The free schemes announced by the ADMK regime led by Jayalalitha are one by one are getting mired in controversies, mysteries and scandals.
The latest to join this list is the ADMK government’s much touted Free Laptop scheme for students. Soon after the scheme was launched, there was an allegation of nepotism landing the student beneficiaries in trouble.
Jayalalitha’s battery of freebie pronouncements has purposes other than mitigating the sufferings of people or meant for their welfare and progress. The modus operandi of implementing free schemes by this regime leaves much to be desired or cloaked in mystery and intrigue, unlike during the DMK rule when at every stage of implementation all the parties represented in the Assembly were associated in a transparent manner.
With the unfolding of one scheme after the other, many skeletons in the cupboard are coming into the open. The free cow, sheep/goat scheme to rural women below poverty line is reported to be benefiting only ruling party functionaries acting as middlemen and the beneficiaries get tormented with dying cattle or old cows already given birth to 10 calves, post lactation period. The scheme served only to transfer government funds to the pockets of ruling party functionaries.
As much back in January 2012, ‘The Tehelka’ magazine in a report stated: “Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalitha’s plans to usher in “another white revolution” in the State might just be the case of wrong use of terminology. The rate at which the cows distributed freely under a government scheme are dropping dead, a leather revolution instead looks imminent.
To match the free distribution of colour TV sets by former CM and DMK supremo M Karunanidhi, Jayalalitha set out to distribute free of cost, cross-bred Jersey cows to families in villages that don’t have milk co-operatives, and four goats each to seven lakh other families. The government had set aside a budget of Rs 1,157 crore to achieve this feat over a period of five years.
But probing this novel idea a little further brings out some interesting details. That the cattle will be purchased from Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Maharashtra is the first curious fact. States such as Andhra have been following a cattle import policy to boost their own production and Tamil Nadu is one of its suppliers.
According to the Animal Husbandry Ministry website, Tamil Nadu has the highest population of cross-bred exotic cattle, which includes Jersey cows. A Ministry official, who does not wish to be named, insists that the decision to buy cattle from outside the State was made to boost the milk production in Tamil Nadu.
To achieve this perplexing merry-go-round ride of cattle repurchase and resale, the State takes the beneficiary to Andhra Pradesh to choose the cow, spending Rs 3,000 for the transport of the person and the cow. A researcher in the field of cattle claims that cattle traders from Tamil Nadu take the cows to Andhra the day before the ‘cow-selectors’ arrive, sometimes the District Collector in tow, and sell the same back to the unsuspecting villagers. Their motive: pass off a cow that has already given birth to more than 10 calves as one in its first or second lactation cycle, as laid down in the conditions of the scheme.
As a result, till date, 11 of the 50 cows procured by a village have dropped dead. S Ramesh Kannan, a resident of Kumbaiyur village, says that they neither have the space to breed the cattle nor the money to feed them: “I have to spend almost Rs 100 a day to feed the cow. As a labourer, I earn only Rs 200 a day. Each cow was bought for Rs 30,000 and transportation cost came up to Rs 3,000. The cows we bought won’t even sell for Rs 10,000. We could have got two local cows here for the same price. They seem to have already given birth to more than 10 calves each and hardly give a litre of milk a day.”
Ministry officials claim that no complaints have been registered, despite this issue being covered in the local media.
A vet has to be paid Rs 300 per visit to a village, transport cost included, to treat a cow. It is an established fact that exotic breeds of cows, such as the Jersey, fall sick very often. They also don’t feed on natural fodder but eat into the human food supplies such as millet and corn”.
The Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) pointed out deficiencies, including in the procurement mechanism, in the ADMK Government’s free milch cows scheme aimed to cover 60,000 beneficiaries. The CAG report on Economic Sector presented in the Tamil Nadu Assembly for the year ended March 2013, said “lack of tranparency in selection deprived needy eligible women” of the benefits envisaged in the scheme where in some cases persons over the age of 60 or those having land/or cows were selected as beneficiary. “Deficiency in procurement mechanism resulted in procurement of poor quality cows and poor milk yield,” it said.
