When anyone asks me whom I like
most, Rahul Gandhi or Narendra Modi, I confidently answer I like both of them. I
like Rahul Gandhi because he let his government to curb corruption irrespective
of the fact that this could severally damage and ruined his image in public and has dented his chances of becoming prime minister of the third largest economy of the
world, India. There were two similar findings in the world during the 90ies of
20th century. One was that Rajeev Gandhi found in India only 17
paise reaches to the people after spending Re. 1, an indicator of the fact that
there was acute corruption in welfare scheme. Rajeev Gandhi was assassinated
within few months of his observation and no one in India could challenge his finding
by unveiling corruption in the system and every government was just sweeping it
under the carpet and it took almost two decades to challenge his findings by the
government formed by his party in June 2009 led by Dr. Manmohan Singh. It took
all 5 years of his government to unearth the most corrupt system formed by the
globalisation in India. Crony capitalism and the nexus between public private partnerships
have spread in such a way that it has weakened the root of the development.
Another is the case of Uganda
where it was found that after spending 100 dollars by the government only 20
dollars would reach the destination. 80 dollars become the disappeared ghost or
somehow siphoned off. There the credit goes to Emmanuel Tumusiime-Mutebile who
without thinking that taking steps to focus light upon these could ruin him and
would lead to political scandal did work on it and he resolved such problem.
I like Narendra Modi as a
prime minister in first instance as I see his drive to lead the Manmohan
initiative of corruption free India ahead. There are two consecutive steps to
make your nation free from all kinds of corruption. One is to resolve the
problem of corruption after taking risk of political scandal as happened in
India and it happens all around the world normally and second is to make your
development process simple and transparent to your public i.e. to form open
government what the world is now doing and we have started these way back in
2005 followed by China. Dr. Singh took risk of political scandal and made all
efforts to unearth the corruption in India “And miles to go before I sleep”.
Sri Modi is now inviting the public to participate in development program where
he knows that “Woods are lovely, dark and deep”. Though it is a slow start since
March 2012, but I have kept my finger crossed in a hope that he will certainly give
a pace to function open government and will not allow public private
partnership to intervene for founding obstacles in it. When Rahul Gandhi can
risk the biggest political scandal after independence, why not Narendra Modi?
In normal course, what I apprehend is that the distance is minimum a decade to
come congress in power and in the meantime UN, WTO, WHO, World Bank and OECD
will pursue India for Open Government like anything. We must not forget that
World Bank is most effect foreign institution which is the biggest victim of
corruption in developing countries across globe and hence it will not spare a
single chance to pursue India for open government. Tunisia can take credit of being
pioneer of open government but we are one mile ahead as we have taken Civil
Society into confidence in making Lokapal Vidheyak. Anna Hazare was the leader
of the civil society which participated in making legislation.
There is no way to ignore the
participation of civil society by the Indian Government as the trend is very
similar across the globe. On March 30, 2012 the Indian Government in
collaboration with the government of USA launched Open Government Platform
(OPL) an open source version of USA’s Data.gov.
Though there is certain limitation regarding sharing the data in India as it is
a matter of copyright and when publishing it with the open source there will be
stifle between government and private partners, yet there are many ways to
resolve it. For example, the government can encourage it by putting simple
norms by the banks and financial institutions to rely only those data which are
publicly available. One problem regarding government data may come about sharing
data of First Information Report (FIR) which is very much difficult as it is
lodged differently by police in different stage, yet the government has to do
it as more than 150 countries since November 4, 2011 jointed in open government
initiative.
India is a country which is
financially very much strong and she has huge market potentiality. Countries
Like, Germany, Japan, France, USA and china whose economy is dwindling between
the economic uncertainties have eye upon her markets. They are investors and
they will ask insurance of their single penny. Mr. Modi’s “Make in India”
initiative could not be successful without open government.
