Joseph Schumpeter (1883–1950) coined a paradoxical term in 1942 “Creative Destruction” to explain the process of progress, continuity and development that follows the obliteration, destruction or simply flaying off, of an existing framework, for better and progressive economic opportunities. The recent case of intermediate exam results going berserk and students of every cadres, IQ and aptitude of Punjab, promoted to the next level, that is grade twelve, to make up for the losses, is an example of right technology manned by a flawed mechanism and being impatient with the fruit of technology that that is bore gradually. Information Technology is the surest way to accelerate the pace of doing work with almost 99 per cent accuracy. However, information technology has a relevance with attitude building and developmental policies, which brings us to the notion of Change Management…a despised option to a majority of people. But what Schumpeter wanted to convey through the theory of Creative Destruction is that some people at some stage have to bear the brunt of progress either in the form of temporary job loss, permanent exit from the existing career or maybe technology going mad initially. Some systems have to be dismantled permanently or temporarily and that any attempt to lessen the harshness of this process could severely damage the pace of economic progress.
Repellence to ‘land record
management information system’
The discourse above brings us to an important point of managing change, attitude and behaviour on the eve of introducing change through technology. Lately in one of my Public Policy class one of my classmates who happened to be on a senior position in Punjab bureaucracy sympathised over the job losses the Patwaries are bound to suffer in the wake of “Land Record Management Information System”. Her argument ran from defending the older system that has been in place since the British Raj to the acumen, abilities and deliverability of Patwaries. She adamantly defended the status quo by saying that “when older system is working why need a new one that could cause not only job destruction but unusual hassles in adoption, adaptation and reformation of system at the administrative and execution level.” In this peculiar example of Patwary vs. Land Record Management, we are faced with dual problems. The first problem traces its link to corruption; Patwary in Pakistan is a man with power so extensive and forceful that his job or transfer orders or for that matter his job descriptions at times come from the upper echelons of the power structure of the government. A clerk of grade five, Patwari handles land records at sub-divisional or tehsil level in Pakistan. He maintains land record system of ownership, cultivation and revenue. Seeing through his academic credentials, that does not go above matriculation and job description that revolves around checking and maintaining few registers, this whole equation of power influence becomes all the more, more intriguing. In corollary he is a man at the centre of the land mafia or land grabbers. The other problem is related to the technological change that would sweep out many older systems, and maybe with it would destroy older jobs and lay people redundant as well. But such hard choices are important if a country or an organisation wishes to grow. It is natural for an underdeveloped country like Pakistan to overemphasise job creation but frown over job destruction. But then in that case we have to keep suffering the pains of lengthy procedures, slow processes, buy time techniques and lost opportunities. Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa governments are striving to bring Land Record Management Information System since 2003; the resistance from both the change averse and corrupt elements has kept the pace of restructuring slow and irregular.
Importance of Information Communication Technology
One key proposition that comes with the theory of innovation is the obsolescence of the preceding theory in practice. But this is the way to new world. Technology has to its credit some of the benefits that ultimately give business a curve that never goes flat: low cost, marginal benefits, economy of scales, competitive advantage and time value of money. Railroads are counted as one of the precursors of Industrial Revolution that made the migration of good to different markets and customers possible from one destination to another. The shifting of raw material or maybe the transportation of labour, skilled at doing one job over the other, to ultimately lowering the production cost due to efficiency and affectivity, became possible due to the system presently we are so careless about in Pakistan; Railways.
Just as railways carry good, and power grids carry electricity, information technology carries digital information. Interconnectivity, information sharing and interoperability are a few of the characteristics of ICT. The interconnectivity horizon has kept expanding from mainframe timesharing to minicomputers based local areas networks to Ethernet networks and on to the internet. Looking at the investment data, according to a study by the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Economic Analysis, in 1965 less than 5 per cent of the capital expenditure of American companies went to information technology. With the advent of personal computers in the early 1980s, the figure rose to 15 per cent. By the early 1990s, more than 30 per cent has already gone into ICT. The end of the decade saw this percentage moving up to 50per cent. On an estimate, businesses around the world continue to spend well over $2 trillion, a year on IT.
