New Andhara Pradesh should have three capitals, not one

Q: Why more than one capital?

Under the guise of pragmatism(convenience, economics etc.,), admnistrative  infrastructure tends to be in one palatial place, and this leads to all the important decision makers living in the capital. Businesses, social organizations including the political parties  tend to have their own liason, or better still, head offices in the political power centre, the capital city. This ultimately dilutes the noble intention of decentralized development.  At best the decentralized development would come to mean development of a few more cities. The development has come to mean locating at least one or two industrial/knowledge hubs around the few cities. It does not take us even an  inch towards making   villages self sufficient and  economically independent,  a prerequisite for poltical freedom.

An honest move  towards decentrallized development begins with a few fundamental moves, one of them is to build a new  capital city in each sub region of the state, amidst the most backward and problematic cluster of villages, remote from any big city  

(The others:  

a) to build clusters of new campuses of elite institutions of higher education and research in clusters of remote rural villages and 

b) building the infrastructure that includes the needed service facilites, for all the new campuses or for the govenrnance,  only  on the  lands leased from the villagers.  - More in  another blog post, 'Three Primary Steps towards Sustainable Good Governance' )

1. The problem of locating capital for what is left of Andra Pradesh,  can potentially seed further divisionary tendencies in future. If there is just one oppositon party and if it happens to have a strong base in a few regions, the tactic of stroking the divisionary thoughts seems to offer a short /smart cut to gain political mileage.

2. The one painful lesson learnt from the past  seems to be that the major investments should be distributed over  different regions instead of just in and around the new capital. But this is easier said than done because of a strong tendency of collusion between the vested interests of politics and businesses.

The question arises: "Can the action of our leaders  really over come the compulsions of the specific dogmas of the large scale production systems of the day that stem from things like  'scale of operation',  'the bigger the better' etc., ?"

3. The above question assumes importance due to the needed pragmatism in addressing the  'large upfront investments on  infrastructcture needs of the desired distributed mega production clusters' in all the regions. The available modest manpower and economic resources would be a convenient excuse for  meeting/wetting the vested interests of the powerful quarters in conentrating the investments just in and around the new capital city.

4. The only pragmatic solution, and the one that can stand up to  the major  short comings of the current practices, including the sense of  alienation of societies far away from the capital,  is to have three capitals, one for each region.

If the capital in a region can be located, instead of close to the  bigeest city of the region,   in a cluster of the most remote underdeveloped villages of the region, it would be even better.

5. This calls for a new strategy to organise our legislative assembly proceedings equitably in all the three capitals. It would be worthwhile spending time and resources in finding amicable temporary working solution pending the  final one.

One thing is clear:  the state of the art Information and Communication Technology can be and should be utilized in the palnning and evolution of the plans to make all the peoples of the subregions feel that they are all equal partners in the democratic processes, decision making and not feel alienated. or neglected.

  

Three Steps towards sustainable good governance

Three  Steps towards sustainable good governance

2nd October 2013

1.  Continuous & authentic measuring/indexing of public opinion on several matters that range from local to global (the degree of globality for each matter can be different).

2. Building new campuses of the elite institutions or their relocation, both  academic and R&D, into clusters of rural villages (from the mega/big cities or their immediate neighborhood).

3. Land only on rational lease for all uses  other than ‘fossil fuel free’ farming which also ensures a minimum index of biodiversity.

In brief:

1.  Continuous & authentic indexing of public opinion on several matters that range from local to global (the degree of globality for each matter can be different).

The necessity of freeing  democracy from just periodic voting arises from the multi-dimensional nature of the multiplicity of problems, policy issues included: no single party has any consensus even within, on many issues.

In addressing the step suggested above, can the current technology empower us in a practical/affordable way that has not been available earlier ?

The answer is 'Yes' and one powerful way is in routing the taxes of all sorts through appropriately tagged accounts with smart phones.  The only way every one participates in the collective process of governance is through paying taxes and using the very process of paying taxes itself, for continuous & authentic measuring/indexing of the public opinion, should have been a natural option.

2. Building new campuses of the elite institutions or their relocation, both  academic and R&D, into clusters of rural villages (from the mega/big cities or their immediate neighborhood).

The process of building the new campuses of elite institution or their relocation  can begin with some five  to ten such clusters in each state in a phased manner. 
Business as usual with struggles/debates on policies, tackling problems such as corruption only leads to unbridled growth of cities, unless chaos dictates otherwise.  Isn't this unbridled growth cancerous and at the cost of the hinter lands in the rural India, that is Bharat ?

