Imagine a situation in which all transactions with the government can be done through one counter without having to wait in long queues. This is one of the many visions envisaged by the concept of electronic or e-governance. The objective of e-governance is to support and simplify governance for all parties—government, citizens and businesses. In e-governance, IT supports and stimulates good governance through better public service delivery to individual citizens and businesses, transparency in information, and easier citizen access to authorities.

While strides in computing ushered in easier systems for data processing in government offices, the advent of the Internet took government-citizen interfaces to hitherto unexplored levels. Those who believe in the power of the Internet view it as the catalyst of institutional and process leapfrogging, as it possesses the competence to make governments more accountable to people. The Internet, they opine, is uniquely suited for public affairs and public interest communications in a manner unlike any other existing medium, as it keeps everybody informed at all times; and since governance stands on the edifice of accountability, the Internet could prove to be a faithful ally, especially in ending official secrecy about information and in mitigating corruption in public life. The Internet is considered to be a manageable deployment of e-governance that allows governments to network heterogeneous processes and technology environments within a single framework.

E-governance and India
In India the concept of "e-governance" began with National Informatics Centre’s efforts to connect all district headquarters through computers in the 1980s. This typically included connectivity, networking, technology upgradation, selective delivery systems for information and services and an array of software solutions. Recently, the working group on convergence and e-governance of the Planning Commission recommended that the government earmark $587 million in addition to the 3% plan outlay of each ministry for e-governance and convergence projects during the Tenth Five Year Plan (2002-2007).

The Planning Commission has proposed that an India portal be set up at a cost of $21.7 million to serve as a one-stop destination for public access to information on various aspects of government functioning, as well as a single window for delivery of government services. The Planning Commission has also recommended earmarking $130 million to create a citizens’ database through smart cards and IDs. According to a report of the working group on convergence and e-government, the smart card could be used as a multi-purpose card, which will help the citizen interact for utilities and services, make bill payments, vote electronically, and obtain ration cards, passports and driving licenses.

The US has recently adopted an e-governance act. In India, the legal framework of information technology is supported by the IT Act, 2000. Experts however, feel that this act is not sufficient to deal with e-governance. The act covers all important issues related to information security but it does not have under its preview the new emerging inter-agency cooperation that will be required for an information society. Internet-based government services involving inter-agency cooperation are especially difficult to develop and promote, in part because of a lack of sufficient funding mechanisms to support such inter-agency cooperation and the requisite legal framework. Currently, all e-governance initiatives exist as islands of successes and there is a need to make such initiatives inter-operable, through a legal framework that will spell this out.

In urban India, e-governance is being deployed primarily to provide public services by way of online payment of bills and taxes, and issuance of certificates, but very few cities and towns have portals that facilitate citizen to government interfaces. In rural India, however, the concept of e-governance is being popularised through the tele-centre model, wherein provision of government information and interface with authorities has become an essential ingredient for the business viability of the tele-centre. Government records and income, land, domicile, caste and below poverty line certificates, landholder’s passbook of land rights and loans, online submission of applications under various schemes, driving licenses, loan applications, pension applications, birth and death certificates etc., are being provided by telecenters to the public in rural areas.

Ongoing e-gov initiatives
Many e-governance initiatives in the country have been spawned by enthusiastic bureaucrats, who have sought to take IT to people for delivering better governance. One such experiment comes from Hamirpur, Himachal Pradesh. The effort here has been spearheaded by Anuradha Thakur, who used to be deputy commissioner of Hamirpur. The services offered include information about vacancies, tenders, market rates, matrimonial services and village e-mail. People can also file classified complaints. The Lok Mitra Intranet set up at the district headquarters consists of two Pentium-III-based servers (under WindowsNT), with 4 Pentium-III-based client systems and a router, set up in a LAN with a hub in a separate room at the deputy commissioner’s office at Hamirpur. A total of 25 panchayats have been identified for setting up citizen information centres (CIC). The project will eventualls be extended to cover all the districts of Himachal Pradesh.

Lok Mitra was set up with an investment of Rs 40 lakh, which was funded by NABARD. The project offers local youth an opportunity to run an enterprise. Local youth sign an agreement with the district Lok Mitra society and pay a security amount.

All services are provided at a rate that is fixed by Lok Mitra society, which is collected by the youth manning the center from users. Other than this, the entrepreneur also uses the computer provided for different services such as typing Internet browsing.

