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Sheer Bull!

The French, it is said, chopped off Marie Antoinette's head for being stupid enough to suggest that if people don't have bread, they should eat cake instead. Even the patient and polite in India will have equally murderous designs if they read the action plan issued last month by the National Task Force on Information Technology and Software Development.

Some task, some twaddle!

The prime minister went on Doordarshan to tell us on March 25 that information technology was one of the top five priorities of his government. So far, so good. For most of us, espousing the idea of an alternative media to side-step the vested interests entrenched in print and television, this seemed like a godsend. A month later, when he explained his logic to the Confederation of Indian Industry in terms of creating wealth and employment, I (for one) was convinced that we now have a government in place that understands the imperatives of change and new technology.

That was not all. Within a month the prime minister formed a task force. Chaired by the deputy chairman of the Planning Commission. This force was given five specific tasks.

One: To develop a policy to make India an information technology superpower in ten years.

Two: To ready institutions to implement it, with the participation of "society at large."

Three: To locate bottlenecks and find specific remedies for them.

Four: To draft a vision statement to "energise the people."

Five: To blueprint a national movement.

It was a specific mandate. Very much to the point. Which showed that Vajpayee, amidst all his preoccupations, had actually applied his mind. What followed, however, was a total and unmitigated disaster. A document that did exactly the opposite. It was imprecise, unimaginative, drab and so amazingly dreary that it can lure an insomniac to sleep.

In other words, the prime minister's dream has been deliberately and wickedly distorted. A clear attempt to garbage a perfectly workable idea with obscene bureaucratese. Vajpayee had called for a statement of vision. What we have here is a half-wit response. Too embarrassing for words because it says nothing, attempts even less. No, it is not a report. It is the desecration of a vision, the junking of an initiative whose time had actually come.

It is time our planners woke up to the fact that a bunch of stupid recommendations do not add up to a strategy any more than a flock of swallows add up to a summer. Strategy demands a series of smart measures, logically sequenced, guided by a target, to achieve a distinct goal. A laundry list does not qualify.

The task force gleefully claims it has amassed 108 recommendations. I would not be so proud of that figure, given the fact that the force has 18 members. That barely works out to six suggestions per head, that is, one suggestion per person per week. Hardly a prolific output when put into correct perspective!

But, more significantly, 108 recommendations do not mean 108 steps towards becoming a technological superpower. They mean nothing if they do not add up to a cogent, coherent approach to achieve what India wants, needs. What you get, instead, is an effete, pointless exercise in naivete. The task force, in other words, overlooks the crucial business of creating and putting in place an explicit strategy for marching into 21st century informatics. Which is what Vajpayee talked about. A strategic prioritisation. A vision for integrating the future with the present.

Instead of attempting this, the report -- a laundry list of the obvious -- tells us nothing about what the government actually wants to do and why. It does not even explain why these 108 have been chosen, not another 108 that we could get 18 less pretentious cyberheads to cough up in less than six hours. No, this is no plan. It is just another wish list, made no more respectable by recounting the numerous ministers and secretaries the members met for a powwow.

No less damaging is the fact that the report fails to do the first thing Vajpayee led us to expect. He made it clear that he saw a great future for India in informatics and wanted to bridge the gap between technology and people. The government's role, as he saw it, was to bring the talk down to earth. To create a nationwide movement, not an elitist gameplan. The test should have been how quickly, how effectively we can help India -- befuddled by countless language problems and riven by regional compulsions -- to progress towards complete computer literacy. And, then, translate that literacy into a new language for social change. A language that would cut across all castes, communities, levels of education.

The five tasks for the task force leave no doubt about it. The first is to formulate a policy, but the terms demand that the policy must "enable India to emerge as an information technology superpower" -- the entire country, not just the power elite. It is a silly hope to dream of being a superpower without a nationwide upgrading of skills. The second task is to improve the institutions to implement the policy, but it is prescribed that the institutions must implement the policy as a national mission and the third task is the ancillary one of removing obstacles in the way.

The fourth and fifth tasks are the ones that give the clearest clue to what was intended. The fourth task is to prepare a statement of vision that will excite and energise people, to see information technology as an instrument of growth. If any doubt remained, the prime minister's notification wordily but unambiguously declared that the plan would create a strategy for an ethos, an ambience, a mindset and a work culture for cyber growth. To cap it all, the fifth task was to generate a national movement.

The report trashes this mandate with devastating completeness. There is nothing in it to arouse a jack-in-the-box, let alone a billion-strong nation. There is no vision, save the sorry prospect of hundreds of wheels whirring and thousands of bureaucrats producing endless, useless memoranda. And there is, of course, no strategy. But what is worse, there is not even a stirring word to fire the imagination of the computer-crazy generation that is now slowly moving into place.

It is a slap in the face of those who believe, like me, that the idea of a cybernetically active and technologically progressive India is a pipe dream unless we first address the issue of how to enthuse the people. An information technology superpower? We will forever remain a pygmy unless we face the fundamental question: How will we reach technology to our people? How will we bring wherewithal and awareness to every village, every town?

At least a part of the answer is obvious. Nobody can get energised, let alone excited, about what they know so little about. People in every nook and cranny of this vast land must be immediately made conscious of the vast potential of information technology. Secondly, they will be interested only when they see that it has the potential of enriching their life, in agriculture or industry, in small business or medium enterprise, in social service or in government formation, in academic work or field research. Third, they can be shown the fantastic new vistas of the cyber world, the innovations that are changing the way we work, enjoy, study, interact and reinforce our family ties.

Such initiatives alone can generate excitement. And the only way to accomplish them is to use the broadest tools of public education: films, television, radio and streams of imaginative publications. In other words, a serious, effective public campaign that can open our eyes to the power and incredible potential of information technology.

That is why it is doubly sad that the task force has turned out a report to defeat the very purpose for which it was created. Subverting the entire magic of the Internet. As well as the challenge of change.

The message it conveys is simple: When people ask for technology, governments give them twaddle. When the prime minister proposes change, bureaucrats dig their heels in.

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Pritish Nandy