institutes are now uploading my educational certificates to my Punecard account. I can now provide a digital degree certificate to those who ask it of me.
My privacy is now better controlled. I provide information digitally to whom I may want. Every provision of information also leaves behind an audit trail so I know anytime who took what information from me.
My data on Punecards is scattered between multiple servers and strongly encrypted. I can have a premium account to increase transaction security.
The RTO just needs my Punecard number to register my vehicle. My neighbor, who is still at the silver card level and not a platinum cardholder like me, has to add certified copies of various certificates along with the PuneCard number. I can just provide the number!
My Punecard now facilitates cashless bus travel- All I need to do is flash my card and enter my PMPML pin into the small machine next to the driver.
Surprise- Just after few weeks of using the Pune Card on PMPML busses and the bus routes and frequencies seem to have improved to match my needs!
My kids have got enrolled into a free “Yellow Bus” service to take them to school automatically. The pickup and drop of points have been intimated to them and me on the Punecards account.
My neighbor who works at the Magarpatta IT park has automatically got enrolled to a “Red Bus” service to take him back and forth at a time that he specified!
The Municipal and Cantonment bodies now offer me all civic interactions on my Punecard account. Now all the documents that relate to me automatically available to me on my account - the birth records, properties I own, their approved plans, NOC’s, building permissions, the licenses I have obtained; all digitally certified – I can even back them up on my computer if I wish. No longer do I need to run around for these services.
At parking lots I simply provide my Punecard number and my PIN – no more cash to dole out here!
The parking lots have got reconfigured over the year to accommodate the short and long park vehicles and cope with the loads. Nice to see a responsive local body!
I just moved houses- Thanks to Punecard I just update my profile on PuneCard and all relying parties that I transact with automatically update my address. A verification intimation is sent instantly to my email and mobile.
Applying for an insurance policy is a click away- my Punecard profile simply fills up the form here as it does for the mutual fund I apply for.
Lol! I could just walk away with the new mobile phone in 5 minutes with my Punecard! With dynamic “KYC” provided by the card, telecom companies now use this for fast track mobile and internet account registration.
The police are happier now that Pune is a safe city. Crime prevention is now far easier. Tracking a criminal is minutes away.
Voting online will soon be possible with the integration of Punecards into the ECI’s voting system.
Whenever my profile changes, I start with an unauthenticated profile. As I provide my details to different organizations the authentication count of my profile increases.
My Punecard account tracks the use of my information- I now have a record of who I have shared my profiles with. I can opt to stop sharing update details of my profiles.
When I sign up for my club I provide my Punecard number. My club uses Punecard’s premium services that allow them to provide club-members directory, calendars, alerts and much more.
My company can now allow me to manage my profile- no more request letters or repeated form filling for expense reports, travel indents, reimbursements, address, phone, email changes; all of these are filled through Punecards.
My company can now provide a digital certificate for employment- My supervisor can endorse the projects I participated in. My references are people on Punecards, themselves with a public profile on Punecards.
As a Punecard holder I now have a firm reference of my city backing me for getting a job, for being an entrepreneur and doing good business.
With Punecard premium services I can have my own home page with a public profile and opt to be listed in a searchable directory as a punekar!
To upgrade my Silver Punecard to Gold I can visit any of the Gold Relying Parties. They simply sign me up as a subscriber to their services and verified at least three of the documents required by Punecard.
I got my Platinum Card by visiting a certified authority who uploaded my photograph and fingerprints and verified the certificates I had carried with me. I don’t need to leave unsecured photocopies of these certificates anymore- all Punecard relying parties can just access them online now, and I know who accessed them.
I registered myself for postpaid charges on various services. I now use my card in the bus, parking lots, public phones etc with my PIN or thumb-print to authenticate my use. At the end of the month I pay for the services I used. My Punecard account page lists my usage and the amounts.
My Punecard allows third parties to provide me applications around my secure identity- I am glad that my bank, hospital, insurance company are now allowing me to bank my information with them on my Punecard account.

