What does high command mean in this day and age,asks Pitroda

There are only party agendas,he said,and everyone is fire-fighting.

Sam Pitroda,the advisor to the Prime Minister on Public Information Infrastructure and Innovations,on Thursday called for a complete revamp of the countrys healthcare delivery,education systems,governance model,and even the election system,terming all of them obsolete. Pitroda said,We need to create a national agenda.

There are only party agendas,he said,and everyone is fire-fighting. He proposed such a national agenda should give importance to environment,poverty,healthcare and education. It should start with election reforms since all corruption has roots in the funding of elections as those who come to power after spending crores on campaigning have to think about balancing their personal cheque books before thinking about public policy.

He recommended better use of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) in governance as that would make things more transparent,and worried about the fact that no one has a clear idea about how many schools,colleges,hospitals or even courts are there in the country,which meant there is no integrated data system.

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In an obvious reference to hierarchy in politics,Pitroda also said,What does high command mean in this day and age? Power must come from the bottom.

Pitroda was delivering a lecture on Nation Building in the 21st century and Indian Challenges at the Indian Institute of Management,Ahmedabad. Nation building is not the same as building a company, he said. It is not about balance-sheets or shareholders.

Rejecting the American model of national building where native Americans were killed for their land in the wild west where you walked into a bar,shot the man you did not like and had a beer afterwards,he said such a consumption-based model is neither scalable nor workable.