The above idea of relocating the institutions is definitely 'an out of the box' but is ' neither impulse nor  step like changes: it has no negatives capable of destabilizing the current system - either economically or socially. In fact, given the right mandate, each such rural cluster  can be a true catalyst in education, including school education,   towards sustainable / holistic development.

A simple beginning can be to challenge the collective intellectual / institutional might of each cluster to be self sufficient in drinking water, food, energy and housing, all with the local renewable resources to the extent possible. And here, interaction of the elite with the local / traditional knowledge and skills can be mutually beneficial.

3. Land only on rational lease for all uses  other than ‘fossil fuel free’ farming which also ensures a minimum index of biodiversity.

Even the land preparation and other inputs such as fertilizers and pesticides should be free of the fossil fuels, with near zero carbon foot print for such a farming. Eventually, it would evolve into that ensures a minimum of biodiversity in every small unit of farmland as against vast farms of monoculture.

This can begin with the building of the rural clusters to host the elite institutions on leased lands, with the long term and gradually increasing lease incomes, commensurate to the increasing land value, to the farmers.

Again such a step  can neither cause nor induce  instability socially or economically.  Instead, it may inspire  planning of the institutions with mostly mobile assets. In shelters, this would mean using light weight structures and preference to local renewable resources even to build. After all, building sector is one of the most important ones of  of any country's economy and the use of local renewable resources improves local economy and environment with a sustainable development.         

In a bit more detail:

The basic criteria for good sustainable good governance
Before going into detail, two criteria are aimed at for any step envisaged for good sustainable governance:

a)  It should drive a wedge between the legal and vested interests of the main players.

b) It should not either cause or induce instability in the system.
A third one that is desirable would be that it should not require constitutional changes.

It is then recognized that the first prime step needs to be in strengthening the democratic processes. In the second step, the teachers - researchers should lead the society by setting the example in physically moving out into the rural hinterland as clusters of competing and diverse elite institutions and squarely facing the challenges of sustainability. The third step is aimed at land use alienation from ‘fossil fuel free’  farming in a country like India where land is the most precious natural resource with humanly infinite life (save  lunatic intervention by S&T empowered man). Further, land is in great scarcity with potential to adversely affect over six hundred millions of common folks immediately: treating land as any other man made commodity of very limited life span seems against all rationality, save the greed to make fast bucks through windfall capital gains, most of which only drive the twin evils of black economy & corruption. It is only pragmatic that the governing policies should have an element to contain the greed of humans, even while education should relentlessly try its best to drive it away from the inner self of humans, as part of its character building 'activities', that are productive & socially useful.  

As shall be seen, every one of the three prime steps satisfies the above two criteria for sustainable good governance besides being powerful novel ways to acheive the goals.

1.  Continuous indexing of public opinion on several matters that range from local to global (the degree of globality for each matter can be different).

The necessity of freeing democracy from just periodic voting arises from the multidimensional nature of the multiplicity of problems, including policy issues.  No single party has any consensus even within, on many issues. To know how much of the public are in favor of  what should be done in any specific problem or option, is, currently, at best a partially informed bad guess. It can’t be otherwise since the sources of information are non-authentic opinion polls, ‘dhar-nas’, bandhs, rasta rokos and strikes with the extent of violence becoming de facto measure of public support. But the later,  as reported in the media, spiced to highlight the already dangerous levels of sentiments and emotions of the masses only makes things worse. It just becomes a political game for a momentary win at any cost. Everything else takes the back seat and can wait, because an immediate loss would render politicians  totally ineffective for another five years.  That speaks of the fallacy in the democratic functioning that should be addressed first before anything else has a chance to work.

It is known that when events are constrained to just a few days temporally, the role of rationality decreases at the expense of sentiments and  emotions, which any day are  a lot easier to whip up. These are over and above the role of  the power of money and muscle, all supported by the old saying ‘all is fair in war and love’. Mathematically such temporally  constrained actions may be compared to impulses, which in engineering sciences are well understood to be main sources of instability and failure.  

It is thus a question of even the educated losing faith in the  ability of ‘once in five years (periodic) voting’  to resolve any complex  problem by any party or groups of parties or persons. Thus we see the unfortunate reality that a large part of the human resources that are good at heart, and are competent to  possibly make a difference, simply give up on participation. How else can we understand the indifference of close to half the population towards taking the trouble for some hours once in five years (for voting) ?    

