Structural Reforms Milestones post 2019 Elections

[ramana]

Contd:

Make it mandatory for elevated highways and railways when they pass thru forests and national parks to facilitate free and harmless animal migrations.
Use TBMs to connect all Rivers and develop a grid of reservoirs across nation.

Education
Allow Hindu educational institutions. Allow them to acquire temple properties at market rates to get access to prime real estate.
Bring minority institutions under RTE purview. If RTE is right law then it should apply to all Indians
Conduct a standardized aptitude test after 10yrs of schooling (10th grade).

Farm Sector
Recognize Farming as SMSE and facilitate loans for farmers to move towards organic farming, green houses and Solar farming. Extend MUDRA loans to farm sector with a goal to make 1 acre income to be Rs 1,20,000.
Offer a Rs 10,000 crore incentive to states that go 100% organic.
Prepare water treatment plants in major cities and divert the cleaned water for farming use.
Link NREGA with farm sector. Each farmer gets 100 credits of NREGA hours.

Labor
Pension scheme covered
Extend Ayushman Bhav program to unorganized sector for minimal premium (Rs 300 per family per month).

[vsunder]

^^^ Ramana: Your point 1. is already being implemented. For example in the Satpura narrow gauge conversion that is very near completion and will replace the narrow gauge track between Jabalpur and Gondia through parts of Kanha National forest such provisions have been provided. This is an unusual project as gauge conversion through the Seoni hills/Kanha (Mowgli lives here) and electrification went on together. This will shorten the distance between Varanasi, Prayagraj etc and South India by about 300km and also lower the pressure on Itarsi and Nagpur which are completely congested. Only about 50km of track is left to be re-gauged and electrified and that too only track linking left. Watch the video 0:49 and see the underpasses for Mr. Stripes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tItKS6NmYgI

The indigeneous people who live here will be tremendously benefited once the project is done. Already e-locos ply between Nainpur and Jabalpur and Mandla Fort and Jabalpur. This is the historical Gond kingdom of Garha Mandla(Mandla Fort), you certainly know of Rani Durgawati from this kingdom who fought Akbar valiantly.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rani_Durgavati

Also Surjit Bhalla echoes what I commented when we spoke last. I said it is great BJP lost in those 3 states in state elctions. Then the people found out that all that loan waiver was just fake and tamasha. Imagine that BJP won and there was full court press by Congis for the GE. Like the battle of the Coral Sea, a tactical victory for Japan but a strategic loss a few months later at Midway, same thing here. Tactical victory but a strategic loss for Congress winning Rajasthan and MP in state elections, but losing GE and chances are they will now even lose MP.

Completed and electrified track, Jabalpur-Nainpur

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8b60zi0S_Kc

PS: I am reading the Katha Sarita Sagara at bedtime now and the Gond kingdom appears in some of the stories there. Wonderful stories that surpass Boccacio's Decameron and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.

[ramana]

Thanks Vsunder.
I too have Katha Sarit Sagar Penguin edition.

BTW War of Three Kigdoms is now a video game.

[vera_k]

Education

Universal Secondary Education (up to 12th)
Add new IIT, IIM and AIIMS in response to increase in reserved seats

[vsunder]

Education

Universal Secondary Education (up to 12th)
Add new IIT, IIM and AIIMS in response to increase in reserved seats

You obviously have no understanding of the serious problems the IIT's are facing to hire competent faculty to teach let alone do research and teach. The newer IIT's are running in part by hiring retired faculty from the established IIT's. Once a certain group of older faculty retire from the established IIT's, the s***t will really and truly hit the ceiling in even the older IITs. The newer IIT's are in the main at the level of good community colleges in the US. So opening new IIT's are fine, but who will be the faculty there. Take a place like Kanpur, if I were a young person, reasonably smart and bright, why would I go there, my spouse would have no work, maybe in Kothari pan ka gutka company which is based in Cawnpore, most young couples are two income earners. Good schools are also an issue and the city is horribly polluted. So people are running away from that place. New IIT's are in places like Pallakad, Patna, Mandi, Rohtak etc not exactly places I would want to raise a child. So you get faltu people going there as faculty. Ditto for IISER's. I will encourage you to go to the homepage of IISER Berhampore and see the qualifications of the faculty there. Some I really do not understand what the heck they do. Community colleges in the US have better faculty.