India 2015: An IT Vision for the Next Prime Minister of India

2009-03-09T21:26:00.000-07:00

2015. Everyone is experiencing a prosperous India. Life is hassle free and people walk around with heads high. Rabindranath Tagore’s smiles from the heavens as atlast India has awakened into the heaven of freedom.

The world is acknowledging the Prime Minister’s success in dealing with the major challenges India inherited: an unsafe and insecure India, a failing economy, an hassle filled life, failed land-use management, difficulties in making right projects happen in the right place at the right time, huge leaks in spending tax rupees, an absence of citizen friendly communication, lack of citizen involvement and inability to manage risks in a troubled world.

The ten-point IT program launched in 2009 has transformed the country.

The Ten Point IT Program
1. One-India Card: Building a safer India
2. Shared Information Systems: Information system across agencies and businesses to build a prosperous India
3. Citizen Benefits: Resident accounts for single-point hassle-free governance
4. Tracking Landuse: Vibrant and productive spaces for all
5. Mobility: Mobility cards for hassle free green transportation
6. Projects: Wiki to ensure right projects happen at the right place and right time
7. Budgets: Wiki to track that every rupee well spent for the people
8. Alerts: Broadcast channels for easy and people friendly communication
9. Collaborative governance: Letting people matter
10. Collaborative modeling and futures: Managing the risks of a troubled planet

One-India Card

Of the 3,976 villages with populations larger than 10,000 more than 3,000 have implemented the One-India Cards. Most of the remaining 634,389 villages with populations under 10,000 are implementing the One-India Cards. All of the 4,378 cities of India are now covered under the One-India Cards.

The One-India Cards were launched through licensed One-India Card providers in 2009 when the Prime Minister took over. Over 642,743 entrepreneurs are licensed providers of the One-India Card. They use the standard open-source technology already developed and implemented on a pilot scale in Pune. 35 exchanges run by the technology provider service the cities and villages in the 35 states and union territories to allow a quick query of the resident data from any One-India Card across the country.

Besides creating the huge number of entrepreneurs in the direct management of the cards for each city/village, there are a huge number of entrepreneurs customizing service and product delivery services around the One-India Card. Entrepreneurs have been integrating widgets and API’s into local commerce- the grocers, the libraries, the book shops, the malls, the insurance companies have all sought out ways to allow auto form-fill, customer business profiles, relationship management to integrate with the One-India Card. Some have even provided an integration of their data onto the One-India Card account of every resident signed on the card.

It is now mandatory for all government interactions to use the One-India Card to identify residents, obtain citizen information through forms and provide any services. Most of the Government offices have opted for the easy auto-form-fill services of the One-India Card to fill on-line forms for various requirements. They are also using the auto account-book to display the history and status of transactions with the government offices on the citizens account page.

Shared Information Systems

With One-India Cards the Prime Minister has ensured that there will be a single registry across India of its 1.14 billion residents. In fact there is a real-time information system of the demography of each region. The huge gap of information about the citizens is bridged as is the waste of resources in identifying citizens and authenticating them independently at every point of transaction. This has contributed to making a safer India. This has also brought accountability and responsiveness in dealing with every citizen across the country.

The Planning Commission and various Ministries now rely on information provided by the One-India Card to device and implement schemes for targeted demographic groups: women, children, economically underprivileged, handicapped, homeless, migrants, youth, elderly, unemployed illiterate to name a few.

The 309 million people (60% of the workers) in agriculture now form a backbone of the nation’s Agriculture Information System. Similarly the 61.92 million people (12% of the workers) in industry are the backbone of an Industry Information System. The 144.48 million people (28% of the workers) in services form the backbone of the Services Information System.

One-India Cards are also making it possible to track energy demand distribution of the 4.5 T kWh, 0.09 percent of India’s theoretical Solar Potential . One-India Cards are making it possible to locate the distribution and transmission network and better scale the various power plants and oil and gas stations. It is becoming easier to device a strategy to move from the current energy mix of 53% Coal, 33% Oil, 8% Natural Gas, 5% Hydroelectricity, 1% Nuclear and close to 0% Other Renewables to a different mix that will be more sustainable.