Looking into Pakistan’s readiness or its acceptance level of information technology one refers to the Networked Readiness Index (NRI) according to which in the FY 2011 Pakistan has been ranked 88th amongst the group of 135 countries, a point ahead from 2009-10 rating when Pakistan was standing at 87 positions. Among the 19 Asian countries Pakistan is at the 16th position, with Singapore occupying the first and Nepal 19th position, while India clinging onto the 8th position. As far as the Market environment is concerned, according to NRI, at 61 Pakistan is quite welcoming in providing market environment for the development of ICT. But as far as the political and regulatory and infrastructure environment of Pakistan is concerned the country at the 104th position, and is yet to show professional resilience to let ICT permeate the market on a firm footing. At the government level the usage of ICT ranks at the 87th position, so is the case of business usage, however, at the individual levels the ranking is worse at 106.
ICT and poverty reduction
To the World Bank and the European Commission, insufficient income level, is not the only indicator that gives poverty a bad name. Silence, powerlessness, vulnerability, fear, lack of access to education, health, employment, political participation, land and credit, natural resources, services and infrastructure, all goes in defining poverty as a matter of helplessness of a citizen to lead a respectful and dignified life. Now, the broader definition of poverty has come to include deprivation of needed information to participate in the wider society at the local, national and global level as well.
Economic growth induces inequality when the instruments of growth be it education, skill, health infrastructure, land ownership etc cannot reach a large population owing to vested interest or entranced power structure or policy failure of a given country. What is the use of growth if the poor cannot take advantage of employment and income opportunities due to lack of education. If there is discrimination and social exclusion how can the excluded and discriminated people take advantage of the expanded economic activities and share the benefits of economic growth? Information Communication Technology gives countries power and abilities to reach out to people at a mass level. China’s central Radio and Television universities have more than 1.5 million students enrolled in different programs. Mexico has given access to its people living in remote villages through Telesecundaria Program enrolling 700,000 secondary school students. Lectures are delivered through close circuit television and teleconferencing between students and teachers. Committee to Democratise Information Technology (CDI) of Brazil has created 110 sustainable self managed community-based schools. They train more than 25,000 young students per year in ICT skills which provides them better opportunities for jobs. In Andhra Pradesh India handheld computers have increased the efficiencies of midwives by eliminating cumbersome data entry and paper work. One nurse is responsible for 5000 persons’ immunisation, family planning, and mother child education handheld computers have reduced the time spent on these activates by 40 per cent.
According to International Labour Organization (ILO) developing countries have been able to generate employment opportunities to a great extent through community access points and telecenters. Women of Khizhur Pondicherry India have been able to establish incense-stick firm by utilising telecenters. Initially they started as subcontractors but with passion and the availability of telecommunication facilities they expanded to distant areas. In Gujarat India computerised milk collection centres with integrated electronic weights, fat testing machines and plastic card readers ensure fair prices to the dairy farmers. In Ghana, information about regional markets and development, disseminated on radio has helped farmers increase their revenues and improve their farming practices.
Attitude building
The vulnerability of Information Technology is as much a case of inbuilt phenomenon as that of its utility. The operational risks associated with IT just like any other business ventures are many; technical glitches, obsolescence, service outages, unreliable vendors, or partners, security breaches, even terrorism, some have grown in importance with the shift from proprietary system to open, shared one. Business management theory has it that companies prepare themselves to identify and temper the vulnerabilities that could not only disconnect the business from market but could foul the reputation of a company, an organisation or a country as well, as it has happened in the case of BISE.
Lahore Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education’s online registration system introduced in 2010 has failed on many occasions since its inception. On every occasion be it registration, getting roll number slips or result card the system refused to cooperate with its users, in this case the students, leaving them confused, panicked and distraught. The story has it that the Gujranwala, Faisalabad and Multan boards never implemented the new computerisation system as a whole and even in Lahore board, the system is functioning on only one computer. Most of the staff persisted using spreadsheet and later posting them on result cards. Though the mayhem that we call BISE technology fiasco is tainted heavily with corruption, we cannot ignore the “Technology Training” phenomenon thoroughly ignored in this case just as it has been done in many cases previously.
The ideal situation would have been to acclimatise the staff with the processes through a piecemeal approach then thrusting the whole theory down their throat without giving due diligence to the culture, habits and traditional way of doing business. Though a committee has been formed to look into the causes of the breakdown that almost gave Punjab government a hammering blow, similarly a petition has been filed as well by some citizenry, but the real issue in hand is to make people understand why and how information technology is going to ease their lives, making people comfortable with the technology and last but not the least making the staff working on the technology adapt with the system. It is through this awareness campaign only that we could shift our much needed consumerism attitude to the production one…..
“Durdana Najam is a freelance financial feature writer, currently doing Executive MA in Governance and Public Policy, from FC College Lahore, she could be reached at [email protected]”