On top the IISER campuses are in the boonies. For example to get to IISER Kolkata it takes lot of effort to reach the campus far, far away from the city(in fact it is really far from Kolkata and a misnomer to call it IISER Kolkata, ullu banoing) , also Trivandrum is in some far away place, where leopards, elephants and wild beasts roam.

Regarding higher education someone posted that the new Govt is about to release a document for public comment about higher education policy. In late December 2018, I was asked by the PMO to fill out a detailed form and questionnaire which had listed all IIT's, all medical schools, smaller colleges and universities by zones and evaluate them according to a set of criteria. I ignored this request as it was a very poorly designed questionnaire done by people who have no idea of higher education. Some bureaucrats have designed it and they are clueless.
After repeated reminders, which I ignored, I got an email saying it was very important etc etc. and even an email from the NY consulate. So I did take time and ranked various places in an areas of expertise I was comfortable with. I know nothing of medicine and Social sciences for example. You can see how badly the questionnaire was lumping all disciplines as one.

The questions were also poorly phrased. I surmise this form was sent to many people and based on this some policy has been formulated and this is what will be put up on some web site for public comment.

However I am very concerned at how India is slipping quite fast at the highest levels in certain areas from where it commanded great influence up to the late 1970's. There are no easy ways to reverse the decline. Here I am talking of DAE institutes like the TIFR that come directly under the PMO's office unlike the IIT's and specifically about Mathematics. Indian Mathematics commanded a lot of respect upto the 1970's but idiotic individuals with no foresight have brought it to its knees, so that nothing serious comes out of India. Throwing money is not the problem, there is a lot more money in the system now, but attracting first rate faculty that can halt the decline is the problem. Building new institutes, universities etc is all a con game and farce. I am always amused to see some ex IITians going to start this university and that university and produce world class students. They rope in some Indians who are deans at some fancy universities and the rest are successful business men and stock brokers. As I say, deans are all failed academics, and business people have no idea what excellence means. they started some Shiv Nadar university, Ashoka university and now another one. The previous two are fantastic examples of utter mediocrity, deserve to be closed.

Also the GYAAN program started by the Modi govt. is a farce. The faculty that come under this scheme are from obscure foreign universities and it is a clear boondoogle. I am well aware of several corrupt individuals who have invited foreigners from obscure 5th tier places so that they in turn can get invited to these useless places. The topics that the GYAANIS lecture on are total fraud in my area. Of course it is none of my business, at least some people from India get to see Europe and imbibe the cafe culture, so what goes whose father. There is NO proper peer review of the GYAAN proposals, certainly nothing rigorous like what an NSF grant proposal undergoes in the US, where for sure I would have killed it,
Dead on Arrival.

However, one is seeing from the TIFR and IISER's a large number of CV's of young applicants being sent for review to me. This is a new phenomenon, where in the past hiring was done by some internal consensus at top places. This phenomenon is from the last 3 years and I do not know if it is a directive from the PMO(which controls all DAE institutes) or some realization that the process of building back up needs competent advice as to which areas are cutting edge and how to evaluate recommendation letters from foreign letter writers and determine the quality of research papers.
These I take extremely seriously and have written very detailed reports on the candidates research work and potential for future growth in the Indian context.

What is heartening is that some of them participated in summer schools I ran under the aegis of the NCM,

https://www.ncmath.org/

and then went on to do their PhDs and post-docs in Europe and Israel and are now coming back to India. This is a very tiny number, and most understandably want to go to the top places in India. Two or three of them have had their European or Israeli advisors tell me that they have been quite impressed with their preparation. It is interesting to note that 5/7 of such individuals did their (high) schooling from small towns in Bengal. The days of dominance in mathematics from Tamil boys is long over, in fact there are none. The 6,7 in 5/7 are non Tamilian.

