By M D Nalapat
This country’s forest of inchoate regulations and superfluous rules is why India has a pitifully low per capita income.
The
Election Commission of India (EC) has decreed that even astrologers
will not be allowed to forecast election results on television or in
print. Even TV talk-show guests will be barred from giving forecasts.
Clearly, CEC Nasim Zaidi and his colleagues would like astrologers and
exit pollsters to exit from the idiot box, lest they “influence the
voter”. Exactly what “influence” exit polls or astrological or other
forecasting of results has on the voter has of course been unspecified
by successive Election Commissioners. Such censorship is absent in
practically any major democracy other than ours. Is it because the EC
believes that voters in the many countries permitting exit polls and
forecasting have a maturity of mind that the Indian voter lacks? But of
course. It is axiomatic in a governance construct retaining the colonial
ethos of pre-1947 days that the people of India are as little able to
function without adult (i.e. official) supervision as small children.
Which is presumably why the EC seeks to bar them from as much
information as possible. This assumption of immature and wayward minds
of the Indian citizen is why the bureaucracy in India crafts rule upon
rule, regulation after regulation, thereby making the doing of anything
painfully difficult in India.
This country’s forest of inchoate
regulations and superfluous rules is why India has a pitifully low per
capita income when compared to other major democracies. Those who took
over the administration of this country after the British left, retained
practically the entirety of an administrative structure founded on the
premise that the people of India need supervision—indeed, control—at
every stage of their lives and in all activities. As a consequence, much
of the life of the citizen gets consumed in matters of compliance with
the official regulations, prohibitions and commands needing to be obeyed
on pain of punishment. A recent experience of this columnist concerned
Aadhaar. Now that the government has made mandatory the use of the
Aadhaar-based Unique Identification Number (in a context where 99% of
citizens already have some or other such unique number, including that
of the cellphone they own), a visit was made to an Aadhaar dispensing
outlet. After waiting for an hour and 27 minutes, the shop registered
details of every digi t of both hands plus the irises of the eyes.
However, when the Aadhaar card was sought to be procured ten days later,
the reply was that “all the registrations done for those three days
were disallowed by higher authority”. What happened to the biometric
data taken from each applicant, including this columnist’s? Nobody knew
or cared. And if months later, an ultra-high resolution camera takes
images of both irises and imprints them on contact lenses, it would not
be impossible for an imposter to access a facility that needs such
identification for entry. As for the fingerprints, were someone to scan
and imprint them on film, and that film subsequently used to plant
fingerprint evidence at the site of a crime, it would be next to
impossible to prove that the prints were stolen. Why? Because the
biometric and other data stored through Aadhaar is regarded as too
sensitive to be disclosed even to the person whose data it is. And in
case the agency doing so makes other use of it, in the unlikely event of
its getting found out, the only “punishment” would be blacklisting that
agency for ten years. During that period, all that the owner would need
to do would be to procure a new nameboard and get back into business,
Dhoni or no Dhoni. Because of the not unusual disappearance of three
days’ data of applicants at that particular location, another visit to
the Aadhaar outlet will need to be made. Hopefully, this time the card
will be ready, although there will continue to be zero transparency
about what happens to the stored data. Unless, of course, one were to
access some of the websites that claim to be revealing Aadhaar data to
the public. Aadhaar must get cleansed of its imperfections to avoid
future disasters.
An encounter that same week with the
Regulation Raj that India continues to be, involved buying a Wi-Fi
device from a company that had advertised an attractive scheme. On the
first visit, the relevant retail outlet declined the identity document
offered. The next time around, it refused to process the request even
when presented with a copy of passport details, because a passport
photograph was not presented. Why this could not have been taken on the
spot by the outlet through a mobile telephone remains a mystery.
Fortunately, on the third visit to the store, armed with passport,
photograph and loads of patience, success. Registration was done, as
this columnist was informed just two days later on his mobile phone. The
entire process (including the three visits) took 57 minutes to
complete, including downtime. Not that the company or its outlet should
be blamed. Failure to comply with any of the multiplying regulations
involving telecom could well lead to prison for some of its officials.
If India is to ever enjoy a growth rate
high enough to generate 13 million additional jobs each year, Prime
Minister Narendra Modi will need to set up empowered working groups that
would go through the country’s Walmart-sized lists of regulations. They
need to trim some and remove the rest entirely, leaving behind only
those applicable to 21st century needs and practices. By the time the
2019 Lok Sabha polls take place, India needs to have a leaner and
citizen-friendly system of rules and regulations, so that a genuinely
new India emerges from the shadow of growth-destroying mechanisms of
governance.
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