Naturally the One-India Information System has helped a quick revival of the economy- helping support to reach the regions and even individuals where it was needed. The stimulus plan having ensured that using the One-India Card appropriate incentive reached the bank account of each registered resident after an automatic evaluation of the eligibility.

The economy is now well past 4 trillion from the $3.305 trillion figure in 2008 and is growing at 9 to 12%.

Citizen Benefits

The account pages of each citizen now inform them about the demography, energy use, water use, land use, mobility and other details in their neighborhood. They are also told about the incentives, schemes, and programs that they have been automatically qualified for based on their profile information. They can also get their taxes worked out through third party licensed widgets and file them through the One-India Card. All this serves as a terrific incentive to help them update their profiles regularly.

While filling their profiles on the One-India Account Page individuals can quickly indicate their current or past employers or become one. Becoming an employer allows a one-step easy registration of a for-profit or a non-profit institution. Becoming an entrepreneur is as easy as that. This has helped create more jobs, compensating for the huge number of jobs lost when the recession hit in 2008-09.

Tracking Landuse

Recognizing the importance of tracking the conservation of the economic, energy and biological potential of its 3,287,240 square km tracking of land use, land records and property records have been standardized across the country.

Most of the 595 districts have initiated wiring every property. About 30 percent of the districts have completed more than 70 percent of the properties. The North East point of every property now has an official GPS device on it. Any movement of this point alerts the Land Use Information System. Each of the GPS coordinates link to a property database with records of its history and links to the One-India number for the owners.

Development Plans can now be monitored and implemented. Land acquisition is easier and partitioning property without violating Land Use has become possible.

The landless can now receive land, single property owners a 50% rebate in their taxes. Land taxes now work by a fixed rate per acre times the inflation, not by market rates.

One-India account holders can now search and view land-use, proposed use as per DP, encroachments, ownership, tenancy, other claims by loging in to their account. The information they sought on individual properties leaves a trail for purposes of security.

The forests, rivers, wetlands, fields and wastelands are now much better conserved as also the built environments across India.

Mobility

It has long been recognized that not just does mobility result in a happy people but it ensures a buoyant economy.

All vehicles now come with an embedded RFID that serves as a single registration of the vehicle with the Transport Ministry. Since road tax is now a pay-by-use per kilometer tax charged to the account of the person who owns the vehicle, all road junctions maintain a working RFID reader. The local-self-government of the region collects the road tax by billing the One-India Account of the vehicle owner. Inter city/town or village travel is simply charged the same way but a third party widget allows pay the road tax directly in a single click to multiple local governments.

All taxpayers get free information about traffic flows on different roads in any city, town or village. At a per-vehicle registered under the same name, the owner may subscribe to tracking her fleet of vehicles real time. Courier companies and transporters are using this system to track their fleet of vehicles.

The ministry of transport is able to generate real-time data as well as patterns of travel corridors for ensuring the smooth flow of vehicles in the city. The goods flow can be tracked by looking at the movement of goods vehicles.

Projects

Following the Web 3.0 emphasis on the IT Vision, every one of the government’s projects now has an online semantic wiki. For the Prime Minister this means every development project is track-able real time. It means that there is an overall development with millions of projects across the country tying together into a larger meaningful emergent whole. It means that projects happen, and happen on time. It means that projects are no longer about awarding contracts but rather about providing development.

For the people this is quite a startling change. Suddenly everyone can actually collaborate to make project be relevant to them, help to ensure they meet high quality standards and most importantly serve the purpose for which they were executed.

Simple semantic forms allow anyone to enter data about new projects: the description, the associated plans, start dates, milestones, end dates, budget links, contractors details and even the current status. Amazingly each project can be viewed on maps- even a small pop-up window on the location allows fill the semantic form! It is now possible to view the categories of projects happening across the country and obtain detailed information about each of them.

Budgets

Like the projects, all the tax Rupees are now track-able.

All government receipts through the multiple channels at local state and national levels now get displayed on a public semantic-wiki based application. Citizens can query and understand where the Tax Rupee is being collected real time. By geography, by income group, by item head, by level of government. They have an access to a huge spreadsheet to do a what-if analysis and suggest where it can come from and how it can be rationalized.

