India
has a rich heritage of culture expressed in manuscripts, folk songs,
paintings, classical dances, classical music, stories, sculptures
etc. However, with modernization, we are loosing them at a very rapid
rate. Very soon, we will loose the unparalleled rich heritage that we
have inherited.
The
loss is happening not just because of physical deterioration but also
because we do not have Digital Sovereignty and hence records that are
kept in electronic form are also being lost as there is no holistic
approach or vision to maintaining these records. As an example,
precious recordings of renditions by Gangubhai Hangal when she was 19
years old are lost as there are no machines that can read the tapes
on which the recording was done.
Our
citizens face daily problems with regards to their own records
provided by the government and government agencies. Governments
themselves regularly ask the hapless citizen to bring documents such
as caste certificate or birth certificates or even educational
certificates that have been given by the government itself. We feel
that it is bad governance if the government itself does not have the
documents that it issued to the citizens and thus harass the
citizens. It also leads to fraud as paper documents can be forged
leading to further degeneration of governance.
Such
risk of frauds also push up the borrowing rates for capital for
purchasing income generating assets such as trucks and tractors as
banks are not sure if the same asset is being hypothecated with
multiple banks.
We
therefore propose to digitize all government records, government
provided documents and capture the Indian heritage digitally in
formats that do not compromise our digital sovereignty. All land
records and property records will be made available on click of a
button, thus reducing property related civil cases that clog our
courts. All citizen records, including birth records, deatch records,
marriage and caste certificates will be made available online. Caste
certificates will be issued automatically based on the caste of the
parents. All educational degrees will be kept online for verification
and authentication.
The
National Manuscripts Mission, that was launched by the
Government almost a decade ago, needs to be implemented vigorously with digital archiving
standards that are not controlled by foreign companies but are
universally shared. A similar mission will be launched for protecting
the invaluable intangible heritage of India, expressed through music,
oral history, folk arts etc.
And
to set up a Central Electronic Registry to track all income
generating movable and immovable assets in order to make it easy to
get loans to purchase such assets.
And
so in India in future, no government department will harass a citizen
by asking the citizen to bring the ownership documents of land for a
loan, or to bring educational certificates, or caste certificate or
passport as the government itself will have it as e-records. And it
will create many more jobs by making it easy and cheap to take loans
for purchasing income generating assets. It will help transform India
into an efficient, world class economy.
