Comments on: BJP’s “IT for All”

By: Politician Promise » BJP Promises 2Mbps Lines, Unlimited VoIP, 1 Billion Internet Subs; Colonize Mars? - They Promise, We Demand

Sat, 09 May 2009 16:06:12 +0000

[...] Atanu Dey has made certain assumptions about the cost of BJPs IT rollout plan, and estimates that the overall cost will be around $80 [...]

By: Global Voices Online » India: BJP’s IT Vision And Poverty

Global Voices Online » India: BJP’s IT Vision And Poverty — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 08:21:44 +0000

[...] Dey takes a look at the $80 billion dollar IT vision plan of the political party BJP and comments that: “there [...]

By: sridhar87

sridhar87 — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 05:00:44 +0000

BJP Election 2009 manifesto download

bjpkarnataka.org — Full text of election 2009 manifesto of BJP for download.

By: sridhar87

sridhar87 — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 03:52:58 +0000

0
-+
I agree with all ideas with the nation but,if it comes to progress it will be good .

support to bjp,visit–
http://bjpkarnataka.org

By: naavi

naavi — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 08:40:38 +0000

I agree with sreej. The estimates given here are very pessimistic.

The MNIC cards can be sourced at less than Rs 50/- per card as against the RS 200/- indicated here. So the cost could be only 25% of what is estimated here. I feel that we also may avoid smart cards and go for a simple paper card with a bar code at best. In such a case the cost may come down even further. The real cost of the system is the management of a secure data base with adequate DRP and BCP support. (I have discussed this several years back at naavi.org. Rolling out of the system is definitely within the capability of the industry and I donot see a technical problem. However, there will be a massive field work to be done and it could take a couple of years.

Let’s remember that the previous government had enough resources to spend Rs 60000/- crores simply for writing off farmer’s loans which was a completely unproductive use.

The MNIC cards are important for Security reasons as well as many other projects and hence its cost need to be distributed over different projects.

The only place where I have a difference of opinion is the free distribution of mobiles. I think this is not necessary. instead we can continue to encourage services such as Kiosks which can provide the required services which the public may otherwise access with the mobile. These will be like the Cyber Cafes or public telephone booths. This will create more jobs.

By: sreej

sreej — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 19:44:17 +0000

You are overtly cynical about the whole IT policy. The BJP should be applauded for at least having one.(Im not a BJP supporter), even if the said IT policy cannot be carried out as it is. I see losgistics as a bigger concern than the spending capacity of the Government- India’s defense budget alone is nearing $40bn. Also for the sake of pushing your argument you have over exaggerated the figures. No- ID cards are not going to cost Rs 200 each if you are going to make 1 billion of them. You get 2gb flash drives for that kinda money nowadays and smart cards are much simpler devices. Rs 1000 for processing per person is again an exaggeration. I bet the contract for the whole thing can be signed for maybe about $10bn. The promise is to get it done within a span of 3 years. you have calculated it as a one time expense which is illogical.Once the system is set in place, the recurring expenses are very less. Of course such an exercise shouldn’t be left to the government for the very same reasons you have already mentioned- corruption and mismanagement. Again about laptop pricing- you can get an eepc for about 12k.10k is not a stretch from there.broadband prices- u already get a 2mbps connection from bsnl( adsl) for about Rs250 a month. Bsnl has a fiber optic backbone running the length and breadth of the country. Again you stretch the argument to the illogical and you have clearly not tried to get your facts right or spent time trying to apply serious thought to it. I would put the cost of the whole program to be around a third or at least half of what you calculate it to be. Suppose the government spends $30-$40bn dollars on the programme, it’ll be able to generate about 10 mn jobs and plough back about $5-10bn in taxes. not to mention the benefits of increased revenues to the government due to lesser black market dealings and also reduced expenditure by the scaling down of the IT dept,the census exercise will become obsolete etc.

If i see at least half of these measures being carried out in true spirit it’ll do a lot of good for this country. At least the vision should be applauded and not pushed away into the realm of the impossible.
my 2 cents

By: vishu

vishu — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 05:04:26 +0000

Arung – How can we say that fundamental question is if a plan works or not! The goal it to make plan work. Nothing else matters!
What is the point of talking policies which will never work. How can there be internet enabled schools when there are no schools, no teachers to teach.
Let us not be blind for weakness of some of the ideas and imagine that they are cure for all the world ills.