I can go one and tell you personal experiences and observations of mine at the IISER's but a lot will be shocked. These are exciting days a man has won an election so why bother. We will muddle our way eventually in about 20 years.

[williams]

Govt need to nurture and reward innovation. Easy access to funds for innovative enterprises. Innovation-oriented Education reforms. Link colleges and schools with the industry.

[vera_k]

The fact that some of the new colleges are in newly urbanizing places is not an excuse for doing nothing. The same tactics used to get candidates for hardship postings like any job in India or China can be used to recruit people. Its probably easier if Indian nationals are recruited since at least a subset will have family ties that make a move easier.

[vimal]

# Develop more oil/gas fields. I'm assuming that India has at least some natural petroleum reserves.
# More funding for Archeological Survey of India and more focus on uncovering India's past. Open up the closed sites like Hastinapur and provide more resources to research sites like Sinauli village.

[Manu]

I have four basic requests/expectations from the new Government from 2019-2024:

(1) How to retain the best human talent in India. small example: AstraZeneca has just hired a smart PHD from a premier US Institute who will be developing the latest cancer fighting molecule for them (Top $ Salary). The kid was my junior in School in Delhi and his family is from Bihar. I dont see the likes of him ever returning to Desh. And there are many thousands like him. All this talent is simply being permanently lost.
(2) Special emphasis on Indigenous Defense Production of Tanks, Planes, Ships, Subs and Weapons Systems. Yes, it is always desirable to get top of the line, but we must nurture our home capacity and build in Numbers. There is no one nurturing LCA (need 400+ to make up Numbers, in various classes), SSBN/SSN, Arjun, Vishal Class, AIM-120 equivalent BVR Missiles, BMD, SAMs, AEW, Artillery, Helos (Lift/Attack), Kaveri etc. Need a solid Raksha Mantri and Namo focus on this and force Armed forces to accept otherwise the mindset will never change.
(3) Reforms: Judiciary, Police, EJs/NGOs, Defamation Laws, Family Laws (which are very lopsided and breaking up our family structure)
(4) Infrastructure: Top of the line Highways, Railways, Waterways and Regional Airports. This was needed yesterday and is usually one of the first steps in unleashing an Economy's real potential.

Social Reforms are already well covered by others earlier.

[ramana]

Disha or AGupta. Could you guys summarize the top 10 in each category and put in.a word document please.

[ramana]

Folks thanks for participation. Need to wrap up.

[Lilo]

In India Land as an asset class needs to be subjected to a Liquidification process.So that enterprises can easily procure land for their manufacturing/storage/production/transshipment units etc & to cool down urban residential land prices to sustainable levels.

1)All Govt/s should pass/modify laws so that a transparency & clarity of landtitles is broughtforth though out India.
In this regard NDA's land aquisition bill should be passed this session to address the mire surrounding land acquisition/compensation/litigation issues in India.

2)Affordable & efficient mass housing needs such a law supporting govt land acquisition & longterm(& innovative) compensation strategies to procure land in urban growth zones.

3)Pass a separate finance bill to link all marginal (and above) size rural landparcels & all land parcels in tier1 & tier2 cities in India to aadhar number of the owner.
Identify the benami's and tax or seize their benami land assets as per market rates.

4)Identify unproductive govt land & lease it out to the private entities
Example:
Why cant be there a supermarkets/malls/market areas/stocking yards/warehouses/fulfillment centers/ attached to every Railway-junction in India?
Railways has too much land lying in disuse in prime areas.
Auction the longterm leases for these land parcels and convert them into income generating assets.
Railways will improve its operational efficiency and the rentseeking based on land in central areas of cities & towns will be moderated.

5)Time to come up with a nominal level of agricultural income tax on big farmers in villages. Here too innovative approaches similar to CSR in corporate sector can be devised .
i.e give with right hand what is taken with the left hand - 100% agricultural tax collected will be passed back to the local village panchayat direct from the central kitty to fund common village assets .

