The Hindu Business Line : ‘IT can help create a national intelligence grid’

We have to create a real-time information network that connects all the pools of data we have and which is obviously available only to very few people, so that they can act on it proactively.

NANDAN NILEKANI, CO-CHAIRMAN, INFOSYS

Rasheeda Bhagat

Infosys co-Chairman Nandan Nilekani says the Mumbai terror incidents have reinforced the need for a national intelligence grid with real-time mapping of information. IT companies can really help in this, he told Business Line, in an interaction on Tuesday.

Excerpts from the interview:

The title of your book is ‘Imagining India.’ The Mumbai attacks have raised question marks on whether Brand India will take a beating. Already, we are in a difficult economic environment… will our business and economy slow down further because of this?

Certainly, in the short term these dastardly attacks on Mumbai will have an impact on sentiment, travel. Investors and clients will be a lot more hesitant to come here. That this comes on top of a global economic recession doesn’t help matters.

But I’m optimistic about India and its long-term future. My book reflects that optimism. And I think the best way to deal with it is not to be scared but to go on and do what we have to do…go ahead and build the country and make it better.

Are you getting calls expressing apprehension and concern from outside India?

Actually I’ve got very, very reassuring messages. All the e-mails I’ve got, not just from corporate associates but from friends all over the world, say we are with you in this hour of turmoil and we have great confidence in India. Everybody has come out with great support.

You’ve talked about how IT has changed many aspects of life in India, including the stock market. Now the challenge before you is to apply IT in increasing the security of this country. Will you be able to harness IT for this?

Totally, hugely enormously. I’ve been talking for quite some time, even before this attack, about the need to create a national intelligence grid. What happens today, and I’ve seen government at close quarters, is that governments operate in silos.

If there are five departments there are five territories, run by five bureaucrats. And, very often, they don’t talk, don’t exchange information and actually hide information from the other guy. I’ve seen this, at the city level, State and national levels too. Government departments don’t talk to each other. Period.

They are all little fiefdoms. When you have fiefdoms in general public services, at worst you get bad services. If the health guys are not talking to the education guys and the education guys are not talking to somebody else, at worst you have bad health and bad education.

But here, if the security guys are not talking to each other, then you have these kinds of attacks. So the cost of non-communication is very high. Therefore, I have been propounding the concept of a national intelligence grid…

The point is we have to create a real-time information network, which connects all the pools of data we have and which is obviously available only to very few people because those who have access to it should be intelligence people.

And they should be able to go through all these databases on a real-time basis, not after a week, and see patterns of suspicious behaviour, do data mining and start proactively identifying patterns. If you look at the Mumbai episode, scraps of information were there with different people, but in silos.

So, what you’ve written in the book… about imagining India, its future, etc; does anything change after this horrible event?

Actually, my book gets reconfirmed.

You have touched on terrorism and its implications… .

Yes. We have a choice. Between operating on our divides, being divided by our vertical differences or we can choose to be united by our horizontal aspirations. Unfortunately our politics have been the politics of division.

Today to achieve any kind of political success, you define your own sub category and by doing so, you describe someone else as the ‘other’… the other side. So we divide Hindu-Muslims, Hindu-Christians , urban-rural, rich-poor, north Indian-south Indian, Bihari-Maharashtrian. All kinds of divisions.

How do you think we are going to overcome these challenges?

We’ll do so if the people demand change. The good news to me, or the milestone that has happened, is I see people livid and upset about what has happened. At the same time they are not blaming the “other”; they are saying it’s our state which is at fault and dysfunctional, our politicians who are not delivering. If that remains the dominant feeling… fundamentally we have to be watchful of our politicians dividing us. I mean when a Raj Thackeray says he is against Biharis, it is for us to say: “Pal, that’s not the right argument.” At the end of the day, a young man from Bangalore (Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan) lost his life defending Mumbai. So what is this talk about North Indian, South Indian?

People have to start realising that politicians will use divisions for their own interest but it is not in our interest to promote such division. And, as people get this message, it will be more and more difficult (for politicians) to play this game.

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