Where is the Vision?

Couple of days back, Govt of India finally opened its eyes and came up with a portal of its own. A much awaited one, given the fact that, in most of the developing countries it is very easy to get approvals online to start your own business etc and many other things. India has always been blamed of being covered from head to toe with red tape. Well rest assured, now
you can take your driving licence from any state online, companies can file returns online, you can contribute to Prime Minister's Fund and much much more. Yes you can also register your company and start business. This needs to be validated as the provision seems to bethere.

I checked it a little more in detail. There are maps which show almost all the demographic ratios and details. An interesting thing was that there are some state reports that are available online. There are four states for which there are some reports that are online. The obvious two should have been Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. Well thats not the case. The list goes like this in alphabetical order - Goa, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal. Surprise it is that two of the states are the communist bastions where such things like adapting technology should be the least important programme of the government. Tamil Nadu has always been better off in terms of adapting technology and setting up infrastructure, be it the blooming educational institutions in that state or the industries setting up shop in the state. Goa is another state which is making progress at a rapid pace.They have quietly implemented changes like "Banning Plastic Bags", which lead to such a hue and cry even in Mumbai. They pulled it off quite successfully too.

I further probed and was surprised to find the "Vision 2020" document available online. I downloaded the document as I thought I will read it peacefully at home and see what the Govt has thought for us when we will be like 40 years old. There were seperate sections like Urban Infrastructure, Rural infrastructure, Telecom and Transport, which sounded interesting as these were the current issues in focus after the rains and stuff. Well we still live with our major issues like Poverty, Illiteracy and Unemployment. They are like the old politicians in parliament, they will take a while to get out of the system.

Ok now about the document Vision 2020. It is a document written in 2002, by the committee under the chairmanship of Dr. S P Gupta (He was/is a member of PLanning Commission). The Foreword is by K C Pant, the Deputy Chairman, Planning Commission. Its starts off like this "Every country needs a vision statement which stirs the imagination and motivates all segments of society to greater effort"...wow, should be interesting. It goes on to say that the committee after intensive research etc, has examined the issues that the country faces, giving projections for 2020 and all.

With this I thought let me check out the the 3 sections that I was talking about. Page number 58 took me to the Chapter 4 - Infrastructure. It started off with some statistics and then some general statements, which doesnt prove a point to anyone who is reading it. It moves to rural infra and then compares rural and urban living. A fifth standard comparison of these two parameters. I was expecting the Planning Commission to give some break-through ideas on how the infra problems would be solved,some new plans would be suggested, but nothing like that. There was a one and only alternative suggested, which goes like this "link clusters of ten villages together by a high speed circular highway, thereby bringing 100,000 or more people into a circular community that can be crossed within 30 minutes travel time, and promoting a balanced and well spread out development of urban services along the periphery of the ring road."

Telecom was even worse than Infra.It traces the history of how the telecom sector developed in India. Is this a document for the future or a circumsition of the past. Give me a break. There is a table thrown in to show the "Number Main Telephone Lines per 100 Inhabitants". Us rests on top followed by Germany, Japan...If the telecom sector was not thrown open to privatisation we would not have seen the kind of growth seen now. It is more affordable and easy for the mobiles to penetrate than waiting for the BSNL people to dig up the roads in laying cables. And with its set principles of generalised inferences the section on Telecom comes to an end in page number 64.

Next in line is Transport. The same statistics. The road transport is discussed and it makes a statement like this "No organised, viable and significant public transport system is available in major cities, except the four metro areas of Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai and Delhi." Thank you sir, it was an eye-opening statement. I feel ashamed to state the conclusions drawn in the document. It is like the fillers you sometimes write in your exam paper when you know like 2 points but have to somehow make 5 points out of it. Again there is a table with Future Trends in Transport. I dont have words to describe it. After the entire reading the only value add to me was in knowing the fact, if it is true is that "Already more people travel between Delhi and Mumbai by air than by rail." No numbers to prove it, will have to check it out. Not difficult these days. But I do not have the patience. All you need to do is find out the number of flights and trains between these sectors and then do some addition and multiplication.

Thats for later, but what do we do of our bureaucrats who cant think of any Vision for us, hapless Indians. they might bloody well think of how much to loot from the public pockets in the next 100 years, but not this. The only argument against this article could be that, maybe the actual vision of a country is not disclosed in the public domain. This is a loose argument as nobody gains anything in knowing our country's vision for 2020. I only have one thing to say after reading the Vision 2020 document - A paper writing contest in a B-school would have prepared a better Vision 2020 statement. I am serious.

~Sujith

And the whole time I was typing this article, I played just one song and repeated it. The title song fom Swades - "Yeh jo Desh hai tera". A R Rehman has got this unique ability to deliver patriotic numbers. The movie was one of the best I saw last year. But unfortunately, the Hindi movies I consider good are always a flop at the box-office.