Are you kidding me, sir? Happiness Index will increase by online services?

AERIAL VIEW

Well, Mr Sawant, you must be talking only of the people who sit in the plush air-conditioned office and do not want to move out and want all the services to be online so that all the bills, EMIs and taxes are paid by the click of the mouse. Isn’t it?
But what about the common man, the farmers, the daily wage workers, the taxi drivers, motorcycle pilots, the fisherman, the people in the rural areas who have no access to the internet? What about them, sir?
Agreed, in this age of globalisation, digitisation of every service is very important, and it helps in many ways, but the question here is, are we really prepared for this?
In the last two years of the COVID19 pandemic, we saw our rural children walking for kilometres to get a proper range for online classes. Why not improve the network facilities first, sir?

 

In a weird statement, the Chief Minister of Goa, Dr Pramod Sawant, said that most government services have to be made online to increase people’s happiness index.
Well, Mr Sawant, you must be talking only of the people who sit in the plush air-conditioned office and do not want to move out and want all the services to be online so that all the bills, EMIs and taxes are paid by the click of the mouse. Isn’t it?
But what about the common man, the farmers, the daily wage workers, the taxi drivers, motorcycle pilots, the fisherman, the people in the rural areas who have no access to the internet? What about them, sir?
Agreed, in this age of globalisation, digitisation of every service is very important, and it helps in many ways, but the question here is, are we really prepared for this?
In the last two years of the COVID19 pandemic, we saw our rural children walking for kilometres to get a proper range for online classes. Why not improve the network facilities first, sir? The Goa Broadband Services (GBBN) was launched almost 12-13 years ago but is still a failure.
The GBBN was supposed to connect every house in rural areas, but sadly it still seems a distant dream. Every time one goes to make a digital payment, it gets stuck due to network failure, and payments get stuck because the bank message shows the amount is debited from your account but does not reflect with the merchant.
After that, the person has to make several rounds to the bank to get the payment back. Why not improve the network situation first?
Again, the online payment of water bills is a good initiative; it will save time for people like us, who can make payments easily and would not have to struggle in the queue as we have two-three wifi connections, but the common man does not have that luxury.
But still, this does not increase my happiness index. My happiness will increase when my taxes come down, the LPG prices will come down, the fuel prices will come, and the inflation will come down.
Today, the common man is suffering due to inflation and is ready to stand in queue for hours if he can save a few bucks because today, it is not the survival of the fittest but the SURVIVAL OF THE RICHEST.
The common man is unhappy because inflation is eating into their savings. Some even cannot make two ends meet, then what kind of happiness index are you talking about, sir?
The senior citizens are not getting their DDSSY pension, the housewives are not getting Griha aadhar pension, the COVID19 victim’s families are yet to get the compensation amount, and above all, the common man still has to pay bribes to agents to get their work done in government offices like transport/ RTO, Mamlatdar, Dy Collector and so on.
When corruption reduces, it will increase the happiness index by at least 50 p.c. The rest of 50 p.c will increase when the inflation subsides.