All the expenditure can now be tracked on a similar real time information system. Officials involved in the project associated with the budget head now have cards that allow them to expend money from the budget head upto the limit set for them. This has greatly speeded up the project execution process. This has also enabled the expenditure information to be available in real-time to everyone.

Alerts

Several public broadcasting feeds have become a common feature of all government offices. Twitter started it all in 2009. Most of the early adopters in the government designated an official tweeter who would broadcast deadlines, event alerts, sos messages, public notices, changes in people, processes or policies. This practice now continues but has been enhanced to reach out to non-twitter audiences through an RSS push on the One-India accounts of relevant persons.

Collaborative governance

The governance wiki now allows stakeholders to collaborate on all governance issues. It tracks people, projects, budgets, issues and visions of the various communities across the entire nation. India’s cost of governance has more than halved and it is regarded amongst the top three best governed countries in the world.

Recognizing the importance of the botanical, zoological, geological, archeological and land surveys in India there is now a National Wiki Institute that promotes the public participation. This has led a nation-wide collaboration to update the information on its assets and even provide a discovery of many that were not known before.

Schools, colleges and universities are actively researching on these assets and updating their findings on the national wikis for a nation wide collaboration.

Every city and village are following the pattern of Pune in providing a map to track information at the ward or community level.

Collaborative modeling and futures

After the failure of economic theories to identify and help cope with the economic meltdown of 2008-09 the Prime Minister called for an active program on futures research and alternative design. The National Institute on Futures Research and Design was set up to promote more resilient, stable and sustainable systems across the nation.

The Institute has successfully built a wiki based modeling platform that allows collaborative design of models that can be mixed and matched to help design real systems, processes, and organizations. Now all stakeholders can communicate effectively the impact of various decisions in different systems on them. This is enabling a better design. This is bringing a tremendous power to create networks, collaborations and communities that succeed. No wonder the economy has shot past 4 trillion and is galloping ahead close to double digits.

2015

The resulting India is one that brings prosperity to all. People can walk without fear and hold their heads high. Everyone has access to knowledge. The country is not fragmented by local, state and national governments.

The UN has requested the Prime Minister to replicate the vision across other countries and spread the prosperous and resilient economic and governance system across the globe.

You can make this your vision by modifying it on the the governance wiki.

Tweet for Pune!

2008-12-29T22:47:00.000-08:00

Imagine you could SMS to everyone. Imagine you could let everyone know there is a traffic jam at the University circle. Imagine you could send out an invite to the tree-planting drive on the Baner Hill. Imagine you could message the world that admissions open for the educational course you have been waiting for. Imagine you message out reports of malaria in your neighborhood or choose to report births, deaths, suspicious activities, new shops, sale offers, rentals….

Imagine as a government agency you message out water closures. Imagine you message out flood alerts, road closures or diversions, bus, train and air departures or arrivals, waste collection notices, new project announcements, vip visits, dates of elections, urls of actionable sites...

That’s like a twitter of birds- hundreds of messages all at once…No wonder that these public messages sent on the internet are called tweets.

Of course you do not want to have thousands of tweets clogging up your life and that’s why tweeters like @pravinnirmal are enabling location specific tweets on pages at the governance wiki. See the tweets at the bottom of this page on the governance wiki. Give it a try. This way you can see the tweets sent by anyone on a location on a page devoted to that location. You can even go edit that page and add your two-cents worth.

You can also signup on tweeter and choose to follow tweeters like myself, Barack Obama or anyone else! By following a tweeter you can see all the tweets the person sends out. Others interested in your tweets may choose to follow you too.

With the White House tweets, the US senate floor tweets, the US house floor and even the US Supreme Courts on twitter tweeting away, should the rest of the world be behind?

Cities in the US have begun tweeting. Look at: San Marcos, Texas, Greensborocity, North Carolina, Killeen, Texas, Round Rock, Texas, McAllen, Texas, Plano, Texas. The Police in Austin, Texas, are using tweets for law and order advisories, notices and quick reassurances.

