Page:Code Swaraj - Carl Malamud - Sam Pitroda.djvu/41

Remarks of Dr. Sam Pitroda When we are looking at knowledge economy, we also realize that knowledge is really the fourth pillar of the democracy of the future. Today, there are three pillars of democracy: executive, judiciary, and legislative.

We are convinced that knowledge and information is the key to the democracy of tomorrow. Somehow, this message has not really been communicated effectively to large numbers of people. Today, on one hand, we have all the laws which are based on economy of scarcity when we live in a world where we have economy of abundance.

We can produce lots of food, just to give you an example, in India. Not too long ago, people taught that India will not be able to feed 600 million people. India was considered a basket case. Today, not only can India feed 1.2 billion, but India has surplus food. At the same time, 200 million people are hungry in India because we have not used information technology to really get all the logistics in place to deliver food to the right people at the right time.

These are the challenges that need new mindset, new thinking.

This really brings me to the part that I have been working on for quite some time. I believe that the world essentially needs to be redesigned.

Carl and I have been having this conversation for about two years. World was last designed by the U.S. after World War II, with UN, World Bank, IMF, NATO, WTO, GDP, GNP, per capita income, balance of payment, trade deficit, and all kinds of indicators.

Right after that design, world got decolonized in a short period of 20 years. Deng Xiaoping came in and said, “I’m going to combine capitalism with communism.” Gorbachev came in and said exactly opposite is what Soviet Union needs. He failed in his experiment, but he also succeeded in this experiment in releasing energy of lots of small countries.

Everyone came out with the same aspirations of democracy, free markets, capitalism, human rights, which was the basic thesis of the old design. That design worked well for the U.S. This is something that is not scalable, desirable, workable for large number of countries in the world.

Information gives us an opportunity to create a new design which is more focused on inclusion, human needs, new economic measurements, regenerative