Making Bharat 2047 a reality: Design a new operating system

I shared Bharat 2047 blueprint, which has 5 Themes, 30 Objectives, and 200 Key Result Areas. Dataquest has published a series of articles on this, and please refer to the previous articles for more information.

Bharat 2047: 100 years after independence, technology powered vibrant Bharat

Bharat 2047: Bharat Today and the technologies that change the Bharat

Bharat 2047: The blueprint

Bharat 2047 Blueprint: Quantifying the Success with 200 Key Result Areas

This is my 5^th article in this series, and I am touching upon more on the execution aspect. Without a proper execution model, having Bharat 2047 blueprint becomes a dream. Former president of India, Dr. APJ Abul Kalam, and other experts have created the vision for India 2020 with ambitious goals. Still, the system was not ready to take that journey at an expected pace and passion. Hence, unfortunately, Bharat was not able to realize Vision 2020. Hence it is imperative to design a new operating system for Bharat to realize its ambitious goals by 2047 (100 years after independence).

India Vision 2020 failure and main reasons

India has created a grand vision in the past. India’s Vision 2020 was originally a document prepared by Nivetha SK, the Technology Information, Forecasting, and Assessment Council (TIFAC) of India’s Department of Science and Technology under the chairmanship of Dr APJ Abdul Kalam, along with a team of around 500 experts. Now-defunct Planning Commission came up with an omnibus document that defined and articulated India’s vision for 2020.

India has done moderately well but failed to realize the vision of 2020. There may be so many reasons for the same. The following are a few root causes of not realizing the India Vision 2020.  

• Poor Governance 
• Leadership Gap 
• Lack of Synergy 
• Financial Constraints 

POOR GOVERNANCE

• Lack of accountability, responsibility, and transparency in the governance.
• Ambitious and impractical goals without having the supporting operating system /model,
  Cost overrun, schedule overrun of government programs, and failure to deliver the desired benefits. 
• Lack of changes in the government structure, policies, and processes to bring agility and flexibility to respond to national and global changes.
• Lack of Devolution of power to local bodies and making them irrelevant.
• Lack of transparency and policy deficiencies in acquiring land for infrastructure development, and hence so many legal tangles and delays.
• Lack of urban amenities in rural areas.
• Lack of supporting infrastructure, and readiness of cities to accommodate the migrated population.
• Non-friendly policies to actively involve private parties in the nation’s growth.

LEADERSHIP GAP

• Outdated administration-focused leadership than thought leadership, innovation, and growth-focused leadership by civil servants.
• Resistance to change by government executives who mostly live in a highly comfortable zone. They get years of experience-based promotions than performance-based promotions. 
• Political leadership's too much focus on free schemes and short-term gains with winning the next elections has become the main agenda. 
• Meagre investments in education, research, and health as a percentage of GDP.
• Very high focus on day-to-day operational tasks and less emphasis on transformative projects, programs, and considerable delays in execution.

LACK OF SYNERGY

• Lack of coordinated effort and joint initiatives among the judiciary system, executive system, and legislative system to realize the Vision 2020. 
• Lack of synergic effort to grow GDP at 10-11% per year due to department-focused initiatives and failure to transform the nation as a whole

FINANCIAL CONSTRAINTS

• Financial constraints on investing in transformational initiatives of the nation 
• Impact on the economy due to changes in political, economic, and war situations in different countries 

Need for building a new Operating System for Bharat 2047

To make Bharat a Super Developed nation by 2047, it is imperative to build a new operating system. 

The operating system of Bharat includes an executive system, legislative system, and judiciary system.

Doing the same thing repeatedly does not yield different or better results. The current operating system of Bharat still has the colonial flavour and is so old that it has become a blocker to Bharat’s growth.

Existing systems, policies, processes, governance, laws, acts, and infrastructure in all these three systems are very old; a few are not even relevant, and many new ones are required to prepare for the current and future industrial revolutions. 

Hence Bharat must leverage the unimaginable new capabilities of the modern cyber system (fusion of technologies) to bring significant changes in the current operating system of Bharat.

While each system must be reimagined and re-engineered to realize Bharat 2047, it is very important to redefine the synergy spots among the democratic pillars and nurture them to realize Bharat 2047. 

