IndianEntrepreneur

 On Oct 12 2005, the Right To Information (RTI) Act 2005 came into force in India. Here is a wikipedia link to this act.

This act is really impressive and has fairly deep consequences to the way Indian Government and bureaucracy function in the 21st century. Frankly Iam quite amazed that this Act finally came into effect. It is evidence enough that there is still  fair amount of righteousness remaining in the system. It is to the public, journalists and media on how well we can use this tool.

The Act obligates any Govt body/organization to respond to an Indian citizen’s queries submitted either by letter or electronic means  for a mere ten Ruppees within thirty days. The effectiveness is based on the assumption that Govt organizations feel ashamed to say that there is no action taken on your case and that once they receive your query, they will take steps to address your issue before responding to your query with in the thirty days.

For the skeptics in us, here are some success stories.

I want to discuss the potential of this Act to fight corruption. If you are like me, you are probably wondering the significance of this and how it helps provide a check against the existing practice. Let us start with Indian Government procedures, taken from this article in Times of India.

Let us suppose a flyover was to be built in a certain area. A file would be created on the subject. The officer concerned would put up the proposal which would pass through different levels till it received the final approval, say, the minister of the department concerned.

Finally, the tender would be floated, the quotations received, evaluated and the proposal put up for awarding the contract. The amount of the contract together with the party (in this case, the contractor) would have to be finalised. This would be the stage when pressures would be exercised, kickbacks determined, bribes taken. Notings on the file would reflect all these. If those at the helm of affairs want to award the contract to a certain party, either for monetary considerations or on account of family connections or friendly relationships, they would exercise their influence and ask their subordinates to put up the cost, among other things.

The proposal then would again pass through three, four or even more levels of officials. Then, although a number of officials would put down notings influenced by their superiors, there would be one or two officers in the set-up who are upright and would record their opinions on the file to the effect that the decision being taken was wrong and not in the public interest. This officer would then be overruled by his senior (in most cases he would also be reprimanded verbally) and the contract awarded to the party being favoured by the powers that be. 

The RTI Act allows citizens to get complete file notings. So one can basically use it to get the complete file notings and make it public by, for example, publishing it in news media on the internet or use it in a case against the Govt.

It seems a bit too good to be true, don’t you think.  The example above is an oversimplification of the issue and solution, just take it with a pinch of salt. I hope it does work somewhat on these lines.Like any tool, the effectiveness of this depends on how well citizens can use it.

Until then let us do our part - spread the word and use our creativity to use this tool for fight against corruption.

Will we be successful in this fight of the 21st century against the Government offices? I sure hope so.

There are several organizations spreading the word and fighting a grass roots methods.

I highly  recommend this one - Aid India, a non-profit organization. Many of the full time volunteers are friends of mine and are truly behind making a difference in several areas. This is a link to their RTI Initiative. They have lobbied to create a way to submit RTI queries in the US!!

Some other organizations or individuals who are working with similar objectives:

fightcorruptionnow.tripod.org

nyayabhoomi.org

Sid’s blog.

parivartan.org

Please help support the organizations above spread the word and let them know of the successes and problems you face in using the RTI Act.

I came across Rajesh Jain’s blog and lot of his articles on entrepreneurship are very thought provoking.  I would like to draw your attention to these articles.

This one is about need for more Indian entrepreneurs.  It is a nice kick in the back for lot of us in our comfort zones and highlighting the need of the hour. 

This one discusses about a major problem - getting your company funded.  He has rightly highlighted a major problem facing Indian startups - too little funding for early stage companies and too much funding for mature companies.

I very much liked his articles on entrepreneurship.

However Iam quite skeptical of his ideas on affordable computing, thin clients, given the falling prices of personal computers. I wonder about the economics behind his comments that mobile computing is going to replace pricey laptop computers. 

We all have seen the Doordarshan of India TV of the 80s, 90s and the popular programs on today’s Indian satellite TV channels available all over the world. It is great to see technology being the backbone for providing entertainment at any part of the world at an affordable price. Given the success of satellite TV and the number of channels starting up, the viewership, it leaves very little doubt that paid access television channels are going to be the main driver of next generation TV services in India.

This article is a dream of how some of the technological innovations can be applied to suit the Indian audience.

Do we want to see more of the movies, music and sports that we enjoy currently? Sure and probably in high definition with multi channel surround stereo capability. This is more or less the theme behind the transiton to digital TV transmission happening in most parts of the world. But the compression schemes are mostly driven by carrier efficiencies and besides providing higher quality channels and more number of those, they do not promise much of a change in end-user experience.

This in my opinion is probably a minimum that any digital transmission system deployed in India will use.

Programs with multiple language streams covering major Indian languages, for example sports commentaries, news.

Caption services possibly in multiple languages, to help not only the hearing challenged but also to encourage the audience to experience a program in a different language or over time as a means to learn another Indian languageOk, so what is so great about all this? Here are some scenarios that I can think of.

Imagine, we can hear our favorite cricket match commentary in the language of choice. How many times have we been disappointed when the commentary switches languages at a crucial juncture during the match.

Consider you move to a part of India where you are not familiar with the language spoken and would like to learn it or practise it. What better way than to watch program in that channel with captions turned on for your favorite language.

Imagine watching a Marathi play with the language turned on to either Tamil or Gujarati or a Bengali movie with captions to help follow it. There is tremendous amount of entertainment available in each of the Indian languages and sharing it will only help bring us all together as Indians.

While this may not be a panacea for the much ballyhooed national integration, I dream in my own naive way it takes us a few big steps in that direction.

Similar discussions

• Is this all we can do?
• India TV Summit.

Related Links:

• Challenges in Indian TV
• How can we have multiple audio
• Indian broadband forum

India is unlike other countries due to its varied mix of people who speak various languages and with its diverse culture and practices. Even though our brain says we need to look beyond these differences, our heart always thinks differently depending on which part of India we come from. In practice, it is difficult to overcome these barriers and look at issues that impact our day to day life.

I base this on the products and services available in the communication space ” i.e. how we talk, write, store our information, how we work, learn and play. For example, let us consider the language of support seen in the computers, telephones, cell phones, DVD players, VCRs, TVs and on the Internet. It is based on English. Don’t get me wrong, I like the benefits that English has provided to our society. But won’t it be convenient if the user can select the language while operating a phone or computer or TV or DVD player. Imagine how easy it will be for some one not so comfortable in English to operate a computer or TV with the same ease that most teenagers seem to do.

I personally think, it is a matter of the society asking for it and sooner rather than later we would see such products available commonly. For such social issues, I believe the open source technologies can be used to tackle this effectively from a grass root level. Before the big, multi billion companies are forced to provide similar options.

If you are aware of similar web sites or blogs or forums, I would like to add it to this site. Please email the author at utbtkids@gmail.com .

How is it organized?

This forum will be split into the following categories:

• Work: For areas related to what we encounter at work.
  
• Home: For areas related to what we encounter at our homes “ either related to adults or kids.
  
• Play: For areas related to entertainment, sports, social events
  
• Miscellaneous: For others areas that do not fit into any of the above.