New Delhi, Aug 9 (KNN)  In a movement to improve policy implementation, the Planning Commission and India@75 Foundation have launched the India Backbone Implementation Network (IbIn) website here yesterday.

‘India Backbone Implementation Network’ or ‘IbIn’ in short was conceived during the creation of the 12th Five Year Plan with the objective of promoting systemic capabilities that ensure coordination, collaboration, and implementation on issues, projects and policy within India. 

IbIn envisages promoting widespread capabilities in the country to systematically convert “confusion to coordination, contention to collaboration, and intentions to implementation.”

Speaking at the launch, Member Planning Commission, Arun Maira said the initiative would bridge the gap between policymakers and the stakeholders. 

He also said it would greatly benefit the MSME sector.  “The MSME sector consists of many small enterprises and they feel sort of alone and no one is there to really pay attention to them.   They are a part of the manufacturing sector which will benefit the most by the collaboration and coordination.   IbIn’s whole aim is to promote better collaboration amongst stakeholders and better coordination in getting things done. 

“We need to make MSMEs proactive and enable them to access technologies and resources like credit which they will get when they will work collectively together,” he added. 

Furthermore, as a collection MSMEs, he said could have greater might together, than if they tried to do things separately. 

Of the policies, he said there were many policies, some from the MSME ministry, some of the state government and other from the RBI.  Sadly, “People don’t even know what is available to them.”

IbIn’s capabilities include stakeholder alignment, project management, and policy advisory all of which require technical skills (for the process) as well as domain knowledge (pertaining to a specific subject matter or sector).

To ensure the spread of these skills and knowledge, IbIn is designed as a network that will cross-share and cross-link this information by leveraging partner organizations as well as by developing nodes.

The prior focus of the network is to map stakeholders and enrol them into a process. It has a shared vision with a common understanding of systematic issues and is appreciative of each other’s concerns.

Further, IbIn will focus on the formation of team with role clarity and make plan of action with a Joint Monitoring plan.

Reiterating the importance of such a network, “There is a greater need for bringing out success stories of collective initiatives undertaken by industry associations in different clusters to address the challenges of infrastructure, common affluent, technology, marketing, skill development etc,” said Secretary General of Federation of Indian Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (FISME), Anil Bhardwaj.

The IbIn network can be very helpful in capturing such successful stories and spreading them for wider replication, he added.

The first node of the network was launched on April-19 and is being hosted by India@75, a visionary organization that envisages how India should be after the 75th year of independence.  It attempts to draw together all stakeholders including the industry, government, institutions, community groups and individuals to transform the vision into a reality.

Meanwhile, Secretary General, CUTS International in Jaipur, Pradeep S Mehra said, “IbIn concept has evolved to bring all stakeholders together through a process of more concrete dialogue to help not only resolve such problems but also other similar problems in the country by offering more sustainable solutions.”

IbIn has been modelled on the lines of Total Quality Movement in Japan which in the 1960s and 70s, transformed the capability of Japanese organisations in the private and public sectors to deliver results.

The Planning Commission also studied best practices for co-ordination and implementation in other countries such as Korea, Malaysia, Brazil, and Germany.
IbIn’s other partners are World Bank, UNDP, GIZ, FISME, FICCI etc. (KNN/SD)