• Synergy between Legislative and Executive systems 
• Synergy between Legislative & Judiciary systems  
• Synergy between Judiciary and Executive systems

Former Vice President of India, Mr. Venkaiah Naidu, emphasized the importance of three pillars Strong in their professional competence, high ethical behaviour and Strong in their commitment to national development. cementing the bond of national unity, integrity, and prosperity.

Guiding Principles to build Operating System for Bharat 2047

Following are a few indicative guiding principles of the Bharat 2047 Operating System 

PEOPLE-CENTRIC 

• Be responsive to people’s needs and aspirations
• Implement people-centric policies and ensure that the right people get the benefits of a democratic system at right time without bureaucracy and middlemen
• Involve the people and make them change agents for inclusive development 

DECENTRALIZED GOVERNANCE AND GROWTH 

• Introduce an agile, accountable, responsible, and transparent governance system
• Decentralize the development and growth from the village level to the country level in a hub and spoke model by making the districts the socio-economic growth centers. 

UNBIASED AND FASTER JUSTICE 

• Introduce a people-friendly, affordable, approachable, credible, transparent, and fast-paced judicial system that does unbiased justice to people irrespective of financial and social positions.

RESPONSIBLE AND UNBIASED MEDIA  

• Strengthen democracy with genuine, positive, and unbiased media by curbing fake news factories 

Framework to build Bharat 2047 Operating System

I propose the following framework to build a new operating system for Bharat 2047 that must be aligned with Bharat 2047 core purpose, vision, themes, objectives, and Key result areas. There is a need for a complete reengineering of the current operating system of Bharat, as shown below.   

The anatomy of Bharat 2047 Operating System 

Building an operating system requires significant changes andinnovations in the 3 systems and 7 building blocks, which I call the operating system of Bharat.

The new operating system must leverage the unimaginable new capabilities of the modern cyber system (fusion of digital technologies) to re-engineer the 7 building blocks in 3 systems legislative, executive, and judiciary. The pictorial representation of the anatomy of the Bharat 2047 Operating system is shown below. 

Projectized Approach to Design Bharat 2047 Operating System

The new operating system must be effective and efficient to improve the identified key result areas faster, better, steadier, and cheaper.

Hence, I propose a top-down approach. For each Key Result Area, it is imperative to identify the annual targets till 2047. To realize these targets. It is very important to identify the right initiatives in current legislative, executive, and judicial systems at right time. 

An example is given for one KEY RESULT AREA (KRA) on how to identify the key initiatives that help in building the operating system of Bharat 2047. I have given only two initiatives as an example below. 

There may be so many initiatives to realize one KRA. 

This way, 100s of initiatives will be executed to build a new operating system that helps realize the targets of the 200 Key Result Areas in an evolutionary manner by 2047

Strategic Program Management Office to design, build, and operationalize Bharat 2047 Operating System

The next step is to create the project portfolio from the identified initiatives and group the interrelated and interdependent initiatives into transformational programs and projects, and use the lean and agile execution methods to execute these programs and projects that help in building a new operating system of Bharat 2047. 

Designing the Bharat 2047 operating system may take 3 – 5 years with 100s of subject matter experts and if there is a focused effort by Government in collaboration with the people, academia, industry, and other stakeholders.

Government must establish a new agency that focuses on these programs and projects’ execution in collaboration with the current government departments. 

Government must transition from department-driven execution of programs and projects to purpose-driven execution so that all resources work for the program’s purpose to build an agile and cost-effective operating system to realize Bharat 2047 mission.

Bharat 2047 Strategic program management office must be established to ensure that the right programs and projects are designed, planned, and executed to design, build and operationalize the new operating system. 

While I discussed only designing the Bharat 2047 operating system in this article, I will discuss in my next article more on how to build and operate the new operating system of Bharat 2047

Jai Hind, Jai Bharat

The article has been written by V Srinivasa Rao (VSR), Chairman & MD, BT&BT Author – Lean Digital Thinking – Digitalizing Businesses in a New World Order and Chairman – Open Digital Innovation, IET Future Tech Panel