Though moving at a pace slower than expected, several e-Governance programs are seeing the light of the day and are moving from planning to execution stage and serving the needs of citizens
By Pankaj Maru
Is India’s e-Governance plan becoming a reality? This is a highly debatable question at any given date and time. However, India’s e-Governance plan is certainly becoming a reality to an extent but still a lot needs to be done and that too at fast pace in order to make it more meaningful in real terms of ‘governance.’
In fact, the Government of India had approved the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) formulated by the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DEITY) in 2006 along with 27 Mission Mode Projects (MMPs).
The aim of NeGP is to improve delivery of government services to people and businesses in their locality through the common delivery centers in an efficient, transparent and reliable manner at affordable costs.
Given India’s democratic system along with the size of nation and its huge population, the NeGP works at various layer right from the central government, state governments to all the way down to districts, talukas, municipalities and panchayats.
This scenario makes the execution of NeGP more complex and time consuming as it requires various stakeholders including government officials, local bodies as well as politicians and public representatives to come on a common ground to build consensus to drive those e-Governance initiatives in the public interests.
This is where at times, key projects and initiatives of public welfare and governance gets stalled due to lack on consensus among the stakeholders and later results into execution delays and over budgeting.
In spite of such challenges, India has seen some of the biggest e-Governance initiatives in recent times including the establishment of common and support IT infrastructure such as State Wide Area Networks (SWANs), State Data Centers (SDCs), Common Services Centers (CSCs) and Electronic Service Delivery Gateways.
Actually, this initiative has provided a solid framework across the nation to build and roll out, a wide range of e-Governance programs by various government bodies and ministries. For instance, the passport seva kendras, digitization of postal department, online income and sales tax collections, implementation of a single core banking platform across all 14 nationalized banks, voter identity cards (IDs) and permanent account number (PAN) cards for income tax are some of the nation wide e-Governance initiatives
Among the most ambitious and politically debated e-Governance initiative of India led by former Infosys Chief Nandan Nilekeni is the Unique Identification Authentication (UID) or the Aadhaar card project.
Though, project has been primarily aimed at providing unique identity numbers to individuals residing in India using biometric technology based on finger prints and iris scans but the under layer is actually the governance component. Under the UID cards, the government is trying to to identify people or families living below the poverty line (BPL) and ensuring that these families or individuals gets the direct benefits of subsidies and monetary assistance.
On a larger scale, the UID project is developed as a delivery channel of various citizen services like public distribution system (PDS) for ration, pension and scholarship schemes for retired, aged people and students, micro payments for monetary aid programs and importantly expanding the government’s e-Governance initiative to e-Inclusion.
Interestingly, the e-Governance initiative are not just mere programs on governance, but are part of the Planning Commission’s 11th and 12th five year plans, which showed the significance of those initiatives going ahead with time.
While some of the national level initiatives and schemes have grabbed lot of attention, there has been lot of work done at state and district levels across the country, which certainly is a proof of how India’s e-Governance plan is now becoming a reality of today.
The digitization of land records and information updates across the state of Gujarat, use of radio-frequency identification (RFID) tagging of vehicles for toll collections in Maharashtra, computerization with a very small aperture terminal (VSAT) at the block level under the Gramsat pilot project in Orissa, Karnataka state? Bhoomi project for computerization of land records to curb down the menace of corruption and fake deals, integration of different departments at district collectorates in Goa, e-Courts programs in the state of Madhya Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh are some of the e-Governance initiatives carried out by the state governments.
Some of the e-Governance programs undertaken by different states clearly show how these state governments are changing their mindset towards the use of technology or IT in a move to achieve the goals of e-Governance.
The role of IT in e-Governance is of the highest order and has two aspects when it comes to citizen services and administration. Firstly, IT helps to make those projects efficient, streamline and easily reachable to masses; and secondly IT addresses the social evil of corruption that has hollowed the bureaucratic and administrative processes in India.
According to B N Satpathy, Senior Adviser – Planning Commission, Government of India, IT is an instrument of productivity enhancement and building human capabilities, but making it an instrument of inclusion remains the key agenda of the 12th five year plan.
“The main focus of e-Governance is common man and IT could be a great instrument in addressing regional inequalities in the country. IT can play significant role in lowering poverty, employment generation, building capabilities in manufacturing, ancillary industries and IT services,” Sathpathy had said at the recently concluded 14th Express Technology Sabha held in Goa.
Unlike some other countries, India’s e-Governance plan is not merely looking at using IT for driving citizen services efficiently but it has a substantial role to play in the development of society and impacting lives of the people.
And that is how the 12th five year plan is being perceived to be from e-Governance to e-Inclusion
“The goal is to make all government services accessible to common man in his locality through common service delivery outlets and ensure efficiency, transparency and reliability of such services at affordable costs. e-Governance platform will be used in areas which are inclusive in nature like agriculture, sustainability, employment, livelihood, elevating poverty and boosting domestic manufacturing and other sectors,” Sathpathy had mentioned in his address.
The growing number of e-Governance projects in the country resonates how various governments both the central and state governments are serious and emphasizing on e-Governance programs.
Under the 12th five year, the Indian government has earmarked some Rs 23,000 crore for various e-Governance programs including 27 Mission Mode Projects (MMPs) that comprises of Central MMPs, State MMPs and Integrated MMPs.
The other aspect of the massive spending on e-Governance is likely to boost the demand of IT in the domestic market and throw big opportunities for IT vendors and companies as well as it also going to create new jobs.
While, India has already initiated the e-Governance plan, it needs timely decision making process and execution of projects so that country can become a role model of e-Governance for others to follow and its benefits can bring a postive change in the lives of masses.
