INDIA PUTS THE APP INTO ITS APPROACH TO GOVERNMENT
Prime minister Narendra Modi has introduced dozens of apps, but are they just a knee-jerk response to problems?
Indian governance? There are apps for that.
Since Narendra Modi’s election in 2014, his government has introduced an app to follow the status of income tax refunds, one to track the progress of rural power schemes, two on applying for passports, and another to check if a name is included in the voter registry – and many others.
There is no reliable tally of these apps but it is safe to say there are dozens.
Mr Modi engages with the public through three apps: one officially linked to his office, another simply called the Narendra Modi app, and a third called Mann Ki Baat or Things on my Mind, which archives the prime minister’s speeches.
At times it seems as if a new app is the government’s instinctive response to a problem.
Last year, when Mr Modi announced a de-monetisation drive that made cash payments difficult, the government introduced the app BHIM, to enable instant bank transfers.
In May, four months after a soldier took to social media to complain about his unit’s conditions, the government launched a “grievance redressal mobile app” to help troops send complaints directly to the home ministry.
The apps fit with Mr Modi’s projected image of an internet-savvy leader and his Digital India campaign, which was launched in July 2015.
Charru Malhotra, an e-governance scholar who teaches at the Indian Institute of Public Administration in New Delhi, said she was at first sceptical of his new slogan.
“At the time I thought it was just a repetition of the old slogan, to take governance to people’s doorsteps,” Ms Malhotra said. “But when I visited villages and talked to people I did find that for a majority, the government seemed to have come closer to them because of these apps.”
She said she was concerned initially that the apps would reach only the literate citizens who could afford a smartphone, leaving out great areas of rural India.
But by Ms Malhotra’s reckoning, India’s base of smartphone users – about 300 million – indicates that there is on average at least one smartphone in every family.
Although most literate people are comfortable navigating English-language app stores, she said more content should be available in local languages. And the increasing number of apps could be confusing.
“I think always, one India, one app. If this plethora of apps is confusing for someone like me who studies them, imagine what it’s like for the average citizen,” Ms Malhotra said.
In Bangalore, software engineer Sulleiman Ahmed downloads as many government apps as he can. He does this “purely out of curiosity. I want to see what they’re all about”.
Mr Ahmed said that some apps, including those associated directly with the prime minister, are updated frequently and kept free of glitches, while many others are not user-friendly, have bugs and grow stale rapidly.
“It’s like they just launch the app and then forget about it,” he said.
The haste to put an app to a service is “part of a deeper problem of confusing outcomes with products”, said Ananth Padmanabhan, a fellow at Carnegie India whose primary research deals with technology and public policy.
“Digital India has led to a fixation with the release of all kinds of products, of which apps are truly the easiest to launch,” Mr Padmanabhan said.
“There are also these intrapreneurship programmes now within government departments, where staffers can come up with innovative solutions. I suspect many of these apps are launched as part of such ‘innovative’ thinking by these chaps, making everyone happy in the process.”
The government has tried to put itself in a favourable light by using apps, he said, giving an example from the demonetisation campaign last year.
When cash was in short supply in bank ATMs, the government used apps to indicate the locations of “micro-ATMs”, which had been temporarily set up to dispense banknotes.
“But in reality, many were not functional or not manned properly, or were in locations with no internet access,” Mr Padmanabhan said.
The release of an app might, however, prompt government departments to “set their house in order”, Ms Malhotra said.
“Even if I’m being compelled to launch an app, I have to then build some kind of capacity internally to back it up,” she said.
“It may look cosmetic but these apps are giving citizens windows into the processes of governance.
“The government is laying itself bare in a way, and that means it will be forced to tighten up its systems.”
Digital India has led to a fixation with the release of all kinds of products, of which apps are truly the easiest to launch