Incidentally, disregarding recommendations of special teams constituted to study feasibility of procuring cows from Andhra Pradesh, the department proceeded with purchase of the bovines from shandies there, which “resulted in distress purchase of poor quality/over-aged” cows to achieve annual targets. There was “hasty procurement” of the cows, such as not sticking to stipulations that they be observed for their health status and milk yield for four to five days. It was done within a day in ten village panchayats in Tuticorin, Nagapattinam and Villupuram districts, CAG pointed out.
“Scheme guidelines stipulated that lactating cows that are in their first/second lactation and not more than five years should be procured to ensure continuous production for next five lactations. In 19 out of the 45 village panchayats test checked, it was found that 329 out of 950 cows procured (35 percent) were more than five years of age,” it said.
“Poor quality cows” that did not become pregnant during artificial insemination efforts and poor milk yield were the other deficiencies pointed out by the national auditor who said these impacted the very objectives of the scheme, of improving the economic status of poor rural women and increase the state’s milk productivity.
If this was the case of free cow scheme, the free laptop scheme was mired in controversies from the very beginning. The free laptop is certain to become millstones around the necks of lakhs of students. Under the scheme, a poll promise of Jayalalitha, the government will distribute 9.12 lakh laptops to school students of Plus Two classes every year in four years. The State government’s IT arm The Electronics Corporation of Tamil Nadu (ELCOT) is to procure the laptops.
Leaving aside ‘less-informed’ Tamil media, the self-proclaimed enlightened English media including the 24x7 penetrative news channels, did not find anything amiss in the Free Laptop scheme, until February 6, 2012 when the US expert and Free Software Pioneer Richard Stallman on a visit to Chennai, slammed TN’s free laptop scheme. The Tamil Nadu government may be trumpeting its scheme to distribute computers free to students but it is setting a poor example for what a state should do, says American software freedom activist Richard Stallman.
“It distributes laptops loaded with non-free software to children, teaching them to be dependent on paid products. It creates a system of digital colonisation,” Stallman, who has waged a storied battle against software giants like Bill Gates, said in an e-mail interview. He criticised the State’s ambitious free laptop scheme that hands out computers with the Windows operating system.
Even after the investigative journal Tehelka’s business daily ‘The Financial World’ exposed the evil design in the scheme as much back in October 2011, the media in Tamil Nadu did not think it proper to pursue the matter and inform the people how the scheme will cost the future of the poor students and the State’s exchequer.
The ELCOT took out a tender for the supply of 9,12,000 laptops to be delivered that year. Over the next five years, close to 70 lakh laptops produced at a cost of over Rs 10,200 crore would be distributed. With so much at stake, the IT intelligentsia in India accused Microsoft of using a mixture of American diplomatic offensive and its ‘embrace, extend and extinguish’ strategy to make 7 million poor students of Tamil Nadu dependent on its products with their free laptops.
ELCOT’s repeated changes in the tender forced out free software and pushed in Microsoft products, a move that could ‘end up putting unproductive laptops with Windows in the hands of poor students’. This would entrap them in Microsoft’s proprietary web of licenses, renewals, updates and upgrades.
There were allegations against ELCOT that it deliberately issued a second tender favouring Microsoft by eliminating open source software from its list of specifications and removing academically useful hardware from the laptop in a bid to balance out the increased cost of using the Windows Operating system and the licensed MS Office.
ELCOT advertised the first tender for the free distribution of over 9,12,000 laptops on June 4, 2011, after Jayalalitha decided to implement another of her election promises. ELCOT was working on keeping the base price of the laptop at Rs 15,000 and, given the sheer scale of the order, the costs were expected to come down to Rs 10,000 a laptop.
In June, ELCOT took out a tender with the following specifications: A dual boot system that had free open source Linux with the proprietary Microsoft Windows starter edition with antivirus software valid for a year. In addition, the laptop also had to have 320 GB hard drive, 1.3 megapixel web camera, Wi-Fi adapter and 8X DVD writer among other things.
At a time when ELCOT was looking to reduce costs, the bundling of Microsoft Windows raised the price by Rs 5,000. Experts also pointed out that according to Microsoft’s terms of licensing with Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs), Windows always boots first irrespective of what a user wants when they start a laptop.
