ETTelecom.com:
Panaji: Monday, 01 February 2016.
While coming
out in support of the central government's flagship campaigns, noted technocrat
Satyanarayan Gangaram 'Sam' Pitroda expressed doubts over the implementation of
schemes such as Digital India, Skill India and Startup India. He also took a
dig at the Narenda Modi government for focusing on publicity blitzes for the
programmes.
Asserting
that several high-octane programmes initiated by the current government were
actually started during Congress rule, the former telecom policymaker went on
to state that the Congress government never advertized its work.
"We did
not spend advertising money on ads for our work on UID, GIS, RTI, Digital
India. It is public money. I would rather spend the money in doing things than
buying full page ads in the newspaper. The point is if I have a job, my job is
not to promote my job. Better to do what I am supposed to do. If I go telling
people what a great thing I am doing, then I can't do my job," Pitroda
said, speaking on the sidelines of Difficult Dialogues, a two-day conference in
Goa.
He went on to
point out that due to a rapid change in technology and the government's lack of
action, most work on Digital India was redundant and obsolete. Though the Right
to Information, a key success of the UPA government, had been implemented,
information was no longer available, said the man who helped usher the domestic
telecom revolution.
"Today
we have RTI but we do not have information available in digital format. Our
idea was to computerize all government files but bureaucrats refuse to change.
Digital India requires a huge amount of process engineering which we are not
willing to do," Pitroda said. "Cabinet secretaries are not willing to
do it (digitize)."
Pitroda also
advocated a common platform for key services like passport, driving license,
Aadhaar and other key services. tnn
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