Publish and perish
Published by August 29th, 2010 in Academic Themes, Fun stuff and Naan fiction. 0 CommentsIn his fascinating book, “The world of gold today“, Timothy Green wrote about gold reserves in Fort Knox as one of the silliest ventures taken up by human beings. We slave hard to take out the gold that lies under the earth at tremendous cost of lives and resources. We refine it, transport it across the world and then bury it again under the earth at enormous cost. There can be no venture sillier than that, he argued.
I just had my Fort Knox moment. I discovered that four of the papers that I worked hardest on and got published have been cited once cumulatively in four years. While that is bad, it gets worse. I heard a statistic that the average dissertation is read by seven people in all, and that often includes the mother of the author. We devote years and resources and to burry ourselves into the walls, only to produce something that will be buried in turn, a venture as silly as the gold stores of Fort Knox. It is sobering to realize that the posts I do on Facebook do much better than that, and generally takes only a few minutes to do so.
My recent realisation came when I looked at the software called Publish or Perish. The software helps us to track the performance of various authors, articles, journals and gives us an indication of the “impact” that the author has had. The impact of an author certainly goes beyond the citation that he or she receives: no doubt about that. Such software tend to underestimate the citations one has received since they do not cover all sources, no doubt about that as well. After taking all that into account, it still leaves the work that we do in the academia in very poor light, and life in the academia looks like the perfect route into oblivion: to publish is to perish.
Ps. To those masochistic ones who wish to measure their oblivion or the sadistic ones who wish to precisely estimate the unimportance of your “friends”, you should download and play with Publish or Perish. It costs nothing to download and run; costs to emotions are a different matter.
Will the Unique ID project improve accountability?
Published by July 5th, 2009 in Governance, India, NREGA and Right to Information. 3 CommentsA bold new step has been taken by the government of India to provide all citizens with a Unique Identity Card using smartcards that is expected to be used by citizens while paying taxes, securing government benefits, etc. In an imaginative move the government has appointed the experienced Nandan Nilekani to head the project. Many claim that this will improve the implementing of large schemes while sceptics argue that accountability does not have technological solutions. I explore some aspects of the theme here.
The issue
A planning commission report on this topic (Planning commission 2007) mentions that smart cards with unique ids can improve efficiency, reduce identification errors in selecting beneficiaries, bring greater flexibility in implementing programmes and reduce duplication in information gathering about individuals for each scheme. The report is careful to point out that these many of these problems cannot be “solved”, but can be mitigated by the use of smart cards. The report also points out that the efficiency of smart cards will depend on the quality of data that goes into it.
Let’s take the example of fake ration cards. The report correctly states that there are many fake ration cards that are used for corruption, and this represents a loss for the government. To make things clear, let me distinguish fake ration cards from fake currency. Once fake currency is printed, it can be used freely used anywhere. Faking ration cards on the other hand goes beyond successful printing. Every transaction in a ration card has to be recorded in a corresponding register at a specific ration shop. Typically, the dealer also tends to know the cardholders especially in the rural areas. Thus, without the cooperation of the dealer and the accompanying system of inspectors and others, the project will not succeed.
Typically ‘fake cards’ are cards issued in the names of non-existing people, or cards that are issued in the names of some people who never get to see them. Especially when there is a lot of money involved there will be an attempt to replicate such faking with smart cards as well. After all, if those who are in charge of confirming people’s identity cooperate while issuing smart cards, it would be possible for locally influential people to hoard a large number of such smart cards.
Further smart cards does not help with other forms of cheating e.g. under measurement of goods, telling people that government did not supply the full quota of kerosene while making fake entries while swiping cards, shifting better quality grains for worse during transit, adulteration etc. will continue as usual. In many states people who are really poor are often not identified as Below Poverty Line (BPL) and thus are denied their entitlements; this will not change with smarter cards either. Given this background, it is not surprising that activists who encounter the system on a day-to-day basis have limited enthusiasm for e-governance. As one person put it, ‘there are only political solutions to accountability, and no technological solutions’. I agree with that view, but I also feel that if e-governance is designed the right way, it could alter some aspects of politics and help us improve accountability.
