Chasing Realistic Dreams and Not Utopia

The machinery that we follow in our country is pseudo-democratic. The bureaucracy is full of busybodies with a brimful of ideas and it wants to implement unrealisable dreams.

I am not naming the people involved here, but I am pained to describe before you, the young people of India, a certain initiative that has been taken up by one of the state governments in our country.

The initiative plans to draw from the world bank a sum that runs to a thousand crores and more. It aims to set right a certain set of "traditional" practices in the water distribution, allocation and irrigation sectors, that these people believe have gone "wrong".

I had an opportunity to look at the proposal made by the "chosen" people of the bureaucracy, and believe me, the three documents that I had a look into were akin to the famous bhasmasura. Not only the people had no idea which models were applicable when and where, but also they thought that GIS was only a tool to make maps. They plan to design a system which would design and dictate policies, handle billing and tender, make maps, devise alternate strategies, not be a black box to the user and display the model proposed and the relevant flowchart, become a repository of knowledge etcetera etcetera etcetera all built into one. They probably stopped short of doing the laundry and cleaning the toilets!

I ask you, o common man, would you like to be slaves of such kind of bureaucracy? Would you like to submit before the World Bank, a project that has no clear mission, no clear vision and yet is a khich of big-worded ideas, thus sending our country into debt and in foreign hands.

I would ask the young people to come forward, learn proper methods of writing project proposals and throw them open to the real world. Make your ideas available to the public, tell them that you know what to do and how. Choose small ideas but study the best practices. Let Geoinformatics be a friendly tool for the people and not an enemy of the country. There is a need to educate people on the proper use of Geoinformatics in our country.

I am signing off for the day.