Can we have our ward officers, the Pune Police, the Pune RTO, the Pune Collector, the PMC, the PCMC, the Cantonment Boards, the MIDC, the PWD, the telecom companies in Pune, the Income Tax commissionerate, the Service tax commissionerate, the Pune University and even the businesses in Pune tweet?

All this is simple and free. Just sign into Twitter and start listening to the whole world- or talking too! Well not exactly the whole world, but to the whole world signed into twitter. If you are a government agency or a business in Pune you may qualify for some help and customization to get your tweets increasing your impact and effectiveness. Just email cio.pune@gmail.com to request your office to show the way to the rest of India.

Pune 2015

2008-05-17T20:29:00.000-07:00

Pune 2015. Of the 4 million, over 3 million citizens of Pune are using Pune-card and most of them keep track of the card-transactions through their ilife account. About 5 percent users still prefer a quarterly paper-statement of their ilife.

I log in as Anupam.Saraph at the punecity.gov.in site. It is the single point for my ilife. Single windows are passé. No longer do I need to go to “singe-windows” at different departments or offices of the local, state or central government, I simply log into my ilife. Better still my bank, insurance company, hospital and even my local grocer are ilife enabled.

The pain of providing the same information over and over at different counters is history. The first time I registered myself to ilife, through my computer at home, I was asked to provide information to identify myself. I was requested to visit any one of the 14 ward offices to provide a photograph and my thumbprint to receive my Pune-card, my username and a password to access ilife. That was it.

My Pune-card provides me with cashless bus-travel, parking and entry into all electronic access public locations as well as electronic entry enabled private locations. It works as a cash-card and also replaces time-consuming procedures with countless forms to make applications. It simplifies and secures transactions as I can simply allow the service providers to swipe my card and take my thumbprint to access information. Only information that I have marked as allow through Pune-card will be accessed at points-of-transaction. The transaction is updated in my account on ilife.

When I log in my account includes records of every institution with whom I did a transaction, either using the Pune-card or directly through ilife. Government departments, businesses and service providers have registered themselves to use Pune-cards and ilife. In one-step through a single-point they gain access to the reliable, authentic and consistent information that they need from me thus enabling them to shorten the time it takes to service my requirements.

ilife has made my life more hassle-free and organized. All my transactions are filed into my account, no longer do I need to search for documents, certificates or obtain “NOC’s” for any transaction- even my photographs and signatures have become unnecessary. From my birth, education, marriage records to tracking my assets and accounts, my income and expenses even my taxes all get organized securely and with full privacy by ilife.

Pune having become the country’s first city to be unwired has device connectivity across the city through secure channels. Thousands of card-readers, traffic sensors, flow-meters, switches can now communicate information or take instructions on secure channels across the city. This has enabled Pune-card readers to instantaneously access the ilife servers to query or update information.

ilife’s open source and open standards have enabled it to create an eco-system of services by diverse service providers. A whole industry of businesses has flourished providing solutions to enable their services onto ilife.
Even my travel has now become more hassle-free as I subscribe to itravel solutions built by third parties using the ilife framework. I can view my travel route for congestion before a journey- even book a route, at a price, for guaranteed average-time or lower travel times. I can get mobile alerts for bus routes I subscribe to or choose to be informed if the bus is delayed.
Other service providers enable my son’s tutoring for the courses he has chosen. iteach manages the city-wide teachers and the courses they run and allow me to book myself or my son onto any course run by a specific teacher at a venue- the various schools or colleges.

The city’s water distribution is now monitored over the unwired network as also the city’s lighting system. I am alerted into my ilife account of any system failures, scheduled closures or quality issues. I can in turn contribute to alerting the utilities about any problems or failures.

ilife now enables me to view my electoral ward’s map. I can choose to view the schools and display schools that can be reached on a bicycle track from my house. I can look for theaters and markets and check for bus routes that will take me directly there. I can look for restaurants I can walk to or parks and gyms that I can jog to. Third parties are running ipage services (the replacement of the yellow pages) to businesses to add additional query-able information updates about their business into the basic information on the map. Hotels are adding tariffs and booking-gateways. Restaurants are adding menus and home-delivery-gateways.