The Madhya Pradesh government is doing some key work in the area of e-governance. The Gyandoot project in MP was initiated in January 2000 by members of the Indian Administrative Services in consultation with various gram panchayats in Dhar district. Under the project, a low cost, self-sustainable, and community-owned rural Intranet system (Soochnalay) has been installed. It caters to the specific needs of village communities in the district. Thirty-five centers have been established since January 2000 and are managed by rural youth selected and trained from amongst the unemployed educated youth of the village. Just like the Hamirpur model, the youth in the Dhar experiment also run the Soochanalays as entrepreneurs and charge for the services that include agricultural information, market information, health, education, women’s issues and applications for services delivered by the district administration related to land ownership, affirmative action and poverty alleviation. Kiosks are connected to the Intranet through dial-up lines. The dial-up lines being currently used are to be replaced by wireless connections using CorDECT technology. The Soochanalays have been equipped with Pentium multimedia color computers along with dot matrix printers. The user interface is menu-based with information presented in the local Hindi language. The features of the Gyandoot software are continuously being updated. The project has now been replicated in 20 districts.

Replication of Gyandoot-type service for urban areas has begun with municipal bodies in Indore and Bhopal introducing the same.

Headstart, another grassroots initiative in MP, is a programme for computer-enabled education in rural elementary schools to improve the quality of learning. R Gopalakrishnan, secretary to the chief minister and mission coordinator of the programme says, "Headstart is not merely a programme for computer literacy but uses computers to build multimedia rich lessons to the push frontiers of learning. It supplements the teacher and does not supplant her." Started with 648 schools and now with 2,070 more schools added in June 2003, it is India’s largest programme for computer-enabled learning at the middle school level. It seeks to bridge the digital divide and takes computer-based learning to rural schools. Headstart produces its own educational software. Lessons are based on curriculum mapping and identification of "hard spots" of learning. Teachers are trained to handle the software and over 11,000 teachers have been trained so far. Hardware consists of three computers and a printer per Headstart unit. Headstart has gone in for using open source software in the second phase of 2,070 schools, the first major user of the OSS.

Other e-governance works in MP include computerisation of land records; computerisation of commercial taxes for VAT; computerisation of transport (issuance of driving licenses and motor vehicles on smart card is being carried out); and computerisation of treasuries. Web sites have also been created for various departments/agencies of the government.

Giving his insight into the current e-governance scenario in India and about the promises that the future holds, Gopalakrishnan says, "The key point is that it (e-governance) is now a play in the margins. But we only have demos and showcases that have not gone to scale. There is no comprehensive ICT for Development framework in policy; no involvement of users at GOI level. The entire effort is driven by the IT Ministry whose competence is telecom. Without cheap computers, broadband connectivity and Open Source Software how can India reach ICT benefits to people? Tremendous opportunities exist in potential, but there is no comprehensive policy framework to make it happen."

Located in the eastern part of Gujarat, Panch–mahals is a backward district with a significant tribal populace.  With eleven talukas, six towns and 1212 villages, the district has its headquarters at Godhra.  The total population of the district as per the 2001 census is 20.24 lakhs. With the basic goals of Transparency and Right to Information, it was proposed to empanel STD/PCO (Subscriber Trunk Dialling/ Public Call Office) booths having basic computer facilities located in different villages /towns of the district to function as centres for dissemination of information, forms and services (also known as Mahiti Shakti Kendras).  The Collectorate of Godhra headed by Jayanthi Ravi, IAS, held discussions with the Concept Centre for Electronic Governance (CCEG) of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A) in October 2000 to develop a ‘proof of concept’ portal for enabling Citizen to Government (C-G) and Government to Citizen (G-C) transactions using information technology as a medium. On October 4, 2001, the proof of concept project was launched in 14 STD/PCOs of the district.

Down south, the state of Andhra Pradesh accounts for a sizable proportion of e-governance initiatives in India. Though most of the projects are urban centric, with every conceivable acronym decorating the state’s e-governance achievements, there is now increasingly a trend of introducing e-governance initiatives in rural Andhra.

An Internet portal providing these services has been developed.  Static data is also provided in a CD facilitating quick, easy and low cost access to data and information, given the bottlenecks of Internet connectivity and cost of telephone calls.

In Karnataka, key among the showcased e-governance projects of the state are the Bhoomi and the Belandur Gram Panchayat initiatives.

The Bhoomi project is based on a computerised database allowing farmers to access and update land records through kiosks.

Legacy data has been captured by the project, covering 200 lakh records in 1 billion data fields. Bhoomi has successfully placed land records in the public domain. Currently there are 177 Bhoomi kiosks covering 27,000 villages. Bhoomi sells 7 lakh records every month and earns Rs 1 crore on these transactions and is an example of a revenue-earning model.