[Prasad]

https://twitter.com/PrinSciAdvGoI/statu ... 8535123968
Principal Scientific Adviser, Govt. of India
‏
Verified account

@PrinSciAdvGoI
10h10 hours ago
More
Thread Early- & mid-career Indian scientists in India and abroad; those in industry, NGOs, universities, research labs. Across all sectors, basic and applied. Please do read and respond.

Please read the thread.

[dsreedhar]

There are so many great ideas. Ramana garu has a very exhaustive list. Below are a few in my wish list -
Judicial reforms is one of the key areas for me. Lot of crime/corruption may be controlled with that.

Geopolitical
-Start relationship with South American cntries.

Internal Security
-Judicial reforms. More courts and specialized/subject-jurisdiction courts.
-Media regulations. Heavy financial penalties on fake news/lies/misrepresentation.
-Education reforms. Good quality, accessible & affordable education upto 12th grade.
Curriculum to include studies on basics in world history, imperialism, socio-econ/religious/political ideologies etc.
-One year compulsory service to nation to youth

Civic Infra
-Start riverlinking project

Political
-NRC bill. Policies to give refuge to Indian/Indic faith ppl suffering anywhere in world.

Economic
-Per some stats i saw current employment in agriculture is about 45% compared to 2% in US and 15% in China.
Create avenues to reduce the direct agriculture employment to reasonable levels.

Tech & Industry
-Research in advance medical - Stem cell, immunotherapy etc

Ecological
-Ban meat exports. But maybe allow/incentivize meat/beef imports for beef lovers to avoid perpetual social conflict/sabotage.

[ramana]

Rudradev. Please compile these and lets roll.

[Rudradev]

Ramana I have started the process with a google document.

All are welcome to edit. No rhetorical bhashans or vague ideas please. Be specific and to the point.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AXP ... sp=sharing

[A_Gupta]

Rule of Law.
- more and better police -- India has only about 150 police per 1 lakh population. Surely India is not as peaceful as Switzerland and Norway, that have 210 police per 1 lakh population.
- more judges and changes to lower court procedures both to clear the tens of millions of cases backlog and to provide swift justice as well (i.e., don't shove new cases to the back of the queue). India has a very low number of judges/magistrates per 1 lakh population compared to other countries.

Quality of life, business velocity all improve when the courts function properly.

[Rudradev]

A_Gupta Ji, please edit the Google Doc. Also, anybody else who has additions, put them in the Google Doc so we don't duplicate efforts.

I've set the permissions for everyone to edit. Please let me know if there are issues.

[A Nandy]

Added in Tech/Industrial: Rebuild expertise in supercomputing power so we have one or more of the top 5 fastest supercomputers in the world. It will have spin off effects in accurate weather predictions, cyclone forecasting, medicines and curing debilitating diseases and nuclear research. High speed national supercomputing grid to provide access to students and scientists to massive computing power for engineering.

Btw whatever happened to the grid - is it already up and running?

[tandav]

I have added quantum encryption of MIL COMMs in AI line

[tandav]

In India Land as an asset class needs to be subjected to a Liquidification process.So that enterprises can easily procure land for their manufacturing/storage/production/transshipment units etc & to cool down urban residential land prices to sustainable levels.

1)All Govt/s should pass/modify laws so that a transparency & clarity of landtitles is broughtforth though out India.
In this regard NDA's land aquisition bill should be passed this session to address the mire surrounding land acquisition/compensation/litigation issues in India.

2)Affordable & efficient mass housing needs such a law supporting govt land acquisition & longterm(& innovative) compensation strategies to procure land in urban growth zones.

3)Pass a separate finance bill to link all marginal (and above) size rural landparcels & all land parcels in tier1 & tier2 cities in India to aadhar number of the owner.
Identify the benami's and tax or seize their benami land assets as per market rates.

4)Identify unproductive govt land & lease it out to the private entities
Example:
Why cant be there a supermarkets/malls/market areas/stocking yards/warehouses/fulfillment centers/ attached to every Railway-junction in India?
Railways has too much land lying in disuse in prime areas.
Auction the longterm leases for these land parcels and convert them into income generating assets.
Railways will improve its operational efficiency and the rentseeking based on land in central areas of cities & towns will be moderated.

