The road to e-India

This era of electronic governance has the potential to address the impediments before the framework of Indian administration and to eventually end the lethargic state of affairs infected by the bureau pathologies of red-tapism and corruption. No doubt we have taken some affirmative action but a lot needs to be done!

India is today the second most populous country in the world and on its way to reach the apex soon. This would be a victory which we would not celebrate as it is the beacon of our incapacity to control the exponential rise of our population and the symbol of the coming jeopardy across all domains of human life. Whatsoever be the volume of the citizenship, the government needs to provide certain essential services catering to the needs and aspirations of its people. It becomes a difficult task when the national boundary spans a colossal area and when it represents around 17.5 percent of the world population. As a result, more infrastructure, more human resources and optimal utilization of the resources is required. To add to this, India is a heterogeneous society with numerous ethnicities representing a rainbow of aspirations. Ergo, amidst all these challenges, governance is obstructed with proportionate impediments and only e-Governance can address all these concerns in a fast, efficient and effective manner.

Governance is the exercise of authority over the socio-economic resources of a country in line with the policy objectives formulated by the government of the land. And e-Governance is the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to facilitate governance. This governance is not only carried out by the State but also by various other non-State actors like NGOs, Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) and other interest groups representing various sections of the population. In a country of the magnitude of India, it is not a choice but an imperative that the non-State actors also participate in the process of governance. But as voluntarism is still a novelty in India, most of the governance is carried out by the government itself. And when government institutions interact with other entities on the electronic forums, we refer to it as e-Government.

As per recent statistics, the overall teledensity of India is nearing 80 per cent which is a remarkable achievement given the ephemeral time period in which this fete has been achieved. More encouraging than this is the fact that the rural teledensity is also rising exponentially as a result of the mushrooming of   service providers after the opening up of telecom sector. Moreover, the number of broadband subscribers has exceeded 15 million depicting the growing awareness among the people of the importance of getting wired to the world of the internet. This encouraging statistics offer us an opportunity to overhaul our governance infrastructure by providing as many services possible by the means of electronic media. In a positive move, the present government drafted the Electronic Delivery of Services Bill, but that is still to see the light of the day.

To understand the relevance and urgency of e-Governance, we need to visualize it as an avenue for the government to facilitate Good Governance. Good Governance was conceptualized by the World Bank which characterized it as governance which is consensus oriented, accountable, transparent, participatory, responsible, responsive and one which facilitates rule of law. All these features can be best guaranteed and achieved by the help of e-Governance as it would unable the government to provide them faster and efficiently.

One of the most conspicuous and instrumental step taken by India towards providing e-Governance is the conceptualization and the ongoing implementation of the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP). The vision of this endeavor is to make all services available via electronic media and this came up as a recommendation of the 2^nd Administrative Reforms Commission (ARC).  This recommendation was given shape by the Department of Information technology in partnership with the Department of Administrative Reforms. It comprises of 27 mission mode projects having various objectives including the creation of several Common Service Centers (CSCs) , State Wide Area Networks (SWANs) and State Date Centers (SDCs). These institutions would create a framework for the electronic delivery of services and that prototype would be replicated across all the departments and government institutions.  Given the large volume of government institutions, it might be a tedious task, but the cornerstones have surely been laid for a promising future of e-Governance.

Creating a unifying thread of e-Governance might be a gigantic task but various states have themselves taken initiatives in this regard instead of just waiting for the union government to consolidate all its efforts. There are various examples of e-Governance across India – e-SLA in Delhi, Gyandoot in Madhya Pradesh, e-SEVA in Andhra Pradesh, Bhulekh in Gujarat, FRIENDS in Kerala etc. These states have become a role model in the field of electronic delivery and are collaborating with the other states to incubate similar initiatives in the rest of the states. This has benefitted the states in two ways – the people are getting better delivery of services and the revenues received by the State departments are on the up. Moreover, with the ease of service delivery, the trust deficit between the people and the state governments is automatically bridged. These electronic forums also facilitate better people participation and thus strengthen the democratic fabric of our country.

Lately there have been numerous cases of corruption, graft and embezzlement unearthed from every nook and corner of our country.  Interestingly, e-Governance is also a remedy for the pathology of corruption. In an organization where all actions and transactions are quantified and collated, the extent of administrative discretion can be reduced to a great extent thus restricting the avenues for rent-seeking behavior by our government institutions.  Moreover as all the information is out in the open and accessible to the people of this country, this would facilitate transparency and accountability. The availability of information to the higher echelons of bureaucracy would facilitate better decision-making which was previously eclipsed by red-tapism and formalism. This would be extremely useful to further expand the utility of Right to Information which has already bought a revolution of transparency in the governance of our country.

Another major problem which can be addressed by this IT revolution is the provision of services in the rural areas of the country still comprising of 60 per cent of our population. The idea of Village Resource Centres (VRCs) which would provide electronic services to all nearby villages is revolutionary in itself. These areas do not usually have the human resources to dispense educational and medical services to the local inhabitants. This can be taken care of by the provision of tele-medicine and tele-education services. Thus, the human resources of the urban areas who are often unwilling to relocate themselves in rural areas can be utilized to cater to the needs of the backwards areas. This e-Governance would also lead to the inclusion of these left-out sections from the process of development.

From a futuristic point, the era of m-Governance stands next in line where the State would utilize the high teledensity of the country to gather information and to dispense relevant information and services to the citizens of the country. As most people would be having a mobile device, the government institutions can directly reach them for the provision of services. An ongoing project called “Dr.SMS” in Kerala is an excellent example of m-Governance where people can obtain any health related information via SMS services. Many States also provides weather information to the farmers via SMS services in order to aid them in their agricultural activities. All these initiatives promise a forthcoming era of m-Governance.

The mission mode implementation of the Unique Identification (UID) is a key to link all the electronic services into one thread. This would allow the government to uniquely indentify the citizens and to transfer the benefits to weaker sections by the scheme of Direct Benefits Transfers (DBT). All these initiatives have huge potential to address the current problems of India but at the same time we need to be aware of the dangers as well.  This IT revolution has also given rise to Cyber Crimes, Cyber thefts, Identity thefts and numerous novel avenues of money laundering. To tackle these vagaries of e-Governance we currently do not have regulatory mechanisms and infrastructure. The government recognizing this has conceptualized various organizations like Computer Emergency Response Team of India (CERT-IN) but they are still in their infancy and lack sophistication of operation. The road to e-India presents a plethora of innovative solutions but first we need to create check posts to safeguard them and take every e-step with utter caution!

Published in 
http://www.pardesipulse.com/flipbooks/December-2013/december-2013.html