A vibrant collaboration to build the communities around local self-help is on through wiki-enabled web-pages. This has helped to bring world-class infrastructure standards to Pune. The city has already distinguished itself in creating a collaborative development plan that identified visions for the next 20 years, the challenges for the city over the next 20 years as well as various strategies to address these challenges. The city ran a world-wide simcity based competition to “Design for Pune” and generated a huge dialog about the challenges and strategies for the city. It also built a strong sense of belonging in the city, a commitment to common visions and a tremendous positive culture to address challenges and make visions happen.

As a result of this alignment, the city has made a transition to non-fossil-fuel based transportation systems, become energy surplus, has a 100% water access for 24x7 and the countries best record on recycling and managing waste. It has also been able to get the largest carbon-credits through the huge corridors of greening accomplished across all the city’s watersheds.
Web 2.0 based technologies have resulted in creating city-resource planning (CRP) across local-state and central government authorities.

Pune in 2015 is the country’s first icity. The Prime Minister has called for the creation of ilife servers in every city to ensure good-governance. The UN has decided to replicate the Pune model across the world for ensuring sustainable development and stable and value yielding economies.

Creating Collaboration in Governments

2008-03-24T21:44:00.000-07:00

Wikis
Wiki’s are websites that allow users to add, remove, edit and change content. Unlike typical websites wikis are invitations to collaborate, self-organize and create order from chaos.

The best-known wiki is Wikipedia, the free content collaborative encyclopedia with over 7.2 million articles. In March 2000 Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger initiated the then radical goal of creating a publicly editable encyclopedia. Today Wikipedia is ranked amongst the top 15 most visited sites in the world and its publicly edited content is recognized by Nature as having similar accuracy as the Encyclopedia Britannica.

The success of Wikipedia is attributed to it using the features of a wiki. Wikis are generally designed with the philosophy of making it easy to correct mistakes, rather than making it difficult to make mistakes. Thus, while wikis are very open, they provide a means to verify the validity of recent additions to the body of pages.

The "Recent Changes" page on a wiki provides a list of all the edits made within a given timeframe. The “History” page on a wiki allows to track all the edits made to a page since its posting. Wiki’s also help track the contributions of different users making vandals and vandalism easy to spot and correct.

Wikis also provide for creating pages with restrictive access- only those with a valid access can view, add, remove and change the content on these pages. This allows the creation of wikis with access to registered users or controlled groups.

Decision Making in Government
In a government the process of decision-making is a collaborative process- whenever new ideas are proposed, applications are made or decisions need to be made the government creates a ‘file’. This file then takes a journey back and forth through the hierarchy of the government from the clerk who generated it to the Minister or even the Chief Minister and then back. The file travels through the government office across through a path defined by a ‘book of rules or procedures’, tradition of the office or a path marked by the person who created the file. It can also be redirected to other people, departments, and ministries. Sometimes files remain on a table for long periods.

Each file has a right hand side of the proposal backed with supporting documents and a left hand side that tracks its journey and the comments or ‘notations’ of those who receive, ‘study’ and forward the file.

A wiki is an ideal way to enable this government wide collaboration of decision-making. Instead of a file a wiki would create a wiki-page on the file-topic. All who are given access to the wiki could see new pages or edits on old pages using the “Recent-Changes” feature or simply search for pages with categories relevant to them. They can then just make any changes, which then become instantly available to all across the government.

With a wiki the government office is well equipped for quick turnaround and transparent decision making.

Imagine- no more file tracking, no-more wait. No more barriers of departmental walls to seek out information on relevant projects.

Imagine a complete transparency of the changes made by everyone who contributed to the process. Imagine the Right to Information Act (RTI) simply granting access to the relevant pages and no painful searches for information that does not exist.

Collaborating with citizens
Governments traditionally do not collaborate with citizens- inputs of citizens can at best be heard through citizen-groups, lobbyists, NGO's, media focus or representations. Governments therefore become very insular and loose the sense of purpose of activities in a sector or area.

By creating wiki’s that allow citizens to add, modify or even delete information the government can create collaborative-governance. For example a draft development plan could be ‘opened-up’ to citizen collaboration in the form of wiki pages. Citizens would then be able to fill in the gaps, add content and collaborate to developing a better region.

