Redefining Evolution

A historian who writes the history of human thought and endeavour a hundred
years from now will have no doubt that the last three decades of the 20th
century were the most defining decades in the history of mankind. By that year,
the nature of governance, as we know it today, would have changed so much as to
make the word ‘governance’ a historical anachronism. Because the word ‘governance’
presupposes existence of someone or something that exercises power or control
over the day-to-day lives of people. Once the dividing line that distinguishes
the ‘governors’ from the ‘governed’ disappears, what is left of
governance? In some respects, this powerlessness of governments to control the
Internet is manifestly clear to everybody.

That historian will also unhesitatingly attribute the decline and fall of
20th century governance to the power of information and communication
technologies. Just as Galileo, Kepler, Copernicus and Newton changed the way
people perceived heavenly bodies, so also have the inventions of a number of
scientists in communications and computer technologies collectively contributed
to changing the perception of what constitutes governance and how best to
minimise face-to-face contact with government officials for getting work done.
This process, called e-governance, has already set the agenda for the governance
of the future.

What we all are witnessing today are colossal changes in all walks of life.
While in some areas, the changes have been fast, they have tended to lag behind
in the area of public administration. These changes have a common thread running
through them–empowerment of people. In the private sector, companies have
empowered employees and customers as never before. In public administration, the
focus is on how to empower people. But if the technology is there, why is it
that in this most important area of human endeavour, there is no comparable and
perceptible change?

Bureaucracy runs public administration. Over time, it has come to acquire
vested interests in perpetuating a system that not only benefits those who run
it, but is also seen as essentially irreplaceable. This partly explains why even
routine changes are anathema to bureaucracy. It thrives on doing the same kind
of jobs day in and day out, without bothering to find out whether there is a
better way of doing it… perhaps because there are no rewards for finding
better ways and no sanctions for not finding them. People, in their dealings
with the government, generally suffer on account of secrecy, lack of
accountability and for want of access to information to which they are entitled.
And these, in turn, breed corruption. Once computers are in, they will in one
stroke remove all irritants. These reasons make the job of introducing IT in
government doubly difficult. Such a person deals with people who are status-quoists.
And there is no reward or incentive for those willing to change and risk
failure.

Then there are other reasons. Job security, job-content and the existing
system of rewards and punishments also play a part in making even well-meaning
government servants less likely to experiment with new ideas, to adopt new
technologies and to come up with solutions that deliver. In the government, it
is better not to try and never fail than to honestly try out something new and
fail. If you succeed, no one is going to garland you. So why should anybody take
chances with failure? "Why should I stick my neck out" is the question
that is most often asked by status-quoists.

These factors make bureaucracy the most unlikely vehicle of change in the
government. So is there any hope? Yes there is. You. The people will ultimately
force governments’ hands to adopt new technologies in delivering government
services. IT industry and its associations constantly make people aware of how
IT can make their life a lot easier if only the government were to adopt use of
IT in its day-to-day working. That raises expectations of the people and they
understand that technology is not the limiting factor anymore. And that puts
enormous pressure on the governments to deliver. I am sure that all state
governments are doing something or the other to bring the benefits of this new
technology to the people. All countries are adopting this new technology. Which
of these countries will change the course of its history by adopting this
technological revolution will be known only when our historian friend writes
about it in the year 2100. As for me, I fervently wish that he does not single
out India as a country that was long on promise, but short on delivery.

DS Pandit addl secy, Dept of IT Government of Delhi