Sunday, March 21, 2010

Challenges @ 60

Recently we have celebrated our 60th Republic day. I felt proud when there was showcase of our strength at the celebration in New Delhi. And why should not I, we have transformed our self as one of the powerful nation in last 60 years. Our economy is one of the fastest growing in the world. We are the largest democratic country. During the last recession which has made paralyzed most of the countries, we were successfully came out of it. So these are some of the facts which everyone Indian should be proud of.We have one of the largest armed force. We are one of the best in space and technology.
 
But at the same I felt there are more challenges ahead when I looked some of the facts. We have more than one billion population out of which most of the them are young crowd. This has potential to transform the country to a superpower. But there are some factor which is unable to tap the potential in right way. Most of the state governments are inefficient in bringing the transparency in the administration. Corruption is at its peak at ground level and this is basically stopping the progress of the country. And higher official just closed the eye. We are the superpower in IT industry. Most of the Indian IT firms ruling the whole world, but our offices does not have proper IT infrastructure. It's picking up though, but people are lazy enough to make sure these things are not implemented in a quick way.

More than 60% of the population lives in rural India. But most of the villages does not have concrete roads, power. Still rural India starving for electricity. Good thing is that telephone has reached most of the places in India, but we don't have proper power supply all over. More than 50% of electricity generated in india, are getting wasted while transmission itself. Had it been utilized in proper way, some of the villages would have got light bulb glowing 24*7. I remember one of the dialog of the movie 3 Idiots where the lady says we have a guaranty of delivering pizza in 30 minutes but there is no guaranty of reaching ambulance if any mishap happens which is true. This describes how the essentials are being neglected.

Let us take example of metros in India. It is estimated that in coming 30 to 40 years, half of the population will live in cities or urban areas. But the urban area does not have proper infrastructure to meet this demand. Lets say London, the sewage system for it was built 100 years ago is still functional but if it is compared with Mumbai, In every rainy season there is artificial flood occurs due to improper sewage system. Lack of proper public toilets messing up the cities. Recent studies says that, More than half of Mumbai’s 18 million residents live in slums, and the average ratio of people to toilets is 81:1. There is a requirement for 64,000 toilet seats in Mumbai city alone. There are 1,300 pay-and-use toilets catering to a population of 14 million. I guess same is the case with other metros too in India. China is building at an average of 20Km highway where our road construction is at average of 2Km Per day and some roads are laid are of sub standard. It is not that India lack of natural resources and man power, but it lacks the basic development. Poor health care system, poor education system are the retarding the growth of country. This has other side effects also, like we have around 200 district effected with Maoists out of around 640 districts which is a challenge for the internal security of the country.

One more fact is that, our food production is more or less in the same level in last few years. This is really not a good signal for food security. When the population is growing and per capita income is moving north, the demand for food is also going up. As our production remaining constant, this is causing to inflate the price of regular edible products. This builds a pressure on entire system.

Its not that there are not enough funding in some area. Lot of money flowing for the developmental work in
rural areas, health care system and education system. But these money are mostly utilized in wrong way. To tackle these people should be properly educated. 
More use of technology and transparency will bring down the corruption level. It will help in track the progress where the money is invested by the government. Corruption level will go down if proper electronic tracking system is in place and public will get good service. Nice example is Banks and Telecom sectors in India. Bank service has improved a lot in last 2 years due to proper automation. Hardly anyone goes to the bank these days, people sit in front of computer and most of their routine works are done. Same with telecom sector too. Bringing proper competition in the market and some decisions in public interest has made telephone reachable to most of the places in India.  Recent reports has shown that the influence of maoist has gone down in some district of Andhra Pradesh where there is better development, better connectivity, better educations and better schemes for empowering the public. This means by providing the basic needs to people, we can see the change in country. Not just focusing on big picture, but have to start with basics like Roads, Electricity, Education, Health care system will surely reduce the challenges as we grow old.