The opportunity
There are enormous possibilities to use the power of the internet to not only create collaboration in government but empowering the democratic process beyond the electoral process. It is an opportunity to see other offices, departments and citizens as partners and not adversaries. An opportunity to create shared visions and empower powerful missions.

Creating collaborative systems

2007-09-10T03:59:00.000-07:00

Roles

To cooperate you need to share a common goal with those you cooperate with. Most of the time the failure of cooperation is from an inability to share a common goal.

To collaborate you do not need to share a common goal- rather for you to work together to evolve goals, some of which may be shared and others may find strong disagreement.

To participate you do not need to work together- you only need to take part.

Unfortunately we use the word cooperation to describe what at best may be a participation. Most systems that enable, reinforce or cause success of these roles are therefore often accidental and not by design. It is not uncommon therefore to encounter a poverty of systems that enable, reinforce or cause success of participatory, collaborative or cooperative roles.

At best most democratic processes result in participating. They enable participation by franchise. However they do not reinforce participation- the participant is rarely rewarded by the act of participating. It is little wonder that democratic processes report poor turnouts and hung verdicts. H.G.Wells in his Anticipations has even predicted democracy to be a passing phase.

The value and endurance of the outcomes depends on what roles people play. It depends on the systems that enable, reinforce or cause the success of the roles.

Collaborative roles

Participative decision making requires those with a stake in the decision to take part- it does not require a voice nor a result favorable to the participant. Unless of course you want the participant to continue to participate.

Collaborative decision making moves a step ahead- it focuses on having people work together and discover common goals and even define common projects. Systems that enable collaboration ensure a voice for every participant. Such systems ensure they reinforce dialog and reward positive attitudes and working together.

Systems that enable participation, collaboration or cooperation can be restricted to a set of predefined participants (closed) or they can be open to participation from anyone.

Decision making

Meetings in organizations are a participatory process- they provide a means to participate. They do not necessarily provide the participants with a voice. They also do not require the participants to work together.

Decision making in governments is perhaps the best example of collaborative decision making. Yet unfortunately in most governments collaboration lacks a proper system to enable, reinforce and reward working together.

In a government decisions are made through a “consensus” evolved from people working together. Decisions start as a proposal, complaint, suggestion, request or even a brochure that is put on a government file. The file journeys through the government hierarchy based on the “rules of business” of the government or sometimes on the route explicitly suggested by the initiator of the proposal. This requires that all people who are part of the route work together to evolve a consensus. While this system enables different participants to work together, this system does not reinforce working together nor does it reward working together.

On-line collaboration

Wikipedia is perhaps the best example of online open collaboration. Anyone can take part in creating wikipedia. All you need to do is visit www.wikipedia.org and create an article on a subject of interest to you or just modify an existing article to incorporate your suggestions. It is the working together of man individuals interested in the topics on wikipedia that shapes each article. The more the people who take part the better is the final product, the greater is the value and benefit to the contributors.

Wikipedia thus not only enables collaboration but it reinforces it- authors take part in each others articles and make positive contributions. Negative contributions are quickly removed by other participants. Wikipedia also rewards the contributors with the end product: the allowing them to enjoy the fruits of articles they initiated, authored and edited.

Wikis in business and government

Businesses and governments can use a wiki- the open source software that allows you to create user-editable websites like the wikipedia- to create collaborative systems. Such systems can be open or restricted to private participation.

Wikis offer themselves as excellent means to adress the many collaborative needs of business and government: creating customer support, providing customer-driven services, designing new products, writing manuals, creating relevant projects, discovering missions, negotiating, gathering data, benchmarking, discovering what works- or what does not, understanding the progress, capturing changes in the environment.

Need of the hour

All projects and problems require a participative, collaborative or cooperative role. If we do not create systems that enable, reinforce or reward the role we desire we will not have the performance that we desire.

Thankfully designing participatory, collaborative and cooperative systems is getting easier and easier!

Take it to a new level

2007-05-22T08:49:00.000-07:00

For the people, by the people, of the people- take it to a new level.

To participate in making a difference visit Giki.