Tuesday, June 30, 2009

How can BJP prove it is better?

The BJP came up with a wonderful IT vision which was a result of the hard work of few professionals at the eleventh hour. They also issued an infrastructure vision and a manifesto which was much better than Congress.
In retrospect, very few people took these seriously including,perhaps, BJP leadership. If BJP seriously believed in any such visions it would have worked harder on it and started mobilising public opinion on these issues much earlier and not dumped them as soon as the election got over which seems to be the case at present.
When the BJP states that 85 paise out of 1 Rupee disappear due to corruption,it is blaming itself as well because its not widely recognised that almost all central government schemes are implemented with the active cooperation of state governments.
The judiciary, Police,Education,Health and power sector come under the preview of states as well.But state governments are not considered worthy of critique by most of the commentators and let off to easily.

  • When it comes to disinvestment, why does not best chief minister of India Narendra Modi let go of his state PSUs so well endorsed by his colleague Arun Shourie?
  • why do not BJP ruled state privatise or at least corporatise transport corporations taking a cue from Banglore Transport corporation?
  • I guess Electricity and Transport utility are chief among the loss making enterprises.Why not privatise the state electiricty generation/transmission and distribution and take the process initiated by BJP to its logical conclusion?
  • What prevents BJP ruled states from reining in absentee school teachers and doctors?
  • Why cant other BJP ruled states take a cue from Gujarat and start evening courts to reduce backlog of cases?
  • Can any of the BJP ruled states claim that their Police departments are entirely professional and free from political interfernce?The recent initative of Shivraj Singh chauhan of organising Jan Sunvai with Police officers is a good initiative.
  • Are the borders of BJP ruled states free from rent seeking behavior by Inspectors, why cant they follow the example of Gujarat of computerising the weighing of trucks?
  • The BJP led state governments can still follow up on the promise of digitisation of government documents promised in their IT vision.


There seems to be an impression that only government is central government and public intellectuals have a task at hand here.

Thursday, June 11, 2009

RBI's select economic indicators and Emp exchange data

Summary of select economic indicators is here Look at the employment exchange statistics:
Number of Registrations 6.5 million
Placed in employment: 2.65 lakhs
On live register: 34.6 million

Conclusion:
Options(multiple choice)
a)RBI should stop collecting this vital economic data and start using more contemporary
indices like job portals and number of jobs advertised in newspapers
ball employment exchanges should be shutdown.
c)GoI should pretend to be doing something about it by appointing a commission.
d)Management of Employment exchanges should be handed over to private sector.
e)Job portals should start their physical presence to cater to non netizens which is a big market(>94% of whole labour force of India).
f)Employment exchanges should be made digital.

Thanks to ankush for correcting the mistakes in first draft and sharing Assocham study on efficacy of Employment exchanges and the exampleset by Gujarat. One caveat is that the low unemployment rates mentioned here are misleading since it includes sub subsistence employment as employed (@ <$1 a day) as elaborated by Bibek Deb Roy