IT wastes time

No; you are wrong if you thought that this is a grunt and groan on the current generation’s addiction to playing with mobile devices (it is becoming difficult to point to any Information Technology device and say with confidence that it is not mobile). Rather this is about the phrase “Role of IT …”

I have just come to office after attending the Inaugural Session of a half-day seminar on, you guessed it, “Role of IT [my emphasis] in Municipal Management & Urban Development for Sustainability”.

I have seen this too many times to chalk it down to coincidence – too many “Role of IT” conferences, workshops, seminars, symposiums. Just way too many. I think whenever any outfit – think tanks, business or development lobbies, government departments – feels the urge to host (meaning they have to spend the money they have but do not know how) a jamboree and when they are unable to come up with any meaningful topic they get the reliable “Role of IT” to pull the chestnut out of fire! That must have been how today’s event came about.

In the Inaugural session, the speakers were the regular suspects – two IT bureaucrats, a private entrepreneur and surprisingly, an aam aadmi. No, I am not joking, there indeed was an aam aadmi, so proclaimed by the host!

Only two observations. One, the aam aadmi spoke in Hindi, which was fine with me as I was not keen on listening to more than half of what he said! His basic thrust was why IT intrusion, even to the extent it presently is, has not improved responses from the government agencies. Nothing new.

But this aam aadmi came to the venue in a car that we may call midsize. He was an office bearer (probably the president) of an RWA (Residents Welfare Association). He must have toilet(s) in his house.

Why did I say that?

At least 18% of households in our urban areas do not have access to latrines; the rural situation comes in staggering at 69%. Let me try to translate that into pure numbers (approximate, assuming total population at 1.21 billion and four persons per household). The rural urban divide of the population is 69:31. Doing the numbers, I get a total of 160 million households out of about 300 million. More than 50%. (All data from an infographic from The Economist newspaper.)

If the RWA office bearer is an aam aadmi, what do you call the 50% who do not have latrines? Now, you may understand whence my criticism of R K Laxman’s aam aadmi (the Common Man) as recently expressed. The moment a person who owns a car, owns a house with toilets is tagged or allowed to call himself aam aadmi, 50% of Indian population becomes below common; nonexistent! Not even the Orientalists effaced such a large set of people from the face of the earth. But our Common Man has done that. All thanks to the seminar “Role of IT …”

That takes me to my second observation. Each speaker noted that there are 4,200 municipalities in the nation (they must have downloaded this detail from some government website, and knowing how static these are, I would not be surprised if the true number is 4,500!). One of the two bureaucrats mentioned that all the services should be integrated (nothing new), all complaints about service delivery through e-governance mechanisms (nothing new), all citizens (presumably of these 4,200 municipalities) to have an email address as the point of contact between the government and the governed. All these messages were mutely received by the audience except one person, me. The last message about a citizen email (the moniker I am giving for the proposal) got my goat.

The bureaucrat spoke as if Net intrusion / accessibility in urban India is 100%. Can it be any better than access to latrines? I think not.

You would have an email address but will have difficulty accessing the Net. In that case, what does being a citizen mean? What is the IT intrusion, even in our 4,200 municipalities? Remember, our literacy rate is abysmal. Then, what does the illiterate do with a Net connection?

Oh, I forgot. The Common Man is educated and is literate! Who was the bureaucrat addressing? Those who had assembled at the seminar. He was delivering a targeted address. Can it form the basis of a policy? I think not. Why did the bureaucrat think along these lines? Because, if he did that, he would not get any applause from the highly cocooned audience.

The “Role of IT …”, for all its vaunted powers to reach benighted corners of society, has been hijacked by the elite aam aadmi. Your citizenship is validated only if you are IT literate. It does not matter that you are illiterate; just be IT literate!

Just two observations from just one session of one conference entitled “Role of IT …”. I believe this justifies the title of this post. By merely offering a readymade theme for a conclave – “Role of IT …”, IT wastes time, just like what happened to me this morning.

Raghuram Ekambaram