Faced with a situation where it needed to cut costs and not offend one of the world’s most profitable and powerful corporations (as directed by Jayalalitha), ELCOT took out a second tender that stupefied the IT community in Tamil Nadu. In its new tender, ELCOT asked bidders to provide only Microsoft Windows and removed Linux from the list.
What was more startling was that in 2007, under the DMK government, ELCOT had shut the doors on Microsoft by ordering the migration of all government departments, panchayats and schools to Open Source Software after being convinced about its cost benefits and massive collaborative potential. Over 30,000 government and school teachers were to be trained in Linux. ELCOT’s proposals then, massively upgraded the systems and saved the Tamil Nadu government close to Rs 400 crore every year.
Even the then special adviser to the Prime Minister, Sam Pitroda, believed that in a scheme like this there is no scope for burdening students with stifling software that would eventually become a liability for students.
When ELCOT took out a second tender on August 20, 2011, not only had ELCOT booted out open source by only allowing Microsoft Windows OS on the systems, but it also removed vital hardware to accommodate the high cost of the Windows OS . The new tender removed the webcam and Wi-Fi adapter from the system while reducing the hard disk capacity to half (160 GB as opposed to 320 GB in the June tender). So ELCOT which wanted to reduce costs by about Rs 3000 on the base price of Rs 15,000 chose to dispose of hardware, which would benefit the students instead of shaving off the costs by including free software with extra hardware. Considering the growing penetration and relevance of internet in today’s times, without the Wi-Fi adapter, how beneficial is a laptop (defined as a personal computer for mobile use) to students?
So what changed between June 4 and August 20, 2011 that led to Microsoft’s OS being bundled into the laptop even though it meant higher costs and removing hardware from the system, which was helpful to students?
Diplomatic observers then pointed out to the stopover of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Chennai on July 20-21 when she met Jayalalitha before flying out to Indonesia on a state visit. “The proximity of the Clintons and the Gates is well known to the world and needs no explanation. And the revelations of WikiLeaks only show how the US has been forcing governments across the world to buy expensive Microsoft licences,” said Peter Gabriel, an online free software activist.
Despite a major shift to open source software in 2007 under DMK rule, the State was moving back to laptops for poor rural students preloaded with Microsoft Windows. After one year, the performance of a Windows laptop goes down drastically. Using Windows would greatly hamper the productivity of the student using it and the machine would become useless within two years. This is a step backwards for Tamil Nadu. They thought since it is the tax payer’s money, it doesn’t matter what kind of laptop is given. Would anyone have bought a laptop for their personal use without vital hardware at an enhanced cost?
After the distribution of free laptops to students started there were reports in the media that they were available for sales in bulks in the open market at cheaper prices. A report in ‘The Times of India’ on Feb 16,2013 stated: “Firms which supplied laptops to the Tamil Nadu government for free distribution among students are worried. A good number of them are available in the open market at dirt cheap prices. Upset by what they call undervaluation of their products, representatives HP, Lenovo and Acer have approached the state-run ELCOT (Electronics Corporation of Tamil Nadu), which is managing the ambitious 10,200 crore welfare scheme, to stop students from selling the laptops. The scheme, under which 68 lakh laptops are to be distributed to students in government and government-aided higher secondary schools and colleges, covered 9.12 lakh students in the first year at an expenditure of 912 crore. “We have been supplying laptops with a certain configuration, for which the price is around 18,000 per piece. But they are available in the market for around 7,000,” K Suresh, marketing manager of a computer firm, told TOI. The availability of laptops at less than 50% of their actual cost affected his company’s image and credibility. He said his company had asked ELCOT to take steps to stop the sale of the laptops in the market. Senior officials in IT and educational departments confirmed that there has been a demand from laptop suppliers to check the sale of free laptops.
Though some students might have sold the laptops how did so many found ways to grey market. Needless to say, the free laptops in bulks have found ways to the market through some other source. It is in this context that the daily ‘The Hindu’ on March 15 published the following report:
“Though over $600 million has already been spent on the free laptop programme, no government department seems to have a detailed list of the beneficiaries. Since September 2011, the State government has given out over 21 lakh laptops free of cost to students. That number is set to go up to at least 30 lakh over the next year and a half.