To be fair to all those with differing degrees of sincerity in politics, they are familiar with all the above problems. Recognition of the need  for continuous indexing of public opinion on multiple issues has been there all along for better informed decisions. Only it has become more acute now in India.

However we need to continuously keep asking ourselves the same question, “Can the current technology empower us in a practical / affordable way that has not been available earlier in continuous indexing of public opinion?”

The answer is 'Yes'  and one powerful strategy lies in using the  smart phones for routing the taxes of all sorts through appropriately tagged accounts.

It may be noted that the only way every one already participates in the collective process of governance of any system, is through paying taxes. Thus every one is already  the real source of power of any government, even if only a few  have any say over the actual governance.  

Thus it would be natural to have a mechanism where every citizen has an option to exercise one’s opinion on matters and issues that matter most to oneself whenever one pay taxes of any type. It can be  by routing the taxes through a tagged account that stands  close to one’s opinion even while paying for any goods or service purchased.

One of the conclusions of Prof Miller in the early chapters of his book on game theory states that repeated play would be a true catalyst in promoting business honesty.  This should be  applicable quite as much to  politics as it is to economics. With virtually every adult citizen involved in buying some thing or the other all round the year,  what better opportunity would be there other than routing the taxes through tagged accounts to express one’s opinion, thus achieving accurate and continuous indexing of public opinion for the benefit of one and all, including those holding the reins of political groups.

This would have an added  bonus: groups, including political ones, would have a healthy incentive to see that every shop or service provider issues proper receipts with the applicable taxes to mobilize public opinion in their own favor. Thus a wedge would be driven between the legal and vested interests of politicians between winning the public opinion continuously and  raising unaccounted money for obviously illegal ways of winning the elections. Further, such a measure can in no way either induce or cause instability in the system.

Thus the suggested first prime step improves sustainable good governance by strengthening democratic process by meeting the two independent criteria stated in the beginning:

a) it does drive a wedge between legal interests and vested interests of the important players, namely the political and active groups who seek the reins of governance

b) it does not induce or cause instability in the system.

2. Relocating elite institutions both  academic and R&D into clusters of rural villages (from the mega cities or their immediate neighborhood).

The relocation  can begin with some five  to ten such clusters in each state in a phased manner. Business as usual with struggles/debates on policies, tackling problems such as corruption only leads to unbridled growth of cities, unless or until chaos dictates otherwise.  Isn't this unbridled growth cancerous and at the cost of the hinterlands, namely the rural areas?

The above step can not be possibly an impulse like  step capable of destabilizing the current system - economically or socially. In fact given the right mandate, each such rural cluster  can be a true catalyst in education, including school education,   towards sustainable / holistic development.

A simple beginning can be to challenge the collective intellectual / institutional might of each cluster to be self sufficient in food, energy and housing by using only the renwables of the sub region . And here, interaction of the elite with the local / traditional knowledge and skills can be mutually beneficial.

Some more details in:

i)  Suggestion 1 to GOM wrt proposal of AP division

3. Land only on rational lease for all uses  other than ‘fossil fuel free’ farming.

Even the land preparation and other inputs such as fertilizers and pesticides should be free of the fossil fuels for such a farming. One also eventually may require that such a farming should ensure a minimum of biodiversity in every small unit of farmland as against vast farms of monoculture.

This can begin with the building of the rural clusters to host the elite institutions with long term lease incomes to the farmers.

For one, it reduces the upfront investment in relocating the institutions, while solving one of the most difficult problems of locating lands for the institutions.

Again such a step  can neither cause nor induce  instability, socially or economically.  Instead, it may inspire  planning of the institutions with mostly mobile assets. In shelters this would mean using lightweight structures. It is well recognized  that there is a lot that we need to learn from the  old civilizations who were/are masters in using  local renewable resources even to build. (‘Lightness’, aerospace engg   Delft University and Prof Gordon’s  ‘Theory of Structures or Why things don’t fall down?)

After all, building sector is one of the most important ones of  of any country's economy and the use of local renewable resources improves local economy and environment with a sustainable development.  

For more details also see:

1.Indexing public opinion by routing taxes through tagged accounts

2. Acquisition of Land from Agrarian use - Historic Injustice

3. Why can’t land be leased for all uses other than farming?

3. Decongesting Hyderabad - A way to  reduce pollution and resolve the conflict of Telangana / Andhra Pradesh

4.Partial Mitigation of the problems of mega cities as islands of development amidst neglected/impoverished regions  

-  A General Solution for the Andhra Pradesh like burning problems in the spirit of Hind Swaraj