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Bangaloreing voters' list review
Written By murali772 - 23 January, 2008
Bangalore egovernance Elections Voter ID
I was quite excited to read the caption 'Voters' list review Bangalored' in your columns this morning (23rd Jan). However, on going through the text, I was disappointed to find that what was proposed hardly amounted to 'Bangaloreing', going by the general understanding of the term. What is proposed is a review by another set of babu's, but from different states, which can have a limited impact, at best.
Indeed, what needs to be done is the proper Bangaloreing of not just the review, but the preparation and maintenance of the voters' list itself. Now, supposing the likes of say an Infosys, Wipro or TCS is entrusted with the job, within a matter of a few months, they will work to ensure an accuracy of even upto 99%, from the less than 50% as existing (as admitted by the State Election Commision itself), contributing greatly to the strengthening of our democratic process.
Organised private sector companies are today being entrusted with far more sensitive jobs, and one fails to see how much more sensitive these kinds of jobs are. Besides, the general public today has far greater faith and confidence in the abilities and integrity of these kinds of companies than they have in most of the government organisations.
In fact, I expect it will not be far off in the future before the equivalents of Election Commissions in the UK and US actually start Bangaloreing these jobs.
The above is the text of the letter sent to editor, TOI, today.
For more, read: http://bangalore.praja.in/blog/murali772/2007/12/12/secs-muddle
COMMENTS
admin123 - 7 May, 2008 - 08:21
murali772 - 19 October, 2008 - 11:14
Now, when something as critical as issual of passport, particularly in today's terrorism-threatened world, can be outsourced (http://bangalore.praja.in/blog/murali772/2008/10/14/passport-three-days), why not the preparation and maintenance of voters' list, as also issual of voter ID cards?
Today's inaccuracy levels of the order of over 50% across the country (as admitted by the EC itself), is causing serious subversion of the democratic process even at the very first stage itself, apart from posing a serious threat to national security.
Correction of this anomalous situation has to be the first priority of the country if it wants to call itself a democracy.
Muralidhar Rao
outsourcing - clearly the way forward
murali772 - 8 February, 2010 - 09:16
While helping my m-i-l to apply for a UK family visitor visa, I notice that a large part of the preliminary work has been outsourced to a commercial company - VFS Global, who go about the job in a most professional way. A friend whose daughter took up a job in the UK recently tells me that as a part of the process of checking her credentials, the agency sent its people to physically verify all particulars with some three neighbors. That's the thoroughness with which they undertake the job. Compared to that, I suppose I don't need to elaborate on how the police goes about the job here.
There needn't be a debate any more - outsorcing (to professional agencies) is very clearly the way forward
VFS Global - works for foreign principals
Naveen - 8 February, 2010 - 10:06
Mr Murali,
Though yr point is well taken, VFS in India, a part of the VFS global network is appointed & paid for by foreign principals, who will not stand any nonsense nor will compromise it's working to suit politicians or bearucarts needs, like our systems do !
silkboard - 8 February, 2010 - 13:38
Naveen, having said that, not sure if you read recently about (I think) vodafone cutting off Pranab Mukherjee's phone connection due to large unpaid bill amount :)
That would take us into the decade old privatization debates :), but outsourcing is a bit different. There is no well accepted definition around, but outsourcing is generally defined as sub-contracting of functions via well laid out contracts about quality and payments without giving any larger decision making authority about the business itself to the external parties. Outsourcing is usually done for non-core functions, drivers for doing it are cost advantage and efficiency via tapping onto expertise of specialists.
Hoever, one thing different regarding outsourcing for govt orgs would be - What is core and non-core? One side extreme view would be that the only core function govt bodies should hold on to is - regulation and monitoring. Why not outsource the rest? Many would say no, a lot more things could be core for govt orgs. Regardless, there are no strong argument against outsourcing the acceptably non-core functions towards the bottom of govt value chain.
Many confuse outsourcing with privatization or deregulation, like it happened in case of JUSCO at Mysore. Or would happen in Bangalore if BMTC website and IT operations were outsourced to Praja.in :) Kidding.
Any which way, outsourcing is a bit different deal for governments, and that is why big name analyst firms in outsourcing world have been tracking govt outsourcing separately from non govt sectors.
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