NOFN

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s dream project of Digital India and reaching out to all the Gram Panchayats (GP) though National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN) project is in disaster zone. Instead of building strengths, weaknesses are being created for the project. And the Prime Minister’s ideology of minimum government and maximum governance is being turned on its head. The telecom ministry has introduced new layers, ostensibly for speeding up the project. So there is a new committee of so-called “experts” and there is the new spin with Bharat Broadband Network Ltd (BBNL) to take care of the rollout for 50,000 GPs besides the three PSUs that are already assigned to do the same job. More the messier.

The telecom minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, with no competence for executing a project of this nature, is dealing with the situation by just creating noise, simply conducting rambling meetings, shouting at the officers, without any result. He has taken at least eight meetings in as many months. And yet there is very little to show by way of result. The target is December 2016. The biggest mistake Mr Prasad has made is to agree to Andhra Pradesh’s request for allowing them implementation. If all other states are to do the same, then the project will never see conclusion, and there will be no harmony.