Opinion Nutrition before ID Cards

If I have learned one thing from long years of covering politics and government in India it is that one reason....

July 5, 2009 02:19 AM IST First published on: Jul 5, 2009 at 02:19 AM IST

If I have learned one thing from long years of covering politics and government in India it is that one reason why we are among the worlds poorest,most backward countries is because we usually chase the wrong dreams. We expend huge resources of time and money on things that do not matter and in the process lose the thread of what does matter. We lose sight of what it is that we are trying to achieve.

So we spend vast resources on building rural hospitals and health centres and ignore the fact that they are useless without doctors and medicines. We scatter schools across the countryside,under trees,thatched roofs and tin sheds without noticing that the children who go to these schools rarely learn to read,write or count. We build the same roads every year without trying to understand why they never survive a single season of rain. They do in countries in which it rains every day. I could go on and on but I have less than 800 words to make my point and must do so now without further ado.

The national identity card scheme worries me. I see it as the latest item on our list of wrong dreams. I know Nandan Nilekani to be a fine,intelligent,honourable man with a highly developed social conscience. It is excellent that he should be chosen by the Prime Minister as the newest member of his government but it seems sad that his considerable intelligence (and huge sums of taxpayers money) should be wasted on a project that will do little more than add to the massive infrastructure of our bureaucracy. It needs demolition,not more pillars.

Besides why should this new ID card work when so many others have failed because of running aground on the broken machinery of government? In my own case,I had a voters card at this election but it was ten years ago that the process of giving it to me began. I have a passport that I dread renewing because of the pages and pages of useless forms that I am forced to fill. I have had a passport for more than thirty years so renewing it should not need a police check and endless paperwork,but it does. And,I have strings as thick as ropes that I can pull to ease the process. It frightens me to think of those who need to get a passport without access to high officials.

For the aam aadmi,life is very,very hard in every way. Indians who live below the poverty line are entitled to a BPL card that supposedly gives them a plethora of government benefits. But go to any village anywhere in India and you will find that BPL cards are usually in the hands of those who are not below the poverty line. When I bring this up with political leaders and big bureaucrats,they say it is because the poor are selling them. But when I meet ordinary BPL people,they point to the complex web of caste,criminality and political power that they battle daily for even those things that are their right.

The BPL folks that I know in Mumbai and Delhi do not have birth certificates,identity cards or any proof of nationality. Even if they did,they have no means of knowing how to access the benefits that accrue to them. Will a national identity card make their lives less difficult? I think not. What would make a difference is a nutrition programme like the one that Infosys supports through Akshaye Patra in Bangalore. It is my humble opinion,expressed ad nauseum in this column,that the most important and most achievable goal that we should set is to ensure that not a single Indian child is malnourished by the year 2014. India is shamed in the forums of the world because nearly half of our children are malnourished. What is the point of being the second fastest growing economy in the world if we rank below countries like Sudan,Cameroon and Nigeria when it comes to feeding our children?

Why can Mr Nilekanis huge talents for management not be used to help the Prime Minister end child malnutrition? Why should he not be in charge of a Child Malnutrition Authority instead of a Unique Identity Authority? Even if he succeeds in distributing a billion identity cards will it make any difference? Some estimates put the cost of our new identity card project at more than Rs 1.5 lakh crores. Is this an expense we can afford when half our children go to bed hungry every night? And,besides how will the card work in villages that do not have adequate supplies of electricity leave alone computers?