Thursday, December 02, 2010
Comments on the approach paper of Planning Commission for the XII Five year Plan of India
My comments posted in UNDP Solutions exchange - Employment Community on the Planning Commissions Approach Paper for the XII Five Year Plan of India:
Unfortunately nothing is truly measurable in India! We have no citizen centric systems and structures in place even after 63 years of Independence, except those to benefit the officials and politicians. We have no proper statistics in place. We do not know our exact population, the demographic study, the number of citizens needing good health, education, skill training available, accorded and benefited, employment in various skills, etc., etc. Everything is in some ways more a guesstimate than a reality.
What we need is a fool proof tracking system to identify the various needs of citizens - food, clothing, health, housing, skills, employment, social security, etc. We need to establish systems of planning, bench marking, executing, monitoring, feed-back and accountability.
Every thing should be people centric and bottom-up from the hamlet / village level to national level and not bottom-down from the national to the village level as at present and managed by people themselves and certainly not official centric just for creating records.
Every action of every individual and organization must be by default transparent to the public (stakeholders) and should be audit-able by the stakeholders themselves. There should be a fail-proof audit trail on all activities and public expenses leaving nothing to chance or open to cheating. Today corruption is institutionalised from the village level to the national level. It has permeated all sections of society in all fields of endeavour. This needs to be urgently addressed if we have to derive true benefit from the twelfth five year plan.
This can help transform India and make sure our plans are truly beneficial to the common and man, the voiceless in the remotest corners of India and not just to benefit the powers that be in Delhi or State Capitals.
Unfortunately nothing is truly measurable in India! We have no citizen centric systems and structures in place even after 63 years of Independence, except those to benefit the officials and politicians. We have no proper statistics in place. We do not know our exact population, the demographic study, the number of citizens needing good health, education, skill training available, accorded and benefited, employment in various skills, etc., etc. Everything is in some ways more a guesstimate than a reality.
What we need is a fool proof tracking system to identify the various needs of citizens - food, clothing, health, housing, skills, employment, social security, etc. We need to establish systems of planning, bench marking, executing, monitoring, feed-back and accountability.
Every thing should be people centric and bottom-up from the hamlet / village level to national level and not bottom-down from the national to the village level as at present and managed by people themselves and certainly not official centric just for creating records.
Every action of every individual and organization must be by default transparent to the public (stakeholders) and should be audit-able by the stakeholders themselves. There should be a fail-proof audit trail on all activities and public expenses leaving nothing to chance or open to cheating. Today corruption is institutionalised from the village level to the national level. It has permeated all sections of society in all fields of endeavour. This needs to be urgently addressed if we have to derive true benefit from the twelfth five year plan.
This can help transform India and make sure our plans are truly beneficial to the common and man, the voiceless in the remotest corners of India and not just to benefit the powers that be in Delhi or State Capitals.
Labels: accountability, Biometric tracking, bottom-up governance, demographic data, Employment Generation, Planning Commission, Skill Generation, transparency, XII Five Year Plan