Vishal

By: arung

arung — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 15:17:33 +0000

This is what I replied to a friend who sent me the link to this a couple of days back:
Good that Atanu wrote about this, though cynical he is, as usual.
It was really sad to see this news item delegated to inner pages of
newspaper while statue of Charlier Chaplin and dissent of Arun Jaitely
hogging the first pages of newspapers.
Instead of going to sleep after reading the press release, Atanu
should have given this a more serious consideration. If we can give
$15 Billion to farmers and an equal amount to Babus and other stupid
stuff like NREGA surely we can afford the ivory tower luxury of $80
billion.
Its not conventional to talk about development during election time in
this country. I would expect people like Atanu, to come out of their
own ivory tower and realise where they are living.
What instead they should do is grip politician by the neck, using the
power of their thought.
Here what Atanu has done is to take all the rough and instant
calculations forgetting economies of scale that so wonderfully work as
far as ICT is concerned. I did not expect him to be harping on same
stone age argument that how can IT come before Water,Sanitation and
Health as if its a Zero sum game. Perhaps his real life experience at
Netcore and Deesha has not been encouraging and he might be forced to
think that if we as profit oriented enterprenures could not do it, how
can GoI do it?
The more fundamental question is not that if this is a plan which will
work or not work or is it just a pipe dream. The question is that one
set of politicians has started talking about development breaking from
the conventional divisive politics. The educated class should give it
the attention it deserves and should instead question the other
political parties about their vision and their plans for India. Sure,
there will be flaws in all plans but they can be corrected. Maybe the
best thing is to not have any plans at all.

By: #IndiaVotes09: BJP Promises 2Mbps Lines, Unlimited VoIP, 1 Billion Internet Subs; Colonize Mars? | MediaNama

Tue, 17 Mar 2009 15:22:17 +0000

[...] Atanu Dey has made certain assumptions about the cost of BJPs IT rollout plan, and estimates that the overall cost will be around $80 [...]

By: vishu

vishu — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 14:15:48 +0000

And the ads from Google will come in the free mobiles provided by the BJP Government

By: vishu

vishu — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 14:11:58 +0000

One can use biometrics to record the personal identity.
We really need to have some means of knowing how may people we have in our country and other important attributes of that person.
This work needs to be done by googles of the world.
The scale of solution required cannot be done by normal IT.
The government can work with Googles of the world to come out with a solution.Google may subsidize it if given permission to show ads
The government should not repeat the voting card disaster and waste tax payers money by attempting to do the work itself.Once there is a digital identity of a person it will give dividends in long run.
A person can be charged to get the identity card.

The idea is good but execution remains a challenge in India.

Vishal

By: AG

AG — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 10:40:28 +0000

I agree with the dismissal of all but one idea: the National ID.

It will be expensive but will be hugely powerful to track taxes, security, etc.
One will have to roll it out carefully.

India needs more BHAG’s (big hairy audacious goals) — this is one of the more sensible ones.

By: plodder

plodder — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 02:54:00 +0000

You have made a compelling case to show that it is just not possible to realize all the objectives outlined in the vision document, maybe not even in five years. However, I am ironically encouraged by your funding estimate of $80 billion, which comes to $20 billion per year. While that is still a large figure, it is around half the estimated amount spent per year on all the central welfare schemes and subsidies per year (178 lakh crores or $45 billion – see ‘cash for direct cash transfer’ by Arvind Subramaniam et al http://www.iie.com/publications/papers/subramanian0408b.pdf). It can be safely estimated that the amount of subsidies siphoned away today should be enough to fund precisely such a scheme. For example, according to the same paper the amount of money reaching the poor in the Maharashtra EGS scheme for example is Rs 20 for every Rs. 100.
You have asserted that IT for ITs sake would not make sense. So, for example a BPL family that is given a smart mobile phone just for its own sake would prefer to sell it for the next meal rather than hold on to it. I think it is absolutely essential to leverage the smart phone as a medium for providing vital public services. For example, if that BPL family realizes that that very mobile phone enables it to gain access to its bank account (also envisaged as an entitlement in that document) for its entitlement benefits, or if it enables better prices for their agricultural produce, or provides them with information related to the weather, then it is very likely to consider that device as a life saver. Granted, success is not guaranteed and even this approach is prone to pitfalls and failures. But the possibility of providing more efficient and responsive public services using IT does exist. There are several anecdotes to show the benefits provided by mobile phones on the economic lot of small and micro-businesses. (see http://blogs.nmss.com/communications/2007/02/cellphones_deve.html)
My point is that IT should be considered a means to provide better and more efficient public services, it is definitely worth a consideration. Obviously the document lacks specifics on meeting these objectives. It does not make obvious the linkage between an IT tool and the corresponding public service that it seeks to deliver, but on the whole it is still worth consideration.

