[Reader-list] Netas and babus can outsmart smart cards

[Taha Mehmood]

More cautious voices emerging it seems....



http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Columnists/S-A-Aiyar-Netas-babus-can-outsmart-smart-cards/articleshow/4739109.cms

Netas and babus can outsmart smart cards

Swaminathan S Anklesaria Aiyar5 July 2009,

Dear Nandan Nilekani,

Nobody is better qualified than you to head the government's project
to create an identification number for every citizen, buttressed with
a smart card that allows governments, banks and other institutions to
interact with every citizen. In theory this could transform the
quality of governance, weed out corruption and waste, and end poverty
by helping target the poor. I wish you luck.

Smart ministers (like you) are better than dumb ministers. Yet
low-level netas and babus have long outwitted smart ministers. Your
book Imagining India cites Rajiv and Rahul Gandhi as saying that only
5-15% of programme funds reach beneficiaries. Sadly, implementing
officials are unaccountable and unsackable. So, your challenge is not
to create smart cards so much as to outsmart the saboteurs along the
line.

The government already issues ration cards, PAN cards, voter cards,
and job cards. All are riddled with leakages and gaps. All suffer from
ghosting (cards issued to non-eligible or non-existent persons) and
missing out (deserving people do not get cards, especially the poor
and illiterate).

The government has issued 223 million ration cards, but India has only
200 million households. It has issued 80 million BPL (below poverty
line) ration cards although the number of poor households is under 65
million.

PAN cards for income tax payers, issued by renowned IT companies, are
a fiasco. Several people have multiple PAN cards, while others have
none.

Voter ID cards have been issued for a decade. Yet, millions of voters
find their names missing from the rolls, many have not got cards, and
many dead voters remain on the rolls.

Job cards are being issued for employment schemes. Yet, we have
reports of substantial ghost cards and missing beneficiaries.

Your book says that the government has data on people in various
silos, but these are not interconnected. A national ID card with
electronic capability can connect the silos, improve
government-citizen interaction, and so transform governance. And yet,
as your book itself says, e-governance will remain a showcase unless
governments are serious. Alas, many are not.

Gyandoot in Madhya Pradesh, India's first e-governance scheme, won an
international prize. Today, it is dysfunctional because data are not
constantly updated and made accessible to citizens. Gyandoot started
off smart but ended up dumb.

Economist Lant Prtichett says India is not a failed state, but is a
flailing state. "Its very capable head is not reliably connected to
the arms and legs of implementation... the agents of the state
routinely do not implement the tasks they are assigned."

Driving licences are imposed to improve driving standards. But the
licensing process is so painful that most applicants simply pay a tout
to get a licence, without undergoing a real driving test. Attempts to
reduce absenteeism of nurses in Rajasthan failed because staff ensured
that devices to monitor attendance did not work. Pritchett gives many
examples of non-implementation.

Government servants are responding to perverse incentives. They don't
get rewarded for satisfying citizens. But officials who extort suffer
no penalty, and get promoted in cahoots with corrupt netas. Such a
system is quite smart, but has no interest in service delivery.

If the implementers have no interest in service delivery, can a smart
card outsmart them? ID cards can check illegal immigration. But if the
ruling parties of West Bengal and Assam view illegal immigrants as
vote banks, will they really use smart cards to crack down? When chief
ministers demand huge sums to post officials to "lucrative" posts,
will they use smart cards to undercut this patronage network?
Contractors in every state are party cadres. Will chief ministers
bankrupt their own cadres by using smart cards to check waste and
corruption? Such examples can be multiplied a hundredfold.

Smart cards can transfer funds directly to the needy. In theory,
governments can replace a hundred anti-poverty schemes and subsidies
with cash transfers, eliminating leakages. But this won't happen
because politicians view the poor as too small a votebank, and prefer
distributing largesse to others - they don't see this as leakage.
Hence, they favour free water and power for all farmers, not just poor
ones.

I fear that that even if you create a smart card to deliver cash to
the poor, politicians will not wind up a single subsidy or
anti-poverty scheme. Smart cards may become just one more scheme, with
its own leakages and omissions.

My aim is not to deride your task, but to highlight its problems. I
have great respect for your acumen. I hope you will outsmart all the
saboteurs on India's electronic path. But i wouldn't bet on it.