Despite such staggering numbers, none of the government departments involved in the scheme has a comprehensive list of all the beneficiaries, though the government’s own policy note has claimed for the past four years that “advanced software has been introduced for tracing the movement of benefits... and it integrates all facets of operation, including procurement and distribution.”
Responding to The Hindu’s Right to Information request for the name, age, institution and other details of all beneficiaries, ELCOT claimed it is only a “procurement agency.” The Special Programme Implementation Department, whose sole purpose is monitoring flagship schemes, pointed fingers at the School and College Education Departments. They, in turn, forwarded the RTIs to every district in the State. Even many of the district-level offices, which responded, had no names and merely forwarded the information request to individual institutions under their supervision. Essentially, if the RTI responses are to be believed, there is no comprehensive beneficiary list.
Without such a list to begin with, any effort to detect diversion into the grey market is questionable at best, say experts.
“Without tracking beneficiaries, it is questionable whether the government is getting the best out of this investment,” said Nat Malupillai of the e Governments Foundation. “Is there some intended outcome? Is it an increase in computer literacy? How is this going to be measured? Without capturing roll numbers and the student population along with some unique identifier, it is impossible to determine if the right people got the benefit and also how it is being used,” he said. “We should be concerned. This is a significant issue from a governance standpoint,” Malupillai said. “Ideally, a list of all those, who benefited from a supposed welfare measure, should be released and NGOs or other entities be allowed to do a random audit. Just believing that good intentions will translate to positive outcomes is wishful thinking,” he said”.
Though this report does not explicitly state that free laptops intended to be distributed to the students were diverted to some other source from where they had reached the grey market, it is an open secret that the beneficiaries in this scheme are also the ruling party functionaries in connivance with Ministers and officials!
Not to leave any doubt over this, ‘The Times of India’ on March 20 published a report under the heading “Touts eat into welfare benefits-earn cash on freebies” narrating how from green house allotments to marriage aid disbursal, bribes have to be paid by beneficiaries. The report cited many instances of payment of bribes and stated: “From allotment of green houses to payment of marriage assistance to women, the plethora of government schemes have become a hotbed of corruption involving crores paid as bribes. Funds set aside for distribution of goodies under the top five welfare schemes in TN added up to Rs 4,720 crore last year.
With the State expected to give a push to the distribution of freebies in the budget to be unveiled on March 25, it is high time that government incorporates a system to eliminate or at least minimize corruption at the doorstep of its numerous departments and offices.
“The liberalization of economy in the 90s has enabled the average Indian to make more money, which, in turn, has resulted in an increase in bribery as well as amount paid as bribe. While people who can afford pay bribe hiding behind convenient excuses, it’s is poor for whom these welfare schemes are intended who suffer.
Every government office, from the rudimentary building housing the Village Administrative Officer to the swanky district collectorate, has touts (alibis for ruling party fellows). They could be the woman selling stamp paper or the man running a photocopying out let adjacent to the government office. The applicant would invariably submit the applications through these touts or would be directed to them by the staff. “The money collected would be shared in the evening. Each office has its own system of dividing the spoils. Even if you don’t accept the money, you would be forced to receive it and offer it to other staff,’’ says a revenue officer.
TCS Karpagam, Cheranmahadevi union secretary of CPM, says corruption in government schemes is more prevalent in rural areas. “Village health nurses call the shots in disbursal of Rs 12,000 for pregnant women under the maternity assistance scheme. They are entrusted with receiving applications and entering the data of pregnant women in the beneficiary list. If they are not paid a minimum of Rs 1,000, they drop the names,’’ she said.
A senior doctor at Medavakkam in Chennai who attempted to eliminate bribery in the maternity assistance scheme, couldn’t because the nurse had political backing, he added. Activists say that bribe money ranges from Rs 500 for providing milch animals or household appliances to Rs 25,000 for important allotments. “In the case of greenhouse allotment, beneficiaries have to pay Rs 25,000,’’ said an activist.
Thus, free schemes in ADMK regime are mainly meant for the earnings of the ruling party functionaries in a quid pro quo arrangement. Now and then there are reports of Jayalalitha taking action against her party people accused of corruption. But these token actions are only pretentions to hoodwink the gullible or servile media more than the people of Tamil Nadu, who are cleverer by experience. (22-03-15)
The latest to join this list is the ADMK government’s much touted Free Laptop scheme for students. Soon after the scheme was launched, there was an allegation of nepotism landing the student beneficiaries in trouble.
