In the middle of August 2021, when Covid-19 protocols were still in force, Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal went to a regional transport office (RTO) in the city and put a big lock on its gate. He proclaimed RTOs to be redundant government offices in a digital age and said that most service applications submitted to RTOs will be done in a “faceless” manner online. Through this act, Kejriwal, arguably the country’s second most effective political communicator, was symbolically speaking with the youth of an information and tech economy.
Lead Story
India’s Digital Winning Like A Frankenstein
India is an aspirational digital state. It wants to belong to the connected world like a leader despite its limitations of being a low-middle-income economy, having a large number of poor people, large illiteracy levels and less-than-reliable telecom infrastructure. Will the government’s push from the top create a national digital blueprint or turn the country into Charlie Chaplin’s Feeding Machine?
