Sunday, July 31, 2011
How to fight poverty
In my opinion, poverty is invariably self perpetuating. It breeds where the environment is conducive for its existence and growth. It survives and grows with all those individuals, families and communities who do not take express interest to shake off poverty and come out of poverty. It makes people feel comfortable just to remain in it and complain about it and living it out rather than doing something to drive it away.
One sure way to eradicate poverty would be to create a level playing field and opportunities for all irrespective of any categorization. This can be achieved by ensuring equitable distribution of resources between the haves and have-nots. To achieve this there must be a rigorous resource mapping - supply and demand of various resources. There must be contribution from all towards proper harnessing of resources and prevent abuse of resources. Unique identification and tracking of all resource availability, utilization, demand would help in resource gap identification. Then ways to bridge the gap can be evolved.
The right tools to track online and on real time basis such demand and supply bottom up from the local to the global level through an e-Network using a model of spokes and hub can ensure every entity and resource is mapped. This alone can aid in definitive action rather than just eulogizing about poverty and not taking critical action.
One sure way to eradicate poverty would be to create a level playing field and opportunities for all irrespective of any categorization. This can be achieved by ensuring equitable distribution of resources between the haves and have-nots. To achieve this there must be a rigorous resource mapping - supply and demand of various resources. There must be contribution from all towards proper harnessing of resources and prevent abuse of resources. Unique identification and tracking of all resource availability, utilization, demand would help in resource gap identification. Then ways to bridge the gap can be evolved.
The right tools to track online and on real time basis such demand and supply bottom up from the local to the global level through an e-Network using a model of spokes and hub can ensure every entity and resource is mapped. This alone can aid in definitive action rather than just eulogizing about poverty and not taking critical action.
Labels: base of the pyramid, bottom-up governance, MDG, Poverty Alleviation, transparency
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