Jayalalitha’s battery of freebie pronouncements has purposes other than mitigating the sufferings of people or meant for their welfare and progress. The modus operandi of implementing free schemes by this regime leaves much to be desired or cloaked in mystery and intrigue, unlike during the DMK rule when at every stage of implementation all the parties represented in the Assembly were associated in a transparent manner.
With the unfolding of one scheme after the other, many skeletons in the cupboard are coming into the open. The free cow, sheep/goat scheme to rural women below poverty line is reported to be benefiting only ruling party functionaries acting as middlemen and the beneficiaries get tormented with dying cattle or old cows already given birth to 10 calves, post lactation period. The scheme served only to transfer government funds to the pockets of ruling party functionaries.
As much back in January 2012, ‘The Tehelka’ magazine in a report stated: “Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalitha’s plans to usher in “another white revolution” in the State might just be the case of wrong use of terminology. The rate at which the cows distributed freely under a government scheme are dropping dead, a leather revolution instead looks imminent.
To match the free distribution of colour TV sets by former CM and DMK supremo M Karunanidhi, Jayalalitha set out to distribute free of cost, cross-bred Jersey cows to families in villages that don’t have milk co-operatives, and four goats each to seven lakh other families. The government had set aside a budget of Rs 1,157 crore to achieve this feat over a period of five years.
But probing this novel idea a little further brings out some interesting details. That the cattle will be purchased from Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Maharashtra is the first curious fact. States such as Andhra have been following a cattle import policy to boost their own production and Tamil Nadu is one of its suppliers.
According to the Animal Husbandry Ministry website, Tamil Nadu has the highest population of cross-bred exotic cattle, which includes Jersey cows. A Ministry official, who does not wish to be named, insists that the decision to buy cattle from outside the State was made to boost the milk production in Tamil Nadu.
To achieve this perplexing merry-go-round ride of cattle repurchase and resale, the State takes the beneficiary to Andhra Pradesh to choose the cow, spending Rs 3,000 for the transport of the person and the cow. A researcher in the field of cattle claims that cattle traders from Tamil Nadu take the cows to Andhra the day before the ‘cow-selectors’ arrive, sometimes the District Collector in tow, and sell the same back to the unsuspecting villagers. Their motive: pass off a cow that has already given birth to more than 10 calves as one in its first or second lactation cycle, as laid down in the conditions of the scheme.
As a result, till date, 11 of the 50 cows procured by a village have dropped dead. S Ramesh Kannan, a resident of Kumbaiyur village, says that they neither have the space to breed the cattle nor the money to feed them: “I have to spend almost Rs 100 a day to feed the cow. As a labourer, I earn only Rs 200 a day. Each cow was bought for Rs 30,000 and transportation cost came up to Rs 3,000. The cows we bought won’t even sell for Rs 10,000. We could have got two local cows here for the same price. They seem to have already given birth to more than 10 calves each and hardly give a litre of milk a day.”
Ministry officials claim that no complaints have been registered, despite this issue being covered in the local media.
A vet has to be paid Rs 300 per visit to a village, transport cost included, to treat a cow. It is an established fact that exotic breeds of cows, such as the Jersey, fall sick very often. They also don’t feed on natural fodder but eat into the human food supplies such as millet and corn”.
The Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) pointed out deficiencies, including in the procurement mechanism, in the ADMK Government’s free milch cows scheme aimed to cover 60,000 beneficiaries. The CAG report on Economic Sector presented in the Tamil Nadu Assembly for the year ended March 2013, said “lack of tranparency in selection deprived needy eligible women” of the benefits envisaged in the scheme where in some cases persons over the age of 60 or those having land/or cows were selected as beneficiary. “Deficiency in procurement mechanism resulted in procurement of poor quality cows and poor milk yield,” it said.
