Digitisation offers a unique opportunity to improve governance standards and enhance transparency. Most of India's 5,97 lakh inhabited villages are covered by mobile wireless, thereby creating a platform for citizens to interface with the government. But if this is to work, the quality of user interface needs to improve dramatically. If tax professionals struggle with even the newer iterations of a digital interface, it is likely villagers are being severely disadvantaged. An information technology powerhouse needs to do much better. Income-tax reduced its cost of collection from 1.36% to 0.62% of tax revenue, with digitsation playing a role. Aadhaar, the crown jewel of the Digital India umbrella, has a biometric database of over 1.25 billion people. Building such balancing coalitions is not something India has done in the past and is perhas a phenomenon we are not completely comfortable with. The deep partnerships this requires, go well beyond more political srategic ties and leadership level visits. They imply building strong and interlocking economic contacts and interests, large scale and deep people-to-people ties and long lasting inter-institutional linkages. In order to do this, India may have to adjust some of its domestic policies, which is something we have not done in the past. This national effort will need to be led by our diplomats who will have to rise to the occasion and give an excellent account of themselves. While this represents a brave new world not traversed before, Indian diplomacy is indeed up to this task. The rest of India, which is all of us, will also need to raise our game since this is what is required if India is to rise to the China Challenge. The question we have to ask ourselves is what does India have to do both in the short term.