Bhoomi is faced with certain challenges at this juncture. Given the abolition of the manual system, which operated out of 10,000 delivery points, farmers now have to travel great distances to obtain a land record. Upscaling the project has now become a dire necessity but the government does not have the wherewithal to expand the project. Also, expansion brings with it the need to provide adequate support in terms of maintenance and networking. The Bhoomi project is keen on private sector involvement. The government wants to keep Bhoomi alive and take it to many more delivery points at sub-district levels, by positioning the land records database as a "killer-application" which will ensure kiosk operators a minimum income of Rs 3,000 a month. This advantage, it is hoped, will see a convergence of interests of both government and private players in the information kiosk business. The project is already exploring partnerships with the private sector for "retailing". The franchisee model is already working in Mandya with the partnership of n-Logue.

Non-government players like the Foundation of Occupational Development in Tamil Nadu, which is keen on partnering the government in shaping the e-governance agenda, are trying out new models. FOOD has helped the Tambaram municipality, close to Chennai city, move in the direction of e-governance. Information and services are available online on www.snegham.com, the website of the municipality. FOOD is currently involved in setting up an e-governance project for the Kanchipuram district authority, based on an enterprise model, which in many places is being steered by women self-help groups. The RASI Maiyams are working in 25 locations in the district and connect to the Tamil website rasikanchi.tn.nic.in for C-G and G-C transactions. Educational CDs developed by FOOD are being used in two centers. Some centers are teaching basic computer operations to self-help group members. Some of them are involved in DTP work and all of them are currently involved in data entry of the BPL (below poverty line) data from nearby villages, a contract entrusted to them by the DRDA Kanchipuram.

E-democracy and the role of citizens
The Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan in Rajasthan works with labourers and peasants in the villages of central Rajasthan.

The organization feels that in accessing any right, the poor need to demand transparency and accountability of systems of governance. By mid-1994, MKSS had formulated a specific demand for copies of financial records of expenditure incurred in the panchayats. However, since there was no legal entitlement to relevant information even within the panchayat for the people, they had to mostly rely on sympathetic officials for access to relevant documents. Once these records were secured, the people of the concerned panchayats subjected them to close scrutiny and organized public hearings (the first public hearing was held in December 1994), where they came in large numbers and gave individual and collective testimonies regarding the work done by their panchayat offices. By this method of social audit (verification by the people), the people of the area were able to forcefully assert their right to transparency and accountability from public institutions.

Another citizens’ initiative is the Bangalore-based PROOF (public record of operations and finance), launched as a 10-month public campaign on July 4, 2002, by a collective of four organizations—Centre for Budget and Policy Studies, Publics Affairs Centre, Janaagraha and Voice. Proof envisions transparency and accountability in the financial operations of the government through collaborative processes, between the stakeholders of the city and the Bangalore Mahanagara Palike. Subramaniam Vincent, co-founder and editor at India Together, an online national pubic interest initiative, says: "Proof has succeeded in making the city’s accounting system now the most modern in the world, and allows citizens access to information about city finances. But in the early stages, information coming out of governments about their own performance and operations is likely to be muddy. Re-engineered processes and accounting systems will still carry a legacy of mismanaged and unexplainable information traces.

The MKSS and the Proof experiences highlight the role of information in enabling transparency, thus enforcing accountability.

IT would be a potent tool to make the "right to information" a reality and help in enforcing accountability from the rulers.

Governments will be really able to deliver on the promise of transparency only if information is collated and managed through IT, than through traditional methods of storing information. Governments should, therefore, aim for a shift from current models that only address "service provision" (e-governance) to changing the contours of citizen-government interface in working out the plans and policies and setting the agenda for the government (e-democracy).

Emphasising the need for citizens’ struggles to appropriate IT toward a more accountable government, Dr Gopakumar Krishnan, formerly with Transparency International, says, "The failure of civil society organisations to participate in the ongoing technology-led information revolution will enfeeble them in their socio-political struggles and result in their inevitable marginalisation in the long-run. ICT-led initiatives ‘cannot replace’ traditional grassroots advocacy. But the potential of technology can blend with the zeal of the advocate."

E-governance is yet another promise of the IT revolution. In India, e-governance is still in its infancy, and the efficacy of the model is yet to be felt by most of India. The critics of e-governance view it as another glorified panacea offered to cure the tribulations that the developing world faces. India is not far behind on the road, but these are still early days to judge the efficacy of the e-governance route in the sphere of public administration. So, does technology mediated governance have the potential to set free the largest democracy of the world from the stronghold of vested interests? Time alone will tell.

RESHMI SARKAR
The author contributed this piece to DATAQUEST and is the program coordinator of IT for Change, a non-profit organization in Bangalore. ITfC supports the info-communications needs of other NGOs and undertakes research on the social dimensions of ICTs.