Why #ITForParivahan is needed?

Road network in India, in all its vastness provides last mile connectivity to the masses and also proves to be a lifeline for the country, but the crammed highways chocking flow of goods have jabbed the Indian economy for long. Inconsequential planning and scruffy implementations from successive regimes in the past have gifted the country this messy drive plexus.

In order to provide India with the world’s best road network, Union Minister for Road Transportation and Highways Shri Nitin Gadkari had appointed a ‘Taskforce on IT’ earlier this year with a mandate to modernize the commutation in the country. The Taskforce comprises eminent IT personalities such as Dr. Mohandas Pai, Vinit Goenka, Prashant Pole, Girish Shrivastava and Abhijit Desai.

Indian highways are also counted among world’s most unsafe road networks. According to figures available with the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, India’s daily death toll due to road accidents is more than four times the annual death toll from terrorism. As many as 139,671 people lost their lives on India’s roads during 2014 – 382 deaths every day. For comparison, if 57,844 people lost their lives due to over speeding, 6968 Indians died because rash driving posts alcohol consumption in 2014.

To make our highways safer and better, two IT stalwarts Mr. Vinit Goenka Ji and Dr. Mohandas Pai ji kicked off a nationwide initiative #ITForParivahan for making governance effective through public participation by inviting ‘suggestions’ from various stakeholders in transportation sector and public at large. The dedicated self-motivated team of more than 100 technocrats worked hard to reach out 1 Crore Indians in one month’s time through a social media campaign. In return, we received around thirty five thousand response to make things better.  After rigorous discussions and brainstorming sessions, our panel of eminent IT experts shortlisted five ideas which will be presented to union government for implementation.

Panel of eminent judges include:

 Vinit Goenka
Vinit Goenka is a founder member of Centre for Knowledge Sovereignty (CKS), an organisation dedicated to preserving the sovereignty of India in all aspects. In a first-of-its-kind event, CKS in association with various industry bodies such as NASSCOM, FICCI and AMCHAM enabled direct interface of the top leaders of the industry with BJP President. Mr. Goenka, a technocrat has also been associated with IT giant IBM India and Aditya Birla Group. Lately, he managed the social media of the BJP as National Co-Convener of IT cell that led to a thumping victory of the party in 2014 general elections. Mr. Goenka a philanthropists also runs an NGO, Nirman Foundation that runs a huge eye donation campaign in Maharashtra.  Presently, he is a member of IT Taskforce – Ministry of Shipping, Road Transport & Highways

Dr  T.V. Mohandas Pai
Dr. Pai is Chairperson  of Manipal Global Education Services Pvt. Ltd. He co-founded AARIN Capital to fund companies in Technology, Ecommerce, Health Care and Life Science. He was awarded the Padma Shri award by the President of India in 2015 and the Karnataka Rojyotsava Award in 2004. He also served on the Board of the Securities and Exchange Board of India SEBI. He is currently the Chairman of SEBI Primary Markets Advisory Committee PMAC. He is currently on the Boards of IIT’s – Bhubaneswar and Hyderabad. Until mid-2011, Dr. Pai was a Member of the Board at Infosys Limited, where he had joined in 1994 and was CFO from 1994 to 2006.

Anwar Shirpurwala
After graduating from Nagpur University, Mr. Shirpurwala started his career with technology training and sales. In his first entrepreneurial venture, he developed one of India’s first GPS-GPRS based vehicle tracking system, which runs on over 12,000 commercial vehicles in India today. He has rich and diverse experience in institutional sales, marketing and retail.  Currently, he is Executive Director of MAIT.

Debjani Ghosh
Ms. Ghosh is the Vice President in the Sales and Marketing Group and Managing Director for South Asia at Intel Corporation. She works with governments and industry in these countries to establish policies and initiatives that help accelerate the adoption of technology in the region. Ms. Ghosh joined Intel in 1996 as a marketing communications executive for developing a consumer marketing program in India. Subsequently, she set up and managed Intel's education programs across the Asia Pacific region. Before assuming her current role, she had served as South-East Asia marketing manager, as country manager for Malaysia, and most recently, as director for South-East Asia.

Ashish Sonal
Sonal is the founder & CEO of ORKASH. He has pioneered the concept of integrating the fields of business intelligence, market intelligence, competitive intelligence, social intelligence and operational risk management through web-scale/big-data  decision support platforms.Prior to launching ORKASH, Mr. Sonal was the Managing Director in India of a leading International  risk management consulting firm for over five years. He spent thirteen years with the Army Special Forces before joining the corporate world in 1999. He has also served with the United Nations for various international assignments.