Incidentally, disregarding recommendations of special teams constituted to study feasibility of procuring cows from Andhra Pradesh, the department proceeded with purchase of the bovines from shandies there, which “resulted in distress purchase of poor quality/over-aged” cows to achieve annual targets. There was “hasty procurement” of the cows, such as not sticking to stipulations that they be observed for their health status and milk yield for four to five days. It was done within a day in ten village panchayats in Tuticorin, Nagapattinam and Villupuram districts, CAG pointed out.
“Scheme guidelines stipulated that lactating cows that are in their first/second lactation and not more than five years should be procured to ensure continuous production for next five lactations. In 19 out of the 45 village panchayats test checked, it was found that 329 out of 950 cows procured (35 percent) were more than five years of age,” it said.
“Poor quality cows” that did not become pregnant during artificial insemination efforts and poor milk yield were the other deficiencies pointed out by the national auditor who said these impacted the very objectives of the scheme, of improving the economic status of poor rural women and increase the state’s milk productivity.
If this was the case of free cow scheme, the free laptop scheme was mired in controversies from the very beginning. The free laptop is certain to become millstones around the necks of lakhs of students. Under the scheme, a poll promise of Jayalalitha, the government will distribute 9.12 lakh laptops to school students of Plus Two classes every year in four years. The State government’s IT arm The Electronics Corporation of Tamil Nadu (ELCOT) is to procure the laptops.
Leaving aside ‘less-informed’ Tamil media, the self-proclaimed enlightened English media including the 24x7 penetrative news channels, did not find anything amiss in the Free Laptop scheme, until February 6, 2012 when the US expert and Free Software Pioneer Richard Stallman on a visit to Chennai, slammed TN’s free laptop scheme. The Tamil Nadu government may be trumpeting its scheme to distribute computers free to students but it is setting a poor example for what a state should do, says American software freedom activist Richard Stallman.
“It distributes laptops loaded with non-free software to children, teaching them to be dependent on paid products. It creates a system of digital colonisation,” Stallman, who has waged a storied battle against software giants like Bill Gates, said in an e-mail interview. He criticised the State’s ambitious free laptop scheme that hands out computers with the Windows operating system.
Even after the investigative journal Tehelka’s business daily ‘The Financial World’ exposed the evil design in the scheme as much back in October 2011, the media in Tamil Nadu did not think it proper to pursue the matter and inform the people how the scheme will cost the future of the poor students and the State’s exchequer.
The ELCOT took out a tender for the supply of 9,12,000 laptops to be delivered that year. Over the next five years, close to 70 lakh laptops produced at a cost of over Rs 10,200 crore would be distributed. With so much at stake, the IT intelligentsia in India accused Microsoft of using a mixture of American diplomatic offensive and its ‘embrace, extend and extinguish’ strategy to make 7 million poor students of Tamil Nadu dependent on its products with their free laptops.
ELCOT’s repeated changes in the tender forced out free software and pushed in Microsoft products, a move that could ‘end up putting unproductive laptops with Windows in the hands of poor students’. This would entrap them in Microsoft’s proprietary web of licenses, renewals, updates and upgrades.
There were allegations against ELCOT that it deliberately issued a second tender favouring Microsoft by eliminating open source software from its list of specifications and removing academically useful hardware from the laptop in a bid to balance out the increased cost of using the Windows Operating system and the licensed MS Office.
ELCOT advertised the first tender for the free distribution of over 9,12,000 laptops on June 4, 2011, after Jayalalitha decided to implement another of her election promises. ELCOT was working on keeping the base price of the laptop at Rs 15,000 and, given the sheer scale of the order, the costs were expected to come down to Rs 10,000 a laptop.
In June, ELCOT took out a tender with the following specifications: A dual boot system that had free open source Linux with the proprietary Microsoft Windows starter edition with antivirus software valid for a year. In addition, the laptop also had to have 320 GB hard drive, 1.3 megapixel web camera, Wi-Fi adapter and 8X DVD writer among other things.
At a time when ELCOT was looking to reduce costs, the bundling of Microsoft Windows raised the price by Rs 5,000. Experts also pointed out that according to Microsoft’s terms of licensing with Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs), Windows always boots first irrespective of what a user wants when they start a laptop.
