Draft for comments:

Key Draft recommendations for building a globalizing and resurgent India through innovative transformation (GRIT), a course taught by Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam and Anil K Gupta at IIMA.

1. Several groups recommended setting up pura corporation at district level with district collector as joint CEO with a professional chief executive to run it full time. The spatial allocation of sectoral resources will also help in bridging rural-rural and rural-urban divide. Chief Minister should review the progress of PURA quarterly against well defined and agreed success indicators.
2. There should be competition among different puras so that better performing PURA  gets additional points and resources.
3. While policy making is often given lot of stress, the institutional capacity is seldom matched with the needs of the policies. It was realized, that strong policies through weak institutions will invariably get diluted and distorted. Whereas strong institutions will improve the weak policies incrementally and produce better results. Institution building was recommended as an important goal for empowerment of the poor.
4. Water conservation policies need a complete overhaul. There is no incentive for people to economise water use. So much so that the designs of the toilet and faucets continued to be age old water wasting type. Perhaps some time bound targets will have to be given to change all the toilets and flush system so that water wasting practices can be eliminated completely in urban as well as rural areas. Composting toilets, waterless urinals, wetting effective faucets will have to be popularised all over the country. There should be obligation on every public and private body/user to make a transition to new sanitary equipments. Every new house must be given permission for occupation only after it is verified that it has a rooftop water harvesting system and a water recycling system. Older establishments must also be obliged to install such systems. The per capita water consumption particularly in cities is completely non sustainable.
5. The energy cooperatives entities/companies were recommended by a group to ensure synergy between wind, solar, hydro and other sources of energy. There should be financial incentives and buyback arrangements wherever surplus units are produced. Energy security will require stronger partnership with the neighbouring countries having richer hydel  resources along with non conventional energy. Bhutan alone has more than twenty four thousand mega watt potential of which hardly fifteen hundred mega watt had been harness so far. India should generously and aggressively invest in clean energy projects in Bhutan, Myanamar, Nepal etc.,
6. Revitalizing educational system at different levels attracted the maximum student groups. Almost one third of the class looked at different dimensions of education.  One could integrate the availability of educational materials and learning opportunities with the pura corporation. There could be tax concessions to the companies which help in diffusing high quality educational content to rural areas through various media. An overall regulatory body needs to be created for monitoring the quality of education being provided at different levels. The satellite space and frequencies should be offered at concessional terms to private actors providing affordable education. Multi media multi language content is obligatory to overcome the barriers of language, literacy and localism.
7. Vocational education can be provided by the private sector in collaboration with pura and other public systems so that skills for the future needs can be created.
8. Farmers who send their children to school regularly may be entitled to certain kind of discount coupons for buying seed, other inputs, health services, insurance coverage etc.,
9. All the students of higher education should be obliged to do 120 hours of voluntary duty in the educational sector. The concept of neighbourhood schools must be implemented so that the quality of the municipal or rural schools improves. Distance education for capacity building of teachers along with provision of open source educational softwares in different languages must receive priority. It is a pity that despite so much advancement in IT sector, our children still don’t have access to multi language animation or softwares for understanding scientific, technological or mathematical concepts.
10. The community of researchers, teachers, students and parents must be actively involved in the creation of content, monitoring of quality and mentoring of the students. The excessive reliance on tuitions creates asymmetry, and exclusion of the poor. Availability of public domain high quality learning aids will reduce such asymmetry.
11. One could set up vocational PURAs which focus on providing institutional environment for development of appropriate skills for improving efficiency, generating employment and creating knowledge and innovation based enterprises.
12. The educational systems have to pursue the inclusive agenda aggressively. Be it physically disabled or economically and culturally handicapped people, opportunities for their assimilation in the educational system have to be expanded far beyond than what is the present status. The quality of education in tribal areas, hill areas and many other marginal environments needs considerable improvement (Himachal Pradesh is an exception). All the elite institutions must adopt some villages and slums nearby to overcome the opportunity gap. The ITI s should be modernized and expanded with futuristic skills.
13. There should be a national skill database so that gaps can be identified, demand and supply can be matched and targeted skill building programmes can be taken up. Investment in human resources has to be made an instrument of inclusion, innovation and investment. The entrepreneurship development will have to become the basis for providing employment.
14. Programmes like National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme should focus not just on physical skills but also mental skills. The value addition and entrepreneurship development based on local knowledge, innovation and practices must make it possible for elimination of the public intervention in the labour market at a future date completely. The success of a policy is when it self destructs i.e., one doesn’t need it any more.
15. Creation of a special economic zone may be one way to create world class educational facilities attracting students from around the world. However, excellence without values becomes sterile. Values without excellence becomes burden. Both have to be blended. The placement should be taken out of the Higher Educational institutions since it kills the entrepreneur skills and distorts all other objectives of the institution.
