The Learning State: How information becomes insight

Knowledge is not gathering mounds of information. It is processing that information and translating it into useable propositions that makes people and organisations learners. Two top development economists show the path to a genuine learning state.

PM-KISAN scheme, india farmers, Management Information System, Direct Benefit Transfer, DBT portal, lok sabha elections — We need to curate the info that gets highlighted. That does not mean censorship but some filters have to go into choosing what to give prominence.

Tough decisions lie ahead for India’s social protection system. How can unorganised workers be empowered to access pensions or other income support programs? How do we make sure that benefits from the new PM-KISAN are reaching the intended farmers? The ability of the state to process and consume information to answer such questions for program planning, monitoring, and reform has always been critical and never more so than now.

Program administrators need to be able to track program performance, learn quickly, and incorporate lessons into new designs. In the past 15 years, India has developed an enthusiasm to monitor schemes through hundreds of Management Information System (MIS) portals. In fact, in the past two years, the national Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) Mission at the Cabinet Secretariat reports the development of 400 MISs for schemes to report payment progress on its national DBT portal. This is more than most middle-income countries.

The vision is that these systems will enable citizens, government officials, and politicians to gain access to all the information that they need to play their individual roles in a democratic society and enable the necessary exchange of knowledge for effective program implementation. Those managing food subsidies can monitor the movement of grains via geo-tagged trucks, while the MGNREGS MIS informs administrators of payment delays, and citizens use online grievance portals to register complaints.

Such information has the potential to be extremely valuable. One reason why these investments are happening now is that the cost of collecting and sharing information has gone down enormously over the last decades, thanks to the IT revolution. It is possible now for a mother at work to watch her toddler at play in a playschool by connecting her cellphone wirelessly to a CCTV at the school through one of multiple available apps. And she might for the first couple of days, but the novelty wears off fast. And then? The app will sit unused, unless there is a specific concern (say, the child is sick).