5)Time to come up with a nominal level of agricultural income tax on big farmers in villages. Here too innovative approaches similar to CSR in corporate sector can be devised .
i.e give with right hand what is taken with the left hand - 100% agricultural tax collected will be passed back to the local village panchayat direct from the central kitty to fund common village assets .

I do not see any reason why land is owned by private entities (no body has created the land, at most people are only using it for various purposes)... all land must only be rented and assets built on top of it can be owned by private entity. Land use (agricultural, residential, commercial, industrial, infrastructure etc) must result in revenues to the government in terms of rent/leases. But the government/ people must have the ability to retrieve the land for other uses in public interest and there must be no ownership veto over land use. Either convert all Land to Public property or have an efficient time bound eminent domain act with a more efficient judiciary. In Singapore Land use is voted on (no politician can change Land Use plans or Development Plans without consent of the electorate). Land Use the most corruption ridden part of the Indian economy and is imposing a huge drain on our progress. We can see in Real Estate Market people are paying first world prices for 3rd world facilities in terms of housing and infra most of it going to acquire the land required for the process.

[JayS]

I think Modi 2.0 should start with a few low hanging fruits to start addressing core HIndu issues. Like freeing Temples from Govt clutches, Anti-Conversion, Modifying RTE are some low hanging fruits. Its time BJP starts demonstrating they are willing to take on the core Hindu issues. If they start doing in phases now, they will be able to get more and more support in coming elections, consolidating power for big bang reforms later.

[JayS]

Added in Tech/Industrial: Rebuild expertise in supercomputing power so we have one or more of the top 5 fastest supercomputers in the world. It will have spin off effects in accurate weather predictions, cyclone forecasting, medicines and curing debilitating diseases and nuclear research. High speed national supercomputing grid to provide access to students and scientists to massive computing power for engineering.

Btw whatever happened to the grid - is it already up and running?

You mean this?

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/te ... 745512.cms

[tandav]

Create a Workshop / Tools library (Welding, cutting, lathes, polishing and turning machines with experts available to give pointers and training to anyone interested): basically create a workshop in every human habitation greater than 50000 people

[tandav]

Ramana I have started the process with a google document.

All are welcome to edit. No rhetorical bhashans or vague ideas please. Be specific and to the point.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AXP ... sp=sharing

Please pin this link at the top of the thread

[vsunder]

https://twitter.com/PrinSciAdvGoI/statu ... 8535123968
Principal Scientific Adviser, Govt. of India
‏
Verified account

@PrinSciAdvGoI
10h10 hours ago
More
Thread Early- & mid-career Indian scientists in India and abroad; those in industry, NGOs, universities, research labs. Across all sectors, basic and applied. Please do read and respond.

Please read the thread.

Principal Science Advisor Govt of India is my batchmate IIT Cawnpore and also my hall mate from Hall 5. His nickname is Joey. He did Chem engg. but then switched to Cell Biology after he left IIT K. He became a protege of Obaid Siddiqui at TIFR (whom Bhabha/Banditji had recruited from Cambridge) and then Joey became interested in fruit flies, Drosophilia I believe. Siddiqui sent him to firm up NCBS(National Center for Biological studies) in Bangalore and I saw Joey often whenever I visited TIFR center Bangalore since both were in the same decrepit building on the IISc campus. There was always some powerful stench in that old building and my younger colleagues always ogled the pretty women doing Biological research.
IISc eventually kicked TIFR out in some nasty turf battle, so Joey and company had to start from scratch by building a new campus in Hebbal of NCBS. TIFR-CAM also went to a new campus in Yellahanka. Joey's father was an AVM in IAF, AVM Krishnaswamy I think.

In NDA 1.0, Joey arranged a meeting between Modi and "important" scientists which I thought was a nice concept, but poorly done and poorly executed. For Mathematics he selected 2 individuals both total zeros. One of them was the wife of Abhijeet Bannerjee the RW twitteratti from IISc. This lady (at IISER Pune)has described that meeting in a blog article and it is clear she did not utter a word.

