Agenda for first 3 months of new govt

Low Praying that we get a government which listens to worthy ideas from whosoever. It should not be so arrogant to assume that all the wisdom resides with in or among just a few. Democratisation of learning, sharing and growing opportunities is the need of the hour. The cost of arrogance can be very high because a proper triangulation of ideas does not take place and the cost is borne by least powerful people whose capacity to compensate policy weaknesses through institutional malleability or innovations is minimum.

I discussed several ideas last week and I hope that the action on them might begin soon or may have started. Deepening of water bodies might have started all over the country, tenders might have been floated (besides CSR pooling) for earth moving equipment. The MGNREGA plans must be on the ground to conserve water in the forthcoming rains. The rationing of water in urban areas might have been started so that rural areas don't always bear the brunt of scarcity as always in the past.

Educational experiments in government school are badly needed. Hope that the new government will make it obligatory for children of all government employees, municipal councillors, MLA, MPs to be sent to the nearest government schools and aided schools without exception. This will bring about drastic improvement in the quality of education right away. There was a collector in Tamil Nadu who actually did it and the results were spectacular. Else we will continue to produce two classes of citizen, one, brought up in government schools to serve and another in private schools to be served. There should be a national agency for appointing vice chancellors of universities and directors of school education. This will require a consensus among the states because education is one of the most politicised sectors. Appointment of meritorious vice chancellors and directors of school education will rejuvenate the education system.

The multimedia, multi-language open source content must be made available to every school in the first year of the new government. Given the cost and quality of the network access, merely, providing content on the web will not be enough.

Each KVK [Krishi Vigyan Kendra] almost in every district should become a hub for showcasing all available low-cost technologies from the formal and informal sector. This will require a separate national authority comprising the secretaries of all science departments and directors of selected institutions, besides the private sector and civil society representatives. New government must have a time bound programme for translation of technologies into community-level practices. No inter-institutional barrier should be allowed to come in the way of bridging available solutions and the unmet needs. A massive connect between the final projects of the students and the unmet needs of the communities in the hinterland needs to be institutionalised within the first hundred days.

A GEM like a platform supplemented by a strong logistical backend should be created for farmers, SHGs and other start-ups and small entrepreneurs. Not only public procurement but also private procurement from these small-scale producers should be encouraged. The horizontal exchange and trade among the district and state level SHGs should be enabled.

There has been a considerable decline in the environmental regulations and conservation efforts without achieving economic growth which was an ostensible reason for dilution of these regulations. A new consensus must be achieved for fostering green growth. Strong institutions help in repairing and improving weak policies during implementation but not vice versa.

The author is founder of Honey Bee Network & visiting faculty at IIM-A 
anilgb@gmail.com