1. For drinking water issue
Essential commodities like water should not be left for exploitation by private industries. I see no rational why drinking water erstwhile available free should suddenly become 12 Rs per litre. It’s because of lack of political will and ignorance and hopelessness of public that we are ready to pay 12 Rs for bottled water but we want our domestic supply free. We can pay 10 Rs for a cold drink bottle which may not cost even 2-3 Rs to the company. The govt. should impose higher taxes on such industries and should give open declaration that money collected from such tax will be used in supplying pure drinking water for domestic supply. Govt should not interfere much with market but it should regulate it strongly. I see no reason why Railneer was also 12 Rs per litre. If govt sold Railneer at 5Rs per bottle, the prices of other brands would have immediately come down.
If natural resources like water, air, land, minerals, spectrum etc. will be left unregulated and uncared for, the few influential people will exploit it and the people of India won’t get anything from it, and we will remain a rich country of poor people. Most of such ideas are rejected as wishful thinking but they are not so. We need to restore public trust in the govt. and need a leadership with such vision.
We should have local level water treatment plants to filter at every outlet of a local sewage/nala to a river.
Increase awareness among public not to waste and pollute water.
MNREG schemes should be used for employing people for cleaning of rivers and water harvesting projects.
2. Increasing transparency and accountability
RTI is one of the biggest act passed by legislature. It has tremendous potential to ensure accountability and increase transparency of the system. Currently our bureaucracy (Babus) take it as a burden and it s not being used them as a tool to fight corruption. If all departments and offices make suo moto disclosure of their work including implementation of programmes and the account of the way public money is spent, even a corrupt person can’t dare to make money on loopholes of the system. The suo moto clause of the RTI act empowers officers to save themselves from the pressure of corrupt system and it will put a check on victimization of honest officers.
The finance is the backbone of any country. The weak payment and banking system can’t check while money getting converted to black money. A lakhs and crores of rupees starting from the center level are siphoned out before it reaches the grassroots. A direct payment system is a solution to remove such obstacles.
In this direction, including post offices in the banking system can be a major step forward. Thus govt. can be directly sending money to the beneficiaries to their post office accounts. India has a very huge network of post offices and every village have a post office. We can have a central database connected to state database further to district database and village database which will be connected through post offices. All records of beneficiaries will have account info, and their money should be electronically transferred.
Moreover, all the financial transaction should be made online. All payments for contracts and purchases should be done online so that all transactions are recorded in the bank statement. This will also help in accounting and auditing and will increase transparency.
3. Utilising tax revenue for social upliftment
The tax burden should be well targeted and directed for specific schemes. Tax can be used as a tool to regulate market and direct public money to where it should be spent.
1. Tax on soft drinks --> use for water treatment and free drinking water
2. Entertainment tax on private channels --> to increase education expense
3. Tax on alcohol and tobacco --> health expenditure
4. Tax and penalty on polluting industries --> for keeping air clean and river water pure
5. Either remove subsidy on diesel or impose higher tax on diesel cars/SUVs. Subsidy on CNG/LPG and electric cars and on public transport (not just metro but also better bus service for villages too)
4. Improving the system: Transport, health, education and administration
i. The market highly depends on the transport and supply.The increased cost should be handled by -making better roads so that less fuel is spent and less pollution
-making the supply system faster by removing bottlenecks on roads like making functioning of toll plaza smooth, bypasses from crowded cities, fencing NHs
ii. Removing role of middleman as much as possible specifically for agricultural products and making storage facility for products so that supply side bottlenecks can be managed
iii. More expenditure should be made to provide better teachers. More incentives should be given for rural school teachers.
iv.The routine functions of the district administration like issuing certificates etc should be fully automated and computerised so that IAS officers can spend more time in planning and development.
v.All data starting from panchayat level should be digitalised; it will make data handling easy.
vi. UID, census, land revenue management, certificate issuance and other public service can be directly served by such database.
vii.Higher education and research should be made more attractive by increasing the scholarships and stipends for research students.
viii.Video clinics should be established in every tehsil/sub-district level so that specialists can provide consultation to patients.
With cleaner air and water, we will have less diseases and load on health facilities will be less.
Natural resources should be utilised in a sustainable manner by public, the private companies should be regularised so that people's money is spent on people. Let us take back the public money to serve the people.
5. Understanding People
Suppose there is some garbage on the road. Now there can be five kind of responses
1. people see the garbage and start throwing more garbage there...making it worse just like people spit exactly where its written not to or park at no parking.
2. people see it, curse the other people and the system but don’t do anything. However, they, at least do not add to the problem
3. people see it, condemn it, and make effort to clean it by themselves...that’s out NGOs and active civil societies
4. there are the people who create awareness and lead people with a vision to keep it clean..our leaders, which are very few there for creative issues like this.
5. and finally people who make the structural arrangement to get it clean and make sure it do not get dirty again by strengthening the system. That’s the executives..our bureaucrats.
These last two have most important role and we need to include the civil societies with us. With a participative system we can easily get support of second and third too and then the first have no reason to make it worse.
Ultimately all power lies with the public but it is too ignorant or unorganised to use it.
