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Digital Pakistan without (Digital) Pakistani Rails is a solution that no one needs. Digital Pak was ill conceived, like yet an other last minute policy/political goal.The intent was good as a way to push the country towards digital transformation & empower citizens in the process
But it became a self goal in the end.Whilst we had a base line in NADRA to effectively leapfrog what, say for example India had to do for digital identity.We didnt. Govts effort should be on developing infra to enable affordable internet access as identity is sorted circa 2001.
It is still very straight forward, if the government decides to utilise NADRA as a platform for financial inclusion, the direct transfer of government benefits and low cost citizen engagement. This could be the Digital Pakistan Rails. http://bit.ly/PakRails
These are digital rails in essence a set of interoperable software layers extending the existing Identity use case(s), digital paperless record(s), Digital Payment(s) , B2B/ B2G/G2P/P2G /B2C service transaction(s) all digital all instant + Nationwide. No SPAMMers required.
If it seems so obvious whats gating it ? The lack of implementation-will & vested political interests. Once you have traceable economic activity, who suffers the most? Those who have made tax avoidance their life mission. In that sense, the government cant do this fast enough.
Whats the up side? Once every one is on the system, there will be formalisation of the economy & self governing tax reform. Due to the requirement for each person to submit a unique ID(cnic) to verify accounts, duplicity & anonymity in bank accounts will be culled.
Right now you can have multiple legit $ accounts & potentially use them in a daisy chain to send money out of PK via each banks allowed limit,there is no central view on YOU as an individual either on the source of those funds or a cumulative real time number of what you R wiring
If we had Pakistani Rails built on top of Identity we would solve a host of our issues such as the simplistic use case above.This traceability of funds, whether flowing from personal accounts or businesses, will allow the government to identify shell companies & tax them.
More individuals/SMEs will come into the tax net. Less complexity around provincial taxes & for the first time a universal tax (GST) can be in place for people who want to do legit business & to claim "input tax credit". That would in turn allow them(SMEs) to become credit worthy
Meaning if they have input tax credit available to them, they should theoretically be bankable. With digital rails, instant approvals, tracking and disbursement too. But then, what would the Babus do? The Babus in govt have figured this out, ahead of you and me, hence no Rails.
The only thing that continues to happen, is the employed class, the free lancers, the ones in the existing tax net continue to fight the babus, whilst the rent-seekers/industrialists continue to create dis-incentives for the babus to enforce any rule of law/digital or other wise.
What the govt need to understand is, this allows for ease of doing biz. The less babus; (companies, foreign or local startups or new SMEs) have to deal with, the better it is for the ecosystem to grow. We need to disenfranchise the "agent" mind set and make all svcs direct
But the first step to understand in this journey is, the IT minister or ministry wont solve for this, as they are busy building IT Parks. https://twitter.com/faizansiddiqi/status/1342588365913415682 We already called the Digital Pakistan Juloos http://blog.chinookstrategy.com/digitaljuloos/ . So will this ever happen? It depends.
Policymakers have to keep up. Innovation will leave every thing behind. If there are no digital rails. People/society will out-innovate government, it may be costlier and less universally accessible but it will happen. Especially since people embrace location independent work,
They will continue to innovate to avoid the penalty the state enforces on them to co-inhibit the physical space. Time for the govt to get its head out of the sand. @rebootdude @fmsheik @raza_matin @jehan_ara @YusufJan @TalhaIzhar @Ash_Kalim @ShahidM99 @babushka99 @owaisz