This was in 2014. Modi asked a seemingly naive question, but I think a great question---" Can mathematics help in preventing dropped cell phone calls?" It is a perfectly good question, but all assembled there could not answer it, used as they were to computing the second cohomology of the intersection variety of a K3 surface with a Godeaux surface....... As I say Modi ne sabka phaad diya
You see that was him doing radar so early on in his term, I bet all of you did not know that story, read this Kaneenika Sinha's blog.
I believe Joey selected her on the basis of writing a blog. Individuals who write blogs are just that, in the main thin on the quality and quantity of papers they write. I care jack about quantity but at least prove a great lemma for once in your life. Not even a great theorem, just one good lemma, that's it in a 40 year career and you are good. But if you cannot even do that then do twittergiri full time, why masquerade " ami onko korche"

Some of the people who attended Modi 1.0 vaigyanik sammelan also signed that idiot petition against him I linked. So all this signing up etc Joey is doing is fine but having seen how things are done
in building up institutions I have usually seen one or two people with fantastic taste and standards of excellence usually build things, sort of my way is the right way and all others take the highway. Homi Bhabha and Felix Browder come to mind and Marshall Stone, Oppenheimer. I knew Felix all too well and saw how he built institutions.

https://www.ams.org/journals/notices/20 ... -p1398.pdf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_Browder

I have nothing against Joey, he was very kind to write to me a brief email when he heard my mother had passed way, he is a gentleman in my book and I like him, but I am not holding my breath with this initiative, though I wish him all the best and I really hope GoI succeeds at least in a few areas that matter.

[tandav]

https://twitter.com/PrinSciAdvGoI/statu ... 8535123968
Principal Scientific Adviser, Govt. of India
‏
Verified account

@PrinSciAdvGoI
10h10 hours ago
More
Thread Early- & mid-career Indian scientists in India and abroad; those in industry, NGOs, universities, research labs. Across all sectors, basic and applied. Please do read and respond.

Please read the thread.

Principal Science Advisor Govt of India is my batchmate IIT Cawnpore and also my hall mate from Hall 5. His nickname is Joey. He did Chem engg. but then switched to Cell Biology after he left IIT K. He became a protege of Obaid Siddiqui at TIFR (whom Bhabha/Banditji had recruited from Cambridge) and then Joey became interested in fruit flies, Drosophilia I believe. Siddiqui sent him to firm up NCBS(National Center for Biological studies) in Bangalore and I saw Joey often whenever I visited TIFR center Bangalore since both were in the same decrepit building on the IISc campus. There was always some powerful stench in that old building and my younger colleagues always ogled the pretty women doing Biological research.
IISc eventually kicked TIFR out in some nasty turf battle, so Joey and company had to start from scratch by building a new campus in Hebbal of NCBS. TIFR-CAM also went to a new campus in Yellahanka. Joey's father was an AVM in IAF, AVM Krishnaswamy I think.

In NDA 1.0, Joey arranged a meeting between Modi and "important" scientists which I thought was a nice concept, but poorly done and poorly executed. For Mathematics he selected 2 individuals both total zeros. One of them was the wife of Abhijeet Bannerjee the RW twitteratti from IISc. This lady (at IISER Pune)has described that meeting in a blog article and it is clear she did not utter a word.

This was in 2014. Modi asked a seemingly naive question, but I think a great question---" Can mathematics help in preventing dropped cell phone calls?" It is a perfectly good question, but all assembled there could not answer it, used as they were to computing the second cohomology of the intersection variety of a K3 surface with a Godeaux surface....... As I say Modi ne sabka phaad diya
You see that was him doing radar so early on in his term, I bet all of you did not know that story, read this Kaneenika Sinha's blog.
I believe Joey selected her on the basis of writing a blog. Individuals who write blogs are just that, in the main thin on the quality and quantity of papers they write. I care jack about quantity but at least prove a great lemma for once in your life. Not even a great theorem, just one good lemma, that's it in a 40 year career and you are good. But if you cannot even do that then do twittergiri full time, why masquerade " ami ginti korche"