Politics, technology & accountability
At the heart of accountability lies the process of specifying a set of responsibilities, clearly recording activities of various agents, cross verifying this information and holding agents accountable if there are breaches in performance. For example, every ration dealer is expected to record each transaction in a register she maintains and in the ration card of the holders. Monitoring agencies can check the register and see if such families actually exist in the village and if they got the entitlements they received on paper. Without proper records, ability to cross verify or follow up on problems when found, accountability cannot be secured in a corrupt environment. Technology can assist in each of these processes.
First of all, use of smart cards can help us record every transaction including the time, place, quantity and price accurately. In this process the use of smart cards will reduce problems like fake signatures and entitlements of people who have the card in their possession cannot be transferred without accessing their card. The impact can be significant.
The greatest promise of technology comes at the level of cross verification. To begin with, it is extremely time consuming to process paper data to even start the verification process. For example in an employment scheme like NREGA cross verification involves meeting a beneficiary and finding out how many days they worked in a particular project and how much money they received. Suppose we are hoping to verify a project in which all 100 people of a village worked in a project that lasted 25 days in all. Not everyone works every day, and suppose 75 people turned up on an average day. In order to find out how long a person worked, we have to manually go through over 1,000 rows of records manually for each person. With digital entries at source, this cumbersome task can become extremely easy.
Another equally important feature is that technology can remove the control of information from the hands of those who indulge in corruption. To access paper records we have to approach precisely those who fudged them, and naturally they would resist making it difficult to monitor their activities. One official jokingly told me that he would rather part with his life than part with his papers. By taking information out of their control, it would be difficult for them to resist providing information or doing damage control with records when they sense trouble.
Technology can thus reduce the costs of cross-verification dramatically and thus alter the terrain of politics for accountability. But for this to happen, information should be easily, quickly and cheaply accessible for those who wish to take up this exercise. There is an impressive movement in India today to combat corruption using right to information. Ready availability of information can give a fillip to these movements. If a social audit team can just go online and get a ready list of how many days each family in a village got work in an NREGA project or how much rice a family received each month for the last six months, it would be far easier for them to carry out the verification exercise.
I have argued technology affects accountability indirectly by reducing the cost of getting information. If this has to have a significant impact, suitable systems have to be developed. Today, anyone can go online and find out who worked for how many days in NREGA in any village. Such facilities should be available on all entitlements in the fullest spirit of right to information. In the last 10 years, the penetration of mobile phones and public call offices have increased so much that access to telephones has increased dramatically even in far-flung areas. Instead of stopping with providing information online, we could think about individuals calling on telephone to find out details like how much money has been provided to them in different schemes over telephone. This could be achieved by having highly empowered call centres or even by automated technologies over a period of time.
Similarly, people should also be able to call and receive information by post without delay from call centres or by even sending a letter requesting information. Today, when information is requested, it takes a lot of time for the officials to gather the requisite information from paper records, to compile them and to send it to people. What information technology can do is to make information readily, quickly and conveniently available to people. Such measures will make the right to information more meaningful and less costly, and will thus increase public vigilance dramatically. Public vigilance, rather than internal monitoring systems, will force the government to take action when irregularities are found.
Ultimately all the available information cannot make a dent if people are not vigilant and active. Today there is an active right to information movement in India. The time I spent in rural Tamil Nadu and other states also gives me a feeling that there are enough people who will act, if they have the right tools at their command. Technology can energize the sense of public vigilance by providing low cost access to information and in doing that permanently alter the terrain of politics of accountability.
Will trained workers in Panchayats improve the quality of NREGA?
Published by August 15th, 2009 in Current Affairs, Governance, NREGA and Social Policy. 3 CommentsThere is always a dilemma in wage employment programmes on whether they should focus on creating employment or creating assets. So far most attention in NREGA has been on creating employment and the programme is rightly criticised for not producing useful and lasting assets. Among those I know, Mihir has focussed on quality issues more than anyone else, and he has excellent hands-on experience in creating watershed projects using labour intensive programmes.
