After Aadhaar Card, now Nandan Nilekani lays road map for improved India

Bengaluru, Nov 10: A new book, authored by Nandan Nilekani and Viral Shah, extensively talks about challenges that the new India is facing. The book, "Rebooting India: Realizing a Billion Aspirations", was launched at Taj West End Hotel in Bengaluru on Monday, Nov 9.

Outlining studied road map to invigorate India, the book proposes for the romancing between positives of technology and the government.

Though Nilekani, the co-founder of Infosys and former chairman of Unique Identification Authority of India(UIDAI), takes critical stand against snail-like system of bureaucracy, he admits there are many goods in the system which has to be amalgamated with technology to see the emergence of changed India.

"We have lot of aspirations and aspirations are non linear. With the 19th century of bureaucratic system alone, it is impossible to meet all the aspirations," he observes.

The book that is also co-authored by Viral Shah spreads broad light on bringing fertilizer subsidy of farmers under Direct Benefit Transfer Scheme (DBT) as to save travel expenses of backbone of India to collect the subsidy amount.

"While me and my team was touring in Uttar Pradesh, we witnessed an untoward incident of police resorting to lathi charge to control flooding farmers to collect subsidized sack of fertilizers," Viral narrated.

He asks when urban class can avail technology to see ordered materials coming at their door step, why can't same be applied for the rural mass, especially farmers.

Roping young intellectuals

Viral and Nandan were addressing an elite gathering, which was attended by noted personalities like, co-founder of Infosys, Narayana Murthy, former MP Divya Spandana (Ramya), hostorian Ramachandra Guha and others. Nandan envisaged in the book only integration of technology open doors to innovative India.

The book, however, proposes ten challenges for India and suggest start-ups within the government itself.

"As many as 100-200 young intellectuals should work on technical front to revolutionize techno-government system." Nilekani proposed.

Bureaucratic receptiveness

The authors in the book write about how the government regulatory bodies has to encourage new kinds of business emerging on the back of technological revolutions.

The rigid bureaucratic system has to be changed in order accommodate aspirations of new business ventures to reboot India, the book reads.

Besides, the book has a chapter on political economy and implications of centralized voting system to eliminate the problem of constituency constrain at the time of voting and end corruption at the time registration of voting rights.

Intellectual Property

Diverse key sectors-health, education, election, transportation, energy, finance and others has to be enabled with improved technology to change the lives of lay man of the nation.

Nandan and Viral in the book floated the idea of cash-less and paper less system. Ahead of materializing the project, it is impending to create intellectual property to set the stage to transform the system.

The technology lends speed to the government institutions that has been marred with bureaucratic apathy for many decades.

He cited the example of success of Aadhar by the UIDAI and the work the team underwent before realizing the project.

He opined, though Adhar was introduced by the UPA (United Progressive Alliance), the incumbent Modi government has been reaping the benefits. He divulge he met PM Narendra Modi to convince not to drop Adhar.

Net Neutrality

Nandan Nilekani stands firm by the side of net neutrality as he fear of few Internet giants slowing whole digital network of the globe. "I am for net neutrality and I fear, if the aspect was neglected there is a massive threat of few Internet barons of Silicon Valley controlling global digital network."

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