Some of the people who attended Modi 1.0 vaigyanik sammelan also signed that idiot petition against him I linked. So all this signing up etc Joey is doing is fine but having seen how things are done
in building up institutions I have usually seen one or two people with fantastic taste and standards of excellence usually build things, sort of my way is the right way and all others take the highway. Homi Bhabha and Felix Browder come to mind and Marshall Stone, Oppenheimer. I knew Felix all too well and saw how he built institutions.

https://www.ams.org/journals/notices/20 ... -p1398.pdf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_Browder

I have nothing against Joey, he was very kind to write to me a brief email when he heard my mother had passed way, he is a gentleman in my book and I like him, but I am not holding my breath with this initiative, though I wish him all the best and I really hope GoI succeeds at least in a few areas that matter.

One main issue I find is to implement innovative ideas/products/services in Govt Sector... as of date if you have a patent for products and services that are consumed by Goverment agencies there is a near zero chance of it getting accepted for a govt tender process where the bureacracy claims it will be a monopoly. However there are many ways that a scientific advisory consultative group can be used as a peer review process for incorporating innovations and commercializing them. This could be a good start if one wants to become an innovation nation.

[A Nandy]

Added in Tech/Industrial: Rebuild expertise in supercomputing power so we have one or more of the top 5 fastest supercomputers in the world. It will have spin off effects in accurate weather predictions, cyclone forecasting, medicines and curing debilitating diseases and nuclear research. High speed national supercomputing grid to provide access to students and scientists to massive computing power for engineering.

Btw whatever happened to the grid - is it already up and running?

You mean this?

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/te ... 745512.cms

Yes The grid needs to be finished quickly and made available to Universities. Wonder why roping in the French for the supercomputers though ToT maybe.

[A_Gupta]

The macro-economy needs attention.
The last four quarters have seen GDP growth of 8.0%, 7.0%, 6.6% and the latest out today, 5.8%.
This deacceleration of growth may be a matter of concern, depending on what is behind it.

[ragupta]

Judicial reform - Judiciary In India is corrupt, protects the criminals and victimizes the victim. It has created an environment of extortion, has become arrogant instead of dispensing justice in timely manner. It is a most inefficient arm of the government. The victims rather than getting justice are harassed and victimized through delay, it is less to do with Justice then filling the pockets to Lawyers and Judges. More often than not criminals go scott free by paying bribe and underhand dealings, thereby increasing criminalization of society. The common people have less faith in Judiciary, but for common citizen it is either taking law into their own hands or go to court, where they know in their heart, that they may not get justice, but still they have this last hope or no alternative. There is a need to digitize the process, simplify laws, the continuous need of verification and document in truplicate should be dispensed with, since the records are online, courts should be able to access and verify records, Interim judgement should be based on that and cases must be fast tracked. This will reduce corruption and crime, otherwise it emboldens the criminal elements in the society including white color crimes.

Police reform - Police is another extortion system in India. only the rich get justice, poor are harassed, and middle class have to pay to avoid being harrassed by Police system. Police at the grass root level are less interested in Justice and providing safety to individual then making money out of conflicts. Reduce the burden on Police, People in general should be able to file FIR online with the help of Lawyers or in their own words, it is a collassal waste of Police time, writing FIR. They can call the complainant at appointed time to verify and amend the FIR, all this should be available as change record history, will prevent manipulation of records, will keep audit trail. Now a days police just make you wait in police station for filing FIR wasting your time and money. it acts as a deterrent for people to approach police.

Religious reform - There should be standard rule for all religious activities, why is Hindu temples controlled by Govt, it can go the trusts and uniformly governed as other religious institutions. Money collected through religious activity should be used for charity.

Education Reform - Universalize the education, their should be track for people to follow for achieving their educational aspiration in whatever discipline they desire at whatever age they desire. Importance must be given to cultural heritage and people should take pride and respect thier tradition with proper understanding.

