Why Do Governments, Businesses, Social Enterprises Need Technology?
"Efficiency", "Improved speed of action", "Revenue gains", "Improved customer service", "Minimising human error", "Improved monitoring", "Smart governance", "Social issues", "Social businesses", "Social enterprise systems". These are some of the top ten keywords found when searching for reasons why the government, businesses, and social enterprises should adopt the technology. Very often, we find the development sector in India (non-profits, academia, impact consulting firms) arguing for technology-driven or data-driven governance using similar phrases. While all the above points are true, the government is not a business and should not be one. We must tread carefully when we bring corporate approaches to the public sector. There is a need to further emphasise research and increase understanding of the use of digital technologies and apply the principles of digital culture by the government, corporates as well as social businesses to foster technological innovations and contribute to the realisation of sustainable development goals.
In one of the recent podcasts, former Deputy Chairperson of the Planning Commission, Dr. Montek Singh Ahluwalia, recollected his initial motivation to work with the Indian Government by comparing the role of government in the USA vs. India. In the USA, there has been a general libertarian sentiment that the government should be reduced in size. We carry this sentiment and demand for a reduced government very often. And we terribly go wrong when we carry home sentiments without the associated data. The USA (and other developed countries) already had a huge public sector that enabled good governance and a conducive environment for the private sector to grow. The well-grown private sector then demanded that the government exit the areas where it can deliver, leaving the government to focus on other areas. However, Dr. Ahluwalia believed that the situation in India has always been different. There has always been a lack of government and governance in India, especially in rural and remote lands. And so, he was motivated to join the government, to add some strength to it.
In India, we can observe a positive correlation between the state government's strength and the Human Development Index (HDI). High HDI states like Kerala, Goa and Himachal Pradesh have a much more populous civil service than low HDI states like Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Jharkhand.
One might wonder why the North-Eastern states have a lower HDI despite having a large civil service. The answer to it lies partly in the composition of the civil service. These states, being riddled with security issues, have a civil service mostly composed of the police. In fact, these states are only among the few in India that meet the UN standard of the police-public ratio of 222 police per lakh population, the others being border regions like Punjab, Jammu & Kashmir. Goa and Himachal Pradesh are healthy exceptions.
Another interesting insight from this data is how states like Assam, Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Jharkhand, Telangana can meet the UN standard only if they fill their existing vacancies. This would not only pave the way for a stronger police force but would also create more public-sector employment in India. Other states have to increase their sanctioned strength.
Even if we don’t consider these exceptions and security-prone states, we can observe that high HDI states in India at least have about 1000 state government servants per lakh population. However, there is no global standard to assess India’s civil service strength. Instead, we can compare the strength of India’s civil service with the global mean and OECD nations’ mean.
It is clearly observed that India’s public service strength, as observed from the salaries paid to public servants, is way less compared to the global and OECD mean. This not only highlights the low numerical strength but also signals the low quality of the civil service, as low pay would fail to attract and retain talent.
Government and governance are thus scarce commodities in India. When resources are scarce, politics dictates their allocation. Public goods like streetlights, toilets, roads, municipal water connections, hospitals etc., see a differential and discriminatory allocation based on caste, gender, religion and regional dynamics.
There are two ways to tackle this scarcity of government and governance. The first is a long-term political solution. We have to augment the government. The vacancies have to be filled, public servants have to be trained and sensitized, and the government should be decentralised so that it is present in all parts of the country.
But as we aspire to see the political process that brings quality schoolteachers to all corners of the country, our students cannot wait till they grow old to get educated. We need a short-term solution as well, and technology plays a role here. With tele-education, a teacher might not be a perfect replacement for a student, but at least it will make a quality teacher virtually available to more students. Data-driven governance can make the allocation of public goods more process-driven than politics-driven, furthering the rule of law in the country. By developing appropriate governance models, AI can make the minds of even the most scarce, high-quality public servants more accessible to the people.
Technology will indeed make governments efficient, improve decision-making speed, provide more revenue avenues, improve citizen satisfaction, reduce human errors, and help governments monitor their projects. But seeing technology from this narrow prism can further the digital divide in getting access to governance. Technology in Governance (GovTech) should be envisioned in a much broader way. And the first step towards that is to use technology to make government and governance present in each corner of the country. Moreover, to foster and expand technological and social innovations, it is important to establish and strengthen businesses that nurture such innovations. Furthermore, sustainable development needs business transformation to harmonise numerous economic, social, and ecological challenges, amongst others. Social entrepreneurship as a type of enterprise focuses on resolving social, cultural, and environmental issues and making effective responses to complicated issues. The influence of digitalization is unavoidable: it connects technologies, consumers, and business strategies to accelerate crucial modifications.
