Open Letter to PM

Date: 9 June, 2009
Dr. Manmohan Singh
Prime Ministers Office (PMO)
South Block, New Delhi
India

Re: Open Letter on Achieving UFA by 2013

Dear Dr. Manmohan Singh,

This letter is being sent to you with great hope. Heartiest felicitations on becoming the only Prime Minister In India after Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru to be elected to a second term after completing a full term and best wishes for your second term being recognized by history as one of the finest ever.

In the area of financial inclusion much has been done. In some districts we have 100% “cosmetic” financial inclusion but careful examination shows that most of these accounts are partially or entirely dormant – we have a lot of work to do to have “real” 100% financial inclusion.

I call 100% real financial inclusion UFA – Universal Financial Access.

In India in the area of telecommunication we have near universal telecom access and this has been achieved at a negative cost to GOI. In financial services NPS “New Pension Scheme” is a great and innovative design which will prevent a drain on GOI and benefit citizens. Our demat systems, stock and commodity exchanges are innovative, low cost and becoming better all the time.

If UFA by 2013 is declared a national priority, and with your leadership goals that the country must achieve are defined, then money and talent will rush in and the goal will be achieved with negative spend by GOI which is important in the current economic scenario where fiscal deficit is a concern. We can replicate the success of telecom in financial services and do even better and faster then we did in Telecom.

In this letter I have stayed away from how we should achieve UFA. I have done extensive work on ”the how” but am the first to recognize that there are many paths to this goal and I do not want to dilute from the singular focus of this letter which is:

Make Achieving UFA by 2013 a National Priority

Making sure that the goals are achieved by 2013 will probably require single point accountability with one single person who can make sure that needs of a diverse set of stakeholders converge and that progress towards the goal continues at a rapid pace. TRAI, PFRDA, DMRC, SEBI are all examples where this has worked.

My objective with this letter is to bring UFA more firmly on your radar and on the radar of senior bureaucrats, RBI, senior politicians from all parties and leading foundations, thinkers and practitioners.

A nation cannot have too many national priorities at the same time and thus elevating UFA by 2013 to a national priority status is not a decision to be taken lightly. My hope is that given the inclusive growth agenda that is so close to the heart of UPA you will find it in your heart and in the heart of all politicians and concerned Indians that elevating UFA makes sense.

I would like to end with two excerpts from Prof. Mohd. Yunus’s Nobel acceptance speech.

“We wanted to go to the moon, so we went there. We achieve what we want to achieve. If we are not achieving something, it is because we have not put our minds to it. We create what we want.”

“I firmly believe that we can create a poverty-free world if we collectively believe in it. In a poverty-free world, the only place you would be able to see poverty is in the poverty museums. When school children take a tour of the poverty museums, they would be horrified to see the misery and indignity that some human beings had to go through. They would blame their forefathers for tolerating this inhuman condition, which existed for so long, for so many people.”

Very truly yours

Sanjay Bhargava

UFA Evangelist

401 Aradhana, RK Puram, Sector -13
New Delhi -110066

Email:sanjaybhargava@yahoo.com