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| Smart phones |
“Desh aage barh raha hai” (the country is marching ahead), this is what
Prime Minister Modi has been saying at various fora. Many would not agree with
what he says. They would be right as in many areas of governmental activities
not much change is perceptible. In fact, they have got worse. We would seem to
be stagnating and the newspapers in the mornings are a great put-off. There is
so much of negativity. Stalled parliament, rowdy legislators, crime,
corruption, failures of public agencies, illegal exploitation of natural
resources, atrocities on dalits, skyrocketting prices of everyday essentials –
everything seems to be falling apart. There seems to be utter chaos and
governance seemingly has taken a indefinitely long holiday.
In the midst of all this negativity there is a bit of positivity – a
kind of light at the end of the tunnel. Looked at in that perspective, Modi
seems to be right. The country is really progressing. Things are really
changing at least for the elderly and, presumably, for numerous other sections
of the people. What the elderly couldn’t do earlier without being put to severe
hardships are now changing – and for the better. It is IT which is rendering
that crucial assistance and looks like going places in the midst of everything
that would seem to be collapsing. While the dream of Digital India still looks elusive,
yet information technology has stepped into many sectors in a big way to make
life easier for senior citizens and perhaps the poor. It not only has blossomed
into an amazing medium for doing your personal chores, it is also something
which is elderly-friendly, generally unlike most Indians or the society at
large.
I will give three examples of the change that I have witnessed. Earlier
this month we booked air tickets for Delhi (from Bhopal) through our frequently
used travel agency. But we received the tickets by e-mail on my desktop. I paid
for the tickets online using my credit card. In performing all these activities
neither my wife nor I had to move out of the house, thanks to the progress in
the area of Information Technology. Even a couple of years ago we had to visit
the travel agent’s office around 10 kilometres away at least twice. This time
we didn’t have to move out at all
Then, at Delhi as we found that we were needlessly hanging around in the
midst of heavy showers we decided to cancel our return air tickets and asked my
friend’s daughter in Gurgaon to book for us two seats in Shatabdi Express. We had
to do so as we did not have internet facility in our mobiles. She booked the
tickets on her mobile visiting the railways’ online tickets booking site,
booked the tickets for the day they were available, paid for them by using her
credit card and sent the tickets by text to my wife’s mobile. We had paperless
tickets and the ticket checker on the train checked them on my wife’s mobile.
We were saved from the horror of going to the crowded New Delhi Station in
persistent rain and water-logged streets, waiting in a queue for God-knows how
long to get the tickets. We didn’t have to stir out and it was amazingly hassle-free.
The third example was of the local All India Institute of Medical
Sciences. My wife visited its site for online registration for consultations at
Orthopedics department as an out-patient. She was asked to provide her Aadhar
number and, lo and behold, her card complete with her photograph came up on the
screen. After that it was no problem in proceeding ahead and looking for an
available date of the consultant of her choice. She got a date six weeks ahead
but the crux of the matter is it was all achieved sitting at home. Later she
got a text message on her mobile indicating the reporting time on the day of
her appointment. Obviously Aadhar has been linked now to the AIIMSs wherever
they are located.
Aadhar has
played wonders with the Direct Benefit Transfers of subsidies for cooking gas
customers cutting out the corruption involved and a saving for the government
of a few billion rupees. Besides, payments for the world’s biggest rural
employment scheme, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee
Scheme, have already started directly to the beneficiaries’ Aadhar-linked bank
accounts in real time. This too has eliminated ghost labourers and other petty
kind of corruption.
Nandan Nilekani the author of “Aadhar”, the
online identity platform for all Indian residents, says, “With
the 2014 introduction of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Jan Dhan Yojana for
financial inclusion, more than 290 million bank accounts are linked to Aadhaar
today, and several billion dollars of benefits and entitlements have been
transferred to people’s bank accounts electronically in real time.” The mix of
Jan Dhan, Aadhar and mobile phones, “JAM” for short, enables “paperless,
presence-less and cashless transactions”. Aadhar has since been extended to
numerous other central and state level services.
Aadhar
along with smart phones (already in the hands of 25 million people) will
drastically change the way we look at public services. There’s indeed been a
change – in fact progress – all due to technology and proper government
initiatives. Changes that improve the level of satisfaction, especially of the
poor, are genuine changes.
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