Political reform - state funding of election, decriminalize the system by eliminating criminal elements from the system, raise the bar to serve in public life, restricted terms for political office. This will reduce dynastic control.

[khatvaanga]

I am not sure how many here have looked / read the NITI Aayog report on India @75 where it takes about things that need to be done by 2022/2023. It has a list of "end results" for various reforms that most here have been taking about [except, obviously, Judicial or Police reforms]. I would strongly urge those interested to read it. The execution is what NM is looking for in the 100 day plans being created by various ministries.

I am personally more interested in reading the new Edu Policy that was submitted to the newest HRD today. Hopefully it has details on how to achieve the end results set by the NITI Aayog.

[Prasad]

You mean this?

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/te ... 745512.cms

Yes The grid needs to be finished quickly and made available to Universities. Wonder why roping in the French for the supercomputers though ToT maybe.

O/T but You guys need to read http://delhidefencereview.com/2019/01/2 ... orting-it/

[ramana]

Guys I started this thread in November 2018 and gave plenty of time to post your ideas.
And even asked two members to complie the ideas.
It's extremely unfair to.now start waking up and posting ideas. So please stop. Time is over.
I.kept the thread open to see the collated list posted.
Sorry but don't make the work for the volunteers.
And make me lock the thread.

[tandav]

Would like to see most of Urban India people mobility system start to be replaced by Human + Battery operated system. As indicated in videos below. There is a fundamental leapfrog that is possible. If we look at data for energy consumption it is obvious that for people transport the energy cost of a aerodynamic bicycle (velomobile: recumbent / reclining shrouded bicycle) is an order of magnitude smaller than any competing system around 18 KJ/KM/person compared to a Metro which is closer to 200 KJ/KM/person.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_ef ... _transport

There are new concepts in human powered transport such as Shweeb funded by google as of now with a mandate to see if they can utilize this as a people mover, P2P people transit. Systems such as these can also be coupled with electric motors fed from the track itself to create a hybrid system to increase speed.

Shweeb

Skyride


Given the fact that Shweeb is aerodynamically shrouded recumbent bicycle on rail, it should have even lower energy cost per km since the system is on a rail like and not a more energy inefficient inflated tyre system. Also critically due to its light construction we can have shweeb paths along all major road and create a P2P system that can potentially replace roads for people movement. If the government can showcase a pilot in a smart city which is substantial (100+ KM of shweeb track) then I believe we can showcase and leapfrog Urban mobility.

[ramana]

As the 2023 Monsoon Session is underway time to review the structural reforms so far.
Too bad that two years were lost due to the Covid pandemic.

[sanman]

Fine, SG is not my favourite journo, but he gives a useful summary of the latest important reforms in the Indian Penal Code

[sanman]

New penal code includes explicit punishments against mob lynching and terrorism




Netas and their rich lawyers will be working overtime trying to figure out how to evade new laws.

[ramana]

This is a great end to the 2023 Monsoon session. Finally, the British Raj is ending.
The new Central Vista Parliament house is ready and the Criminal laws formed by the British are being replaced.
It is a great day.

[bala]

Yes, it is great to have judiciary reforms and the booting out of Britshit laws for India. But there is more to judicial reforms other than revamping laws. The court system of judges and lawyers need to be re-examined and process/procedure/arguments and verdicts have to be reformed. Computers and automation with perhaps AI assist can help. AI can solve 80% of the cases, and backlog is history! Catalog of all cases, quick retrieval, cross references, prior judgement/precedents, workflow management of cases (case management), time management for case disposal, all of this requires heavy IT support. Definitely stay orders, postponement, adjournments and other delay tactics employed by lawyers need to be firmly booted out. I also think a 3 panel or 5 panel judge can rule on cases once and for all as the final judgement, no appeals, no further delay.

Now awaiting for the big one - IAS reform and administration reform.

[sanjayc]

NCERT has constituted a committee including author and Infosys Foundation chair Sudha Murthy, singer Shankar Mahadevan, and economist and member of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council Sanjeev Sanyal, to finalise the curriculum, textbooks and learning material for classes 3 to 12.

https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-ne ... 23398.html