My first reaction to the BJP’s IT vision, released by L K Advani, was of surprise. After all, the BJP is a political party accused of communal polarisation, led supposedly by a beleaguered octogenarian who could take India back in time, not to the future. It is rather curious that this document didn’t raise enough eyebrows, especially of the media.
I was taken aback at the sweep of the scope — the document begins with a reference to the IT sector to be used for telemedicine, financial inclusion, governance, new jobs and land records. A natural sceptic like me wonders whether technology is construed as that magic wand which will be the panacea to all problems in this country. But, the document then goes onto cite specific statistics, quote topic-experts (not many of whom are BJP-friendly) and outline next steps. The second striking feature of the document is its focus on social justice, laptops at Rs 10,000 and special focus for the disadvantaged groups. Will scale and innovation really be able to lower the prices, or will there be backdoor subsidies? If there are large government expenditures or mass procurement, will there not be obvious leakages? As a business professional, with a belief that government failures are worse than market failures, I dread the thought of more subsidies and cynically see this as the neta’s attempt to win votes. These remain open questions. The third remarkable point is the reference to citizen identification numbers and digital sovereignty. Sceptics worry about whether this will lead to another avoidable debate on who migrated when from where, and be a source of divide. Such apprehensions cannot be brushed under the carpet and need to be addressed.
One also wonders whether this was really the document one needed. For the economy, isn’t there a more imperative need to focus on finding some way to revive consumer confidence, business capex and capital flows? Would the concerns on social justice, referred to in the document, not be met better by universal primary literacy and primary healthcare ahead of any other goals? Isn’t police reform more important than identity cards? Like anybody else, I can think of many other areas that should be equal, if not higher, in competing with this vision for the attention of a new government.
Indeed, there are many loopholes. Even if very little of what is said is finally implemented, should one not credit them for the boldness of this document and this initiative, especially ahead of the general elections, when the number of people who would respond to it are still not considered critical electoral mass? And can one deny that this is a sharp break from the kind of communal politics that BJP has been always been accused of? It is unlikely to turn this election, the BJP may find only a few votes this time around, and may actually be bettered by a rival party, but if this is any pointer of electoral politics in India in the next decade, that alone makes me very happy.
Anshuman Goenka, Mumbai
