Indias Most Wanted

The hue and cry last month about Indias Most Wanted list goof-up where we discovered that some of the criminals in Indias most wanted list were actually in India (inside a prison) did not surprise me.

Let me share with you the results of a quick search of the NCRB (National Crime Records Bureau) website, which is also in the business of tracking criminals. Their last comprehensive report about crime in India is for the year 2009. The last prison update they have done is in the year 2008 (no wonder Indias Most Wanted list was so old). Their latest list of missing and kidnapped people has not been updated since April 2010, though there are a few photos of missing people flashing on the website, but even that is for the month of March, 2011. Their last newsletter, for instance, came out in December 2010.

Am not sure if these guys do not have resources. NCRB has a backbone of 762 servers that cover all district level and state level Crime Records Bureaus, across the country. NCRB is currently implementing Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems (CCTNS), which is a mission mode project under the National e-governance plan of the Government of India, with a budget of `2,000 crore.

What is indeed shameful and a matter of great concern is that this is happening in India, which has been a big victim of terrorism for years, and accepts that ICT can play a role in preventing and fighting terror. While the Home Ministry tried to brush the seriousness of the matter aside as an insignificant human error, the fact is that questions will be raised on the credibility of such lists in future.

It was after more than 60 years of independence that India decided that it has to have a database of its citizens, and the UIDAI was set up under the leadership of Nandan Nilekani. Hopefully we will see a national database soon and then, theoretically, lots of citizen service plans can be put around that. While the Indias Most Wanted list hogged a lot of news space, the fact is that it is the common man who suffers because Indian police system does not know how to leverage technology. It is time we have a driver for this too. Otherwise, do not be surprised to see more such goof-ups.