Plastic Money: solution to corruption

Corruption is rampant in Indian offices and is impeding development of Indian economy and society. I see plastic money as solution to this problem. The basic problem with financial crimes is that money is not traceable. Untraceablility of cash allows the criminals to get away with the crimes.

It will even control terrorism, riots and other crimes. Any crime requires money. If the investigators see money flowing to suspects, they caan conclude that they are up-to something. Similarly, money laundering and black marketing will also come down.

Public Transport

A good public transport is catalyst to economy.People can travel for work, business and school. Even the regions far way from the center of the city can flourish. It also eases pollution and traffic jams and people ultimately become healthy.

Metro is the most effective option.Regional trains should stop at the main station or at one of the suburban stations and then people can change to the metro for their work. Each overhead train stop can serve as a bus stop (below) for the feeder routes.Bus routes should be smaller to make their timing proper.

There should be trains to connect city centre to suburbs and to the important business districts. The city planning should be done such that all offices are not at the same direction. The office, school and shop timings should be adjusted to spread the load over time.

Subways require a lot of investments, so they should be made only where absolutely necessary. metro stations are OK.

A fixed design should be specified for stops so that costs can be reduced and they can be made fast.

Following is needed at stops:

* arrival/departure page display.
* routes display.
* incoming and outgoing connections.
* 2 escalators for the needy.
* down escalators for most people.
* ticket machines

Fare plan

It is no use making a single journey ticket. There is more investment in checking etc. And the services anyways need to be operated Objective of the system is that when service is running then the usage should be balanced so as to make effective use of it.Following type of tickets may be planned:

- day ticket

- weekend ticket (2 and 4 persons family tkt)

- weekly passes

- monthly passes and so on.

The costs should be based on traffic distribution and modelling.

The regional train should not add to the cause. Having them in same cost will redue burden on infrastructure.

The ticket machine should use credit card and uses RFID. It should just program the identity of person, public key of transport authority and the date range it is valid. The readers should be installed at stations and in buses. They should just check the range and show GREEN if OK.

How to check the identity? is it needed? pass is non transferable?

If the ticket is less costly, many people will use it.

Timing is of utmost importance. Comfort secondary.

National Identity Card

We need national identity card to ease all other services. These should be different for different purposes, but it should be possible to apply for all of them together. The identities are needed for following:

• photo
• signature
• birthdate
• address
  

This card should provide every resident (citizen or not) with a identity number and associate it with a biometric ID stored in central database. This does not contain address because address is not permanent. It is valid proof of address if it is updated once in a quarter. This is also required for non-residents so that their whereabouts are known when they come for study/work in india. This should be 'guest' card. It will help national security.

Getting and maintaining this card should be very easy. There should be a machine just like ATM to do this which can be installed in some government office etc. It should have a fingerprint reader and a photo scanner. People just go there, enter address-signature, put hand on scanner, face in front of camera and just click. It should generate an identity card with those details and also send the data to the server.

Address is valid only when validated every quarter. Updating should be as simple as when postman comes to deliver letter, he can attest it. The addresses should be geographical and mapped to a unique address on map. Also, the geo information system of the govt should store address as latitute and longitude.

This id can be used as entry point for other ids. It can be associated with a PAN card, SSN, bank account, etc. So with one card, govt knows if the person is paying taxes on time, his DL, his credit history, voter-id etc.

People will see benefit in this card and come for it. It can help people in many ways.

People can get phone/mobile connections immeditately. Also, other utility connections like e;ectricity, cable, gas will be faster.

Bank interaction will become faster. Accounts can be opened immediately. Credit history will enable users in getting faster loans.

Further govt services and benefits can be channeled thru it. Because of its simplicity, it will become hit. thought needs to be put so that malicious people cannot exploit the system.

Though govt has linked several information, access to that information like biometric id, bank balance and credit history should be accessible only when allowed by the person.

This will allow other govt interactions to be faster. like passport, PAN, gas, electricity and electoral id card can become easy to get.

Govt can also have schemes like giving benefits to people who have paid their taxes. For example free telephone. Many govt schemes are impeded just because it is difficult to track where the funds are going.