Mihir has argued that creating lasting assets needs detailed planning, where we have to take into account topography, rainfall patterns, social issues and other information. A remarkable handbook produced by his team outlines this process for watershed projects. They point out that while this project takes time and thought, required skills can be taught to anyone using simple techniques. Following this broad approach he wrote in a recent article in The Hindu:
…strengthening the Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs) by providing them requisite technical and social human resource so that plans can be made and implemented genuinely bottom-up. Without a cadre of social mobilisers or lok sewaks (at least one in every village), it is difficult to convert NREGA into a truly demand-driven programme, where works are undertaken in response to the needs and aspirations of a fully aware citizenry.
I agree with his emphasis for creating a pool of workers who are trained in order to make NREGA productive and I think there should be at least one worker in each Panchayat who focuses mainly on implementing NREGA. But, as far as sound planning goes, I doubt if appointing trained people in Panchayats will be of help, for the following reasons:
(1) Panchayats are typically starved of workers and even if a person is appointed exclusively for NREGA, I fear that her efforts will go into other Panchayat work. (Perhaps this is based on my experience in Tamil Nadu where Panchayat presidents do not like NREGA for complex set of reasons).
(2) There is little commitment today for productivity of NREGA. This is true of government, activists, and sadly even farmers who can benefit from NREGA works. If we create capacity for planning sound works, I think we should vest with an agency that is committed to quality. This can be done by creating nodal agencies that work exclusively in creating a shelf of works for each Panchayat. This could be done in a campaign mode in the model of Total Literacy Movement and hopefully such a campaign will make it a public issue and will help in creating a commitment for productivity in the society at large.
(3) It would be easier to organise some resources like rainfall data, topographic materials, etc. at a nodal centre than to do it in each Panchayat. Further, it would be useful to have a set of people in each region who take a macro view of the situation.
I prefer a model of setting up a nodal team that is well equipped with personnel and information, who will work with Panchayats in coming up with plans that can be automatically approved by the administration. This process will take time and will still require a lot of resources – but it will be resources well spent that we will appreciate for a long time to come.
I recently visited Fatehpur-Sikri near Agra with my friend, Dr. K, and faced the worst harassment I ever have in my life (to give you the context, she is a tall-blonde-white-American girl). The process starts at least 2 KMs before one could reach the 16th century monument. Our taxi driver warned us to lock the doors of our car well before we could enter the area, and we realized why in just a few minutes. A gang of “guides” tried to divert our car into a narrow side road at first, but we managed to get past them. Within seconds another gang waved their hands indicating that we should stop. When we refused, one of them literally jumped in front of the car, barely avoiding an accident. While one of them blocked the car, two others bargained with us to hire a guide. Thankfully, our doors were locked and so they were not able to enter the car to bargain with us (which they do according to our driver).
After much bargaining we went to the parking area from where visitors are required to take an official bus to the monuments. The next ten minutes of waiting was spent in telling the next set of guides that we do not want one. Even when we decided to ignore them, it became impossible to have a good conversation among ourselves thanks to the persistent nagging that we faced. Interestingly, our solicitor argued that he should be hired, else other guides will harass us once we enter the beautiful monument built by Akbar. He was not wrong.
The official bus took us to Sikri and the third round started for us. This time, we were followed inside. Each time I tried to give my friend a background of the place, two guides who followed us argued that I am not supposed to explain anything without paying them money. One of them started abusing in Hindi starting with “Do you think we are insane” (when I did not respond to him after a point) to “I’ll take care of you when you come out”. After these two thugs disappeared, we were confronted with at least five more gangs of guides giving us barely two minute intervals to enjoy our visit to the beautiful monument.
We were finally harassed with the guides demanding us that we should give them our tickets, and very often impolitely. The trip was the most unpleasant one I ever undertook, and it was just impossible to have one peaceful moment. I am sure that the story is not unique to us, and many others have faced the same. As a small step, I am creating an e-mail tool with the contact ids of Incredible India (agency of Ministry of Tourism), District Collector of Agra (the chief administrator of the District), and the Director General of tourism of UP (the State in which Taj Mahal and Fatehpur-Sikri are).