By: jackzob

jackzob — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 20:06:32 +0000

Mr. Dey, I agree with some of your concerns/viewpoints, especially the fact that “if the system itself is good, IT enlarges the good” . But I think you are missing the point that this is not all about expenditure.

The number of jobs this initiative will generate is immense [including but not limited to Call Centers and Services]. The cascading effects of this will be renewed interest in IT, access to better technology, gradual shift towards unexplored areas in the Technology sector, the ability to counter corruption to some extent.

Also, there is a vicious circle I see here. If something like MNIC becomes a reality then the system will become better and IT in turn will “enlarge the good”.

Your response is awaited.

By: vishu

vishu — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 16:21:18 +0000

Atanu-
The IT policy is utter crap. Leave it to people and markets to decide how to use IT. We have now progressed from free electricity and free TV to free mobiles!
The BJP should think to give people first roads, schools and good governance. IT will be taken care be people.

The idea for MNIC is good but in current state of affairs in India it can never be implemented. Whenever it gets implemented the best way to go ahead is to charge for the MNIC and not give it free.

Vishal

By: viveksh

viveksh — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 16:07:17 +0000

Reminds me of this article on the Garibi Roko program by Mrinal Pande at livemint.com:

Pandit Buddhi Ballabh’s buffalo: an Indian fable

You’ve got to read it!

By: praveshb

praveshb — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 06:40:17 +0000

Atanu,

Do you really think that ” BJP has worked it out already”?

By: BangaloreGuy

BangaloreGuy — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 06:18:13 +0000

Atanu,

+s of your analysis:

1. Yes, Govt. should keep it hands off more direct spending.

-s of your analysis:

1. You’re ignoring the knock-off benefits that accrue from handing out laptops to the poor. They stand to gain a lot just by getting access to the latest tech – and having a laptop inevitably means one gets access to the internet and info over portable media – which’s never a bad thing. (Ask the piracy/porn industries)

2. MNIC is a very good tool to have. Not just for security purposes but also for easy identification.
2a. Now, everytime someone has to prove their identity they need at least 2 documents – one for photo-identity, and one for address proof.
2b. And then just having to give it in different places means tonnes of paper wasted in photocopying. If you hop over to your office’s travel desk, or photocopier stats you’d see how much paper’s wasted. This has both environmental and (immediate)economic benefit.

3. You ignore the benefits of scale. Just look at the numbers yourself. Dangle the numbers of 10 million laptops in front of Dell/Lenovo/Acer and see how prices drop. So also for the MNIC

4. You use inflated prices to determine the cost. Netbooks (decently spec’d laptops of prev. generations- mobile processors, 1GHz CPUs, 1GB RAM,) start somewhere around 15-20k as of date. Broadband prices arent 4k per 2mbps line – ask BSNL, they charge you between 1/8th to 1/4th the price of that.

5. And on the administration addition that you refer to – it already exists, its called the Election commission of India.

By: akshar

akshar — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 06:15:11 +0000

the MNIC need not be free for all. It again need not be a scheme that is achieved in 3-4 years.
It is worth noting that an election ID card scheme was successfully implemented in most urban areas. MNIC had already executed as a pilot project in many districts in India.
I feel the scheme must be first aggressively implemented in the urban areas and near border areas. I am sure educated people will be ready to even pay for the card. Let the price vary from 200-1000 depending on the income levels and make it free for the poor.

By: ghost_writer

ghost_writer — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 05:56:17 +0000

Thank you for this excellent analysis Atanu. There is no limit tot he stupidity that Indian political parties will go to in order to score some publicity.
It would have been better for the BJP to chart a vision for using IT to improve governance – as opposed to these boondoggles. for e.g. they could digitize or e-enable the taxation system and take out the ‘personal’ (i.e. corrupt) face of the government. But no – it has to be stupidity such as handing over 10k laptops to people who have no idea of what they will do with it. At this rate – the opponents who promise free color TV’s seem more credible – at least the great unwashed know what a TV does!