the government delivers public services
let’s just think of what happens when we
think of what is the government doing
for us think of images what we think of
is broken roads we all travel by them we
think of the potholes like you know like
a wonderful MC said we look at the rest
and save up a talk you hear we think of
a public education system I mean how
many of us really would consider sending
our children to a public school because
we think that they are devoid of
teachers and desks and benches we think
of public hospitals and you know unless
we really need to most of us don’t go
there because we think it’s overcrowded
and and the fact that there aren’t beds
there are nurses that aren’t doctors and
if we think of our sanitation system we
just think of a pile of crap I mean
that’s that’s what comes to mind
so do none of us in this room is it
surprising that we’re not exactly
content with what the government is
doing in terms of public services so the
question is what’s the problem I mean
where is the issue what is essentially
stopping the government from doing this
and most of us are first thought that we
come up with is that we’re a poor
country we do not have enough money or
resources to be able to build good roads
to be able to build good infrastructure
hospitals schools but the fact is that
that’s not entirely true the fact is it
will not a poor country if you just look
at the central government budget and the
central government budget is often
matched with the state government budget
in terms of programs and welfare schemes
you’ll see any program 19 mm
look at our health mission our national
health mission which is divided into
urban and rural mission and what you’ll
notice is there’s a lot of money that
exists in the system the second thought
which we have is that potentially there
is corruption there are leakages so what
if there is money they clearly are going
in the wrong hands and perhaps that’s
one of the big issues and there is some
truth to that
there is in fact some amount of leakages
which happens but that’s not the only
issue which comes up so essentially if
we look at what is going on we in 2012
we started on
this journey we wanted to see what is
going on at the ground level what is
happening why is public service not
being delivered and we reached out to a
Member of Parliament an MP from Barak
bush and our thinking was that look MPs
are usually the first person that you
would the the electorate goes towards
the citizen goes to to say there’s this
issue and so the MP from bericht will
essentially told us that in jute mills
which is a major part of his
constituency the workers will suffering
major health concerns such major health
concerns that it was frightening for him
every time he went back to the
constituency and had a discussion with
them so obviously we were curious and
and a team of us went into the ground to
see what was happening now the jute mill
essentially employed anywhere between 30
to 50 thousand people in that community
and when you walked into the jute mill
if you think that pollution in Delhi is
bad this was about 10 times worse you
could see mattered in the air what you
were breathing in and essentially you
could see it was very obvious why people
were suffering from respiratory diseases
so we did it as report we tried to
understand what’s going on really and
what we noticed was about 90 percent of
all workers in the jute mill were either
at high risk of respiratory disease or
already had one we moved on to figuring
out the solution clearly there’s a
problem we know that it’s affecting a
lot of people the MP is clearly wanting
to bring in a solution what do we do
what we noticed was that there is
someone called a jute mill commissioners
who’s there at a state level now this is
a very minor fact which most of us would
not know but the fact is that the jute
mill commissioners in this case
essentially sits on a pot of fun which
is responsible for the welfare of the
workers of the factory workers we went
ahead and we held health camps we went
ahead and we did Street Theatre we went
ahead and tried to create awareness
around the fact that it was unsafe to be
in the factory ground without a mask if
you are essentially breathing in that
air that’s not good for you as we’re
doing this we realized that there is
something else which exists there is a
national government scheme which
essentially enrolls workers so that you
can get insurance and be treated in a
public order private hospitals so one of
the big initiatives which we had was
enrolling all of these 30,000 workers in
one of the factories into the programs
now that alone was transformational
because now you had workers most of whom
did not even know that such a program
existed come in and work in the system
what this essentially points out in
terms of our framework is that there are
some gaps which exist and specifically
there are three gaps which exist the
first is that oftentimes there is a
knowledge deficit a bureaucrat a dude
male commissioner sitting in some
faraway district in West Bengal might
not necessarily know what is going on
they might not necessarily know how many
people are enrolled and what the ground
realities are and essentially there is a
need to connect those two points there
is a knowledge gap which exists there is
a gap which exists on understanding
there are some 74 schemes that exist to
support the poor and what we’re trying
to do essentially is create that
awareness and that knowledge about what
are the different pieces which are there
the second piece piece which exists is I
understand what the problem is but again
that mentality of we’re a poor country
we don’t have enough money where are the
resources where some money going to be
pulled out of being able to create that
Segway and to say this is where these
sources can be pulled out of and
pointing out specifically where the
money resources lie is is a big piece
which we’re working on solving and the
third piece which we’re working on is
actually having people on the ground
currently we have the bureaucrats we
have what are the executing capacity is
one-fifth of that of let’s say compared
to the United States we are very
understaffed on the ground our
decision-makers are very few when our
work is huge especially considering each
districts gets allocated significant
amount of resources and yet there’s so
much work to do that all we do is
disperse money hoping that if we get
done so then we started thinking about
that this is good and fine so we have
people who go into the ground who
connect the right hand to the left hand
who figure out that there is a
a problem come up with a solution and
mobilize resources this is
understandable there is a gap which is
fulfilled but what do you do in the
longer term essentially how do you
figure out that in the longer term we
need to have the backend system within
the government administration to be able
to sustain these models of understanding
what is happening on the ground and
create corrective measures so we tried
something new in Balasore which is a
district in Orissa essentially in Bala
soil what we said was what if we had a
back-end dashboard what if we had a
real-time platform for district
officials where I could as a district
official see at a household level that
these are the schemes and programs that
this family has access to and this is
where the resources are coming in from
and are they matching so for example
there is a yogena which essentially
allows for people to build houses this
is very big in Orissa the assumption
that a district magistrate would have is
that so much money is coming in clearly
they are going to be a lot of people who
are accessing the scheme but I don’t
necessarily know if that’s true what we
did was we essentially went ahead and at
a household level went and asked the
question how many people have access to
the scheme and went ahead and then
provided a real-time geotag platform to
say okay these are the number of houses
who do have them and this is who doesn’t
have them and by the way this is how
much money you have available so what we
did was we try to connect the whole
platform right now we have a team of
people who are working there and it’s
the little things right it’s it’s the
going ahead and realizing that there’s a
healthcare center that needs to be
really done and rebuilding it it’s going
ahead and holding information session
with farmers groups and saying that this
is how you can get money out of the
system and this is what you need to do
it’s connecting the dots so what does
that mean for us what does it really
telling us what is the main takeaway
today the fact of the matter is that we
think that a government is too big a
bureaucracy is too bloated and the fact
that we don’t have enough systems or
enough money in fact the opposite is
true in each case the fact is that a
bureaucracy is too lean
we don’t have enough government support
that needs to be created the fact is
that we have enough money to be able to
create crown level impact what we need
is you
what we need is smart engaged citizens
to be involved in the process of
governance and nation-building so as
we’re celebrating you think more
actively about how you can be a part of
this nation building process because we
really need you in governance thank you [Applause]