If you have been harassed or if you know of someone, I’d appreciate it if you can send a quick mail to them about it. If you are planning a trip, it would be great if you can send them a mail asking if the place is safe. If there are sufficient e-mails on a regular basis, it may create an impetus for change. The government has managed to protect tourists within Taj Mahal, which is in the neighbourhood, and I trust that they will be able to do it with Fatehpur Sikri if we generate the will to do so. To use the complaint form, click here.
With 15 minutes to go for the Jaipur-Delhi bus, I decided to give the toilet a try. I was directed to dark and damp room with an Indian styled pit-toilet. After finding the only dry spot to stand on, I precariously balanced my pants on my shoulders with nowhere else to hang them. Just when I was to get into business there was a loud crashing sound on my door, and the sound repeated itself in every five seconds along all the doors in the toilet complex. It was a muscular man in a hurry.
“Are you mad”, shouted my neighbour.
“Sis f***, one can’t even potty peacefully in this country”, shouted another in solidarity. Sensing our unionisation, the muscular intruder withdrew into silence. Just when I was about to get into the act, my door rattled again forcefully. The suddenness of the sound was shocking and momentarily scary, and it took renewed concentration and effort on my part to get back to business. I was left wondering how wrong the expression, scaring the shit out of someone is. In any case, this banging was not helping our man’s case. When I finally opened the door he rushed into the room pushing me, and I felt thankful that he at least let me out of the room in his hurry.
I had chosen an A/C bus for the summer heat in Rajasthan. Moments after the bus left the air colder was on in full blast. Half the vents in the bus were broken and passengers blocked them with their hankies, towels and anything they could find. When the bus stopped mid-way at noon, thirty of us streamed out to bask in the Rajasthani summer sunshine, and we watched others hurrying into the restaurant to get some cool air. The three hours were full of irony, improvisation, drama and all about mundane things like going to the toilet or travelling in a bus. I guess that’s what makes life in India intense, happening and fun, with something to smile about simple acts that would be consigned to dullness elsewhere in the world.
This is a desperate attempt to create a story where none exists. As a young man who has freshly returned from the United States after announcing his white girlfriend, I expected some fireworks when I got home; but all was calm in the eastern front. I thought, perhaps an announcement that I will be moving to LA with her could create excitement; that did not help. Will it help if the cause if I make it clear that we have not decided to marry? That did not either.
I am sorry to tell you, my reader, that I have no story to offer: no fireworks, no excitement and nothing interesting to share. My grandma in her mid-eighties now demands to see Dr. K on Skype, and my family is preparing to meet her soon. As a demonstration of acceptance, a long list of people are bracing for her visit with a list of ENT ailments, and we are preparing to turn the guest bedroom into a clinic. Some complaints may require surgeries, and the family is considering installing a floodlight, an oxygen tank and a table with the hope of converting the bedroom into an operating theatre; after all, improvisation is a part of being Indian.
All this goodwill is very disappointing, for I have no story to share. I heard that happy people, like happy nations, have no history. It surely feels good to be happy, but the urge to make history is irresistible. Perhaps I should provoke an uncle or two with something really scandalous. The clock is ticking.
Death needs preparation. Preparation, especially for those who will be left behind, and I have started preparing for the death of a close one. She has been my bedside companion for many years, and the holder of my most intimate thoughts. She has been a part of my conversations with friends, my work and my leisure. She is the one I turned to when I woke up, and she put me to sleep for many a year. It looks like she may die soon.
When she dies, she will take with her a part of me – naturally. A friend once told me of a ninety year old man who just returned from his friend’s funeral. With the passing of this friend, he said that no one remembers him as a child anymore. While my case is not as dramatic, some memories of me will be lost forever with her passing.
You may argue that a laptop is not like a person that she will not take her memories with her passing; and that I can transfer the memories with a little effort. But for me, a laptop is not merely a machine that contains and processes memories. The tactile sensation, the sight and sound of a laptop is unique to it, even if it were mass produced. You may argue that I could go for a newer, faster, better looking laptop after this one. I guess it’s like an old man getting a trophy wife; there is something to be excited about, but much will be missed with her passing.
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