Faced with a situation where it needed to cut costs and not offend one of the world’s most profitable and powerful corporations (as directed by Jayalalitha), ELCOT took out a second tender that stupefied the IT community in Tamil Nadu. In its new tender, ELCOT asked bidders to provide only Microsoft Windows and removed Linux from the list.
What was more startling was that in 2007, under the DMK government, ELCOT had shut the doors on Microsoft by ordering the migration of all government departments, panchayats and schools to Open Source Software after being convinced about its cost benefits and massive collaborative potential. Over 30,000 government and school teachers were to be trained in Linux. ELCOT’s proposals then, massively upgraded the systems and saved the Tamil Nadu government close to Rs 400 crore every year.
Even the then special adviser to the Prime Minister, Sam Pitroda, believed that in a scheme like this there is no scope for burdening students with stifling software that would eventually become a liability for students.
When ELCOT took out a second tender on August 20, 2011, not only had ELCOT booted out open source by only allowing Microsoft Windows OS on the systems, but it also removed vital hardware to accommodate the high cost of the Windows OS . The new tender removed the webcam and Wi-Fi adapter from the system while reducing the hard disk capacity to half (160 GB as opposed to 320 GB in the June tender). So ELCOT which wanted to reduce costs by about Rs 3000 on the base price of Rs 15,000 chose to dispose of hardware, which would benefit the students instead of shaving off the costs by including free software with extra hardware. Considering the growing penetration and relevance of internet in today’s times, without the Wi-Fi adapter, how beneficial is a laptop (defined as a personal computer for mobile use) to students?
So what changed between June 4 and August 20, 2011 that led to Microsoft’s OS being bundled into the laptop even though it meant higher costs and removing hardware from the system, which was helpful to students?
Diplomatic observers then pointed out to the stopover of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Chennai on July 20-21 when she met Jayalalitha before flying out to Indonesia on a state visit. “The proximity of the Clintons and the Gates is well known to the world and needs no explanation. And the revelations of WikiLeaks only show how the US has been forcing governments across the world to buy expensive Microsoft licences,” said Peter Gabriel, an online free software activist.
Despite a major shift to open source software in 2007 under DMK rule, the State was moving back to laptops for poor rural students preloaded with Microsoft Windows. After one year, the performance of a Windows laptop goes down drastically. Using Windows would greatly hamper the productivity of the student using it and the machine would become useless within two years. This is a step backwards for Tamil Nadu. They thought since it is the tax payer’s money, it doesn’t matter what kind of laptop is given. Would anyone have bought a laptop for their personal use without vital hardware at an enhanced cost?
After the distribution of free laptops to students started there were reports in the media that they were available for sales in bulks in the open market at cheaper prices. A report in ‘The Times of India’ on Feb 16,2013 stated: “Firms which supplied laptops to the Tamil Nadu government for free distribution among students are worried. A good number of them are available in the open market at dirt cheap prices. Upset by what they call undervaluation of their products, representatives HP, Lenovo and Acer have approached the state-run ELCOT (Electronics Corporation of Tamil Nadu), which is managing the ambitious 10,200 crore welfare scheme, to stop students from selling the laptops. The scheme, under which 68 lakh laptops are to be distributed to students in government and government-aided higher secondary schools and colleges, covered 9.12 lakh students in the first year at an expenditure of 912 crore. “We have been supplying laptops with a certain configuration, for which the price is around 18,000 per piece. But they are available in the market for around 7,000,” K Suresh, marketing manager of a computer firm, told TOI. The availability of laptops at less than 50% of their actual cost affected his company’s image and credibility. He said his company had asked ELCOT to take steps to stop the sale of the laptops in the market. Senior officials in IT and educational departments confirmed that there has been a demand from laptop suppliers to check the sale of free laptops.
Though some students might have sold the laptops how did so many found ways to grey market. Needless to say, the free laptops in bulks have found ways to the market through some other source. It is in this context that the daily ‘The Hindu’ on March 15 published the following report:
“Though over $600 million has already been spent on the free laptop programme, no government department seems to have a detailed list of the beneficiaries. Since September 2011, the State government has given out over 21 lakh laptops free of cost to students. That number is set to go up to at least 30 lakh over the next year and a half.