16. The preventive health has consistently received much less attention than curative health. Within health the Indian system of medicine has received even less attention. The traditional foods which are more nutritive than the modern foods have also been neglected. Neither midday meals scheme nor public distribution system has focused on nutritional supplement using traditional committee knowledge and resources. The scientific knowledge needs to be disseminated regularly and in a widespread manner. Education and health are closely linked. Education of girls even more so. Sixty per cent diseases are water born. The stress on quality of water and sanitation is much less than what the problem warrants. The subsidies for the rich must be completely eliminated. Those who can afford to pay must be made to pay. However, in certain cases distribution of costs differently among rich and poor may provide a viability to the infrastructure. A national essential drug list must be compiled so that their prices and supply can be strictly regulated. Instead of investing huge resources only in a few centralized hospitals and associated institutions, fund should be allocated to strengthen district level infrastructure. The anti smoking, liquor and other such campaigns must be supported vigorously because their contribution to health improvement is far more than merely by providing curative services. The emergency health services have contributed a great deal to the democratisation of health services. These needs to be replicated. However, diversity of health services giving due attention to Ayush is must. The telemedicine also needs to be expanded.
17. The role of panchayati raj institutions in providing health services has to be amplified. National Rural Health mission has to be more targeted and monitored to people’s participation. The healthcare insurance system has bypassed rural areas. Hardly perhaps one per cent of rural communities get covered under this. There is no reason why NREGA can be linked with the provision of health insurance, soap for personal sanitation, water filter for improving quality water and education for better use of information and resources etc.
18. Corruption is a serious problem. There are several interesting ideas which can help in tackling corruption. The efficient and better performing employees should get better compensation. Social recognition of honest people can be a great motivator. An honours list should be published in local media and in each office. Arbitrary transfers of honest officials must be curbed. There are examples where a transport commissioner was  transferred because he raised the revenue collection by plugging the leakages. Such cases happen rampantly and are ignored by the media and society almost as a routine. There are senior secretaries whose postings reflect the interest of large corporate houses and this happens with wide public knowledge. Such behaviour has to be censored at the highest level. Whistle blower protection act. must be passed and made effective to protect the interest of honest employees. Houses of the convicted persons may  be painted in a specific colour so that even their family may refuse to stay with them. Social segregation can be a powerful disincentive for corruption. Similarly, Disgrace list of chief Vigilance Commissioner should be published in newspapers to create wider awareness about the corrupt people. Community services as a penalty may have  wider demonstration effect. In addition integrity tests have to be introduced so also the file tracking system. Right to recall has to be introduced for elected representatives. Each MP should rank his/her performance against the work done by other MPs so that performance consciousness emerges. There can also be independent ranking of the performance by MPs and MLAs. The voting right of migrant and mobile population must be protected. With increasing economic growth proportion of such people is bound to increase.
19. Horizontal markets have to be developed to encourage specialization in product development in different villages and its trade among them. Local knowledge, innovations and resources can be valorized by blending formal and informal science and technology. Entrepreneurship development and micro venture capital will have to go hand in hand. Grassroot knowledge and innovations can play a pivotal role in elimination of poverty and generation of employment through product development and also enterprise development. The resources for promoting these products must also be provided. Procurement of local grains under PDS must be obligatory. The micro finance movement must be evolved to micro venture finance and product development movement. The local committees must be supported through a knowledge network connecting innovators at the grassroots level. The web based as well as local newspaper and media based collaboration among local committees and knowledge rich economically poor people, researchers, policy makers and entrepreneurs must be enabled. Lessons from successful examples must be shared. Linkage between research institutions and outstanding best practices at local level must be strengthened.
20. The terrorism cannot be tackled without solving the problem of inclusion, social justice and community participation in widespread vigilance. One should distinguish the motivations of different kinds of terrorist outfits. There can be no sanction for any violence based movements and yet certain kind of terrorism gets more attention than others. Students felt the caste based terrorism always tends to be under recognized. Regional exclusion and parochial policies have also to be condemned. The preponderance of naxalite movement in socially and economically backward regions signifies the lack of development as the trigger for social disturbance. Without sorting out the socio-economic injustice, mere use of force will not solve this problem. Religion based terrorism has acquired enormous strength in the recent past. However, terrorists have no religion. The declining engagement of young people with their communities, different social and cultural groups and minorities generates stereotypes in the mind. When innocent people are apprehended and  put into jail without any evidence, the ground for multiplication of terrorism gets fertilized. The role of media in promoting the terms such as Islamic or Hindu terrorism has also done a great damage by putting identity  at cross purpose. Among various strategies developmental strategies were considered more sustainable in fighting terrorism. The people to people contact across the nations must be encouraged to create wider understanding about the forces which support cross border terrorism. Replicating PURAs in bypassed and conflict prone regions might take away some of the reasons for support of local communities for the terrorism.
21. India can become a nation which is the best place to live in and is proud of its leadership by introducing much wider participation of voters in the election as well as governance in a transparent manner. Public servants must go through a 360 degree review  by the bosses, peers and the clients and citizens. Similarly every public organization must be evaluated on multiple criteria including responsiveness to society. The training of bureaucracy needs complete overhaul if the values and the vision for new India has to be implemented. Lateral entry of experts in the governance structure must be encouraged at all levels. The incentives must correspond with the performance. The child labour and other such dehumanising practices must be eliminated in a time bound manner.

The GRIT course also provided exposure to the systems of governing science and technology which can play a very important role in ensuring inclusion and efficiency besides innovation at all levels in the society. There are lot of ideas which need to be further refined. Some ideas have to be backed up by more experimentation. It is clear that when challenged, young people can throw up enormous diversity of ideas, initiatives, institutional designs and innovations for transforming India. A young country cannot afford to ignore the contribution of young people, which seems so obvious.

Anil K Gupta