...and the muddle continues

What am I talking about? Recently, in a news item carried by a leading
newspaper, GS Thakur, labor officer-cum-conciliation is quoted as saying that
leading BPO companies have violated Section 30 of the Punjab Shops and
Commercial Establishment Act of 1958, and, hence, strict action will have to be
taken. The order was passed to two companies-Saffron Global and Convergys.
Give Mr Thakur a break! The poor man was just doing his job. According to
sources, both the above-mentioned companies had not filled two particular forms
relating to the act and the officer had made the statement in that context. As I
write, both these companies have got exemption, and business is as usual.

The fact remains that people I spoke to quickly concluded that either money
had not passed hands, or scoffed at the ruling. I don't blame either party.
Industry people, over a period of time, have been forced to think in a certain
way when it comes to bureaucracy and, try as much as you want, that is not going
to change. Bureaucrats also find little support in statistics. According to the
2004 Transparency International Corruption Perception Index, India, with a score
of 2.8, was ranked at the 91st position. Again, according to a June 2005 report
by Political and Economic Risk Consultancy, India was at the bottom of the chart
in terms of 'Bureaucratic place for doing business in Asia'.

Clean, transparent eGovernance projects can help India get rid of the 'most bureaucratic place for doing business' image

Another recent news that caught my attention was the MoU signed by the Union
Minister of Communication and IT, Dayanidhi Maran and the Swedish Minister for
Communication and Regional Policy, Ulrica Messing, for setting up a joint
business working group to share ideas and technology expertise in eGovernance,
tele-medicine, etc.

I think both the issues are related one assumes that eGovernance will tackle
the issue of low-perception and beef up the transparency level. The only problem
is that the central and state governments have been working on the 'dream'
for more than five year now, but... e-Governance refuses to move beyond the
pilot stage.

I see a wealth of knowledge with various state governments but they remain in
silos, in islands. The only party which gains is the corporate, who uses the
same knowledge base to sell to different state governments.

As per my discussion with eGovernance experts, I realize that even this will
take a long time to change. The change will come from the people driving these
projects, and where people are involved, EGOs clash. So even if one state
government has done a land record project, the other state government does not
use the same information-as each driver wants to reinvent the wheel. NIC, the
central government agency, is sitting with hundreds and thousands of man-years,
but the wheel continues to be reinvented. To overcome this issue, a quazi
government body-the National Institute of Smart Governance-was set up. Well
that's another story, which we had covered recently.

Where does this leave the likes of Mr Thakur and co. LIFE AS USUAL. Even when
they do their job (honestly), our perception will force us to think otherwise.
And for our perception to change, we might need to roll out eGovernance quickly,
which might not happen soon. Till such time, I keep my fingers crossed and look
forward to more such quick polls and analysis

Yograj Varma Associate
Editor, Dataquest