Despite such staggering numbers, none of the government departments involved in the scheme has a comprehensive list of all the beneficiaries, though the government’s own policy note has claimed for the past four years that “advanced software has been introduced for tracing the movement of benefits... and it integrates all facets of operation, including procurement and distribution.”
Responding to The Hindu’s Right to Information request for the name, age, institution and other details of all beneficiaries, ELCOT claimed it is only a “procurement agency.” The Special Programme Implementation Department, whose sole purpose is monitoring flagship schemes, pointed fingers at the School and College Education Departments. They, in turn, forwarded the RTIs to every district in the State. Even many of the district-level offices, which responded, had no names and merely forwarded the information request to individual institutions under their supervision. Essentially, if the RTI responses are to be believed, there is no comprehensive beneficiary list.
Without such a list to begin with, any effort to detect diversion into the grey market is questionable at best, say experts.
“Without tracking beneficiaries, it is questionable whether the government is getting the best out of this investment,” said Nat Malupillai of the e Governments Foundation. “Is there some intended outcome? Is it an increase in computer literacy? How is this going to be measured? Without capturing roll numbers and the student population along with some unique identifier, it is impossible to determine if the right people got the benefit and also how it is being used,” he said. “We should be concerned. This is a significant issue from a governance standpoint,” Malupillai said. “Ideally, a list of all those, who benefited from a supposed welfare measure, should be released and NGOs or other entities be allowed to do a random audit. Just believing that good intentions will translate to positive outcomes is wishful thinking,” he said”.
Though this report does not explicitly state that free laptops intended to be distributed to the students were diverted to some other source from where they had reached the grey market, it is an open secret that the beneficiaries in this scheme are also the ruling party functionaries in connivance with Ministers and officials!
Not to leave any doubt over this, ‘The Times of India’ on March 20 published a report under the heading “Touts eat into welfare benefits-earn cash on freebies” narrating how from green house allotments to marriage aid disbursal, bribes have to be paid by beneficiaries. The report cited many instances of payment of bribes and stated: “From allotment of green houses to payment of marriage assistance to women, the plethora of government schemes have become a hotbed of corruption involving crores paid as bribes. Funds set aside for distribution of goodies under the top five welfare schemes in TN added up to Rs 4,720 crore last year.
With the State expected to give a push to the distribution of freebies in the budget to be unveiled on March 25, it is high time that government incorporates a system to eliminate or at least minimize corruption at the doorstep of its numerous departments and offices.
“The liberalization of economy in the 90s has enabled the average Indian to make more money, which, in turn, has resulted in an increase in bribery as well as amount paid as bribe. While people who can afford pay bribe hiding behind convenient excuses, it’s is poor for whom these welfare schemes are intended who suffer.
Every government office, from the rudimentary building housing the Village Administrative Officer to the swanky district collectorate, has touts (alibis for ruling party fellows). They could be the woman selling stamp paper or the man running a photocopying out let adjacent to the government office. The applicant would invariably submit the applications through these touts or would be directed to them by the staff. “The money collected would be shared in the evening. Each office has its own system of dividing the spoils. Even if you don’t accept the money, you would be forced to receive it and offer it to other staff,’’ says a revenue officer.
TCS Karpagam, Cheranmahadevi union secretary of CPM, says corruption in government schemes is more prevalent in rural areas. “Village health nurses call the shots in disbursal of Rs 12,000 for pregnant women under the maternity assistance scheme. They are entrusted with receiving applications and entering the data of pregnant women in the beneficiary list. If they are not paid a minimum of Rs 1,000, they drop the names,’’ she said.
A senior doctor at Medavakkam in Chennai who attempted to eliminate bribery in the maternity assistance scheme, couldn’t because the nurse had political backing, he added. Activists say that bribe money ranges from Rs 500 for providing milch animals or household appliances to Rs 25,000 for important allotments. “In the case of greenhouse allotment, beneficiaries have to pay Rs 25,000,’’ said an activist.
Thus, free schemes in ADMK regime are mainly meant for the earnings of the ruling party functionaries in a quid pro quo arrangement. Now and then there are reports of Jayalalitha taking action against her party people accused of corruption. But these token actions are only pretentions to hoodwink the gullible or servile media more than the people of Tamil Nadu, who are cleverer by experience. (22-03-15)
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