l You’ve been part of both the Saukaryam and e-seva experiments. What have the projects achieved for the people?
Both the projects have made the citizens’ lives easier by providing them fast and user-friendly access to government services.

The dependence of the citizens on the government system is immense. However, due to vested interests, they are often denied access and have to shell out time and money over and above what is due. And government services being monopolistic in nature leave them with no other chance. Both these projects have tried to address this situation and brought out the delivery of these services into the public domain. The projects were successful in inducing the elements of transparency, accountability and made hapless citizens feel empowered. The projects could create an environment that enables close monitoring of official performances and brings to light sub-optimal and immoral performers, thereby allowing interventions to correct such deviations.

l What are the key lessons for e-governance that your experiences with Saukaryam and e-seva have thrown up?
Both these projects very clearly indicate that although technology is not the only answer for solving governance related problems, it is nonetheless an indispensable step towards achieving the same. The two projects also show that any improvement in citizen services meets with immense approval from the citizens. The agenda for e-governance should prioritize the methods that help improve the interface between the government and the citizens. The two projects have been, by and large, developed and implemented through in-house expertise and, therefore, prove that it is possible to take up such experiments by harnessing the internal domain knowledge and improving upon it through the use of technology. The two projects also had a very minimal "drawing board to implementation time", which underscores the fact that a momentum of popular acceptability should never be allowed to slacken.

l What is your perspective of the role of women self-help groups in the rural e-seva venture?
The self-help group strategy has now become a cornerstone of the development agenda. The strategy not just helps in empowering the impoverished but also enables rechannelizing individual strengths into collective good. This district also has a huge presence of women self-help groups and, therefore, this project thought it fit to use them as information intermediaries to turn them into information leaders in their respective areas. In the rural areas, where access to computer technology is not very significant, it was important that this was not left in selfish hands and, therefore, the e-seva project here has given the responsibility of running the kiosks to self-help groups run by women. Its quite an eye opener that these women’s groups, which were hitherto considered unfit for technological advances, have accepted the opportunity and are running the show with acumen, confidence and honesty. Although it required and still requires computer training programmes, it serves the government well to leave governance issues in local hands.

l What is your perspective on the current e-governance scenario in India?
Although some concrete steps have been taken by various state and local governments in utilizing information technology, there is a still a long way to go. When one talks of e-governance, there are two issues that are germane to this. One is to improve the delivery of civic services while the other is to create an environment to usher in a knowledge society so as to reduce the information gaps between the haves and have-nots. While there has been significant effort towards the former, the dream to achieve the latter is still just a dream. It has also clearly come out that in order to realize this dream, political and administrative will at the top is of utmost importance and this explains why some states are doing better than the others. It is also important that the political establishment starts getting the feel that the way to win the voters’ hearts is by improving governance. Technology offers the most cost effective and easy solutions to achieve the same.

l Has e-governance in India even partially achieved what it had set out to do in terms of mitigating corruption in public life?
Mitigating corruption in public life is a very complex issue and is interconnected with lots of other issues ranging from electoral malpractices, compulsions, the overall decline in societal value systems, to the capacity of the system to offer discretions or largesse to only a few. What information technology can do is to bring into public domain those issues that are shrouded in secrecy. It can also help in improving the systemic deficiencies that allowed wanton elements both within the government and outside to selfishly use them for narrow objectives. The project in Visakhapatnam could achieve this in a very short time by providing easy access to citizens to pay their dues or get various permissions and certificates or in their ability to file their grievances and get them solved without having to pay in terms of time and money. But it is true that unless the other threads are picked the whole circle of eliminating corruption in public life would not be completed.

l What, according to you, are the guidelines that an e-governance initiative should follow to be successful?
In order to be successful, an e-governance initiative has got to be citizen centric. It is also important that e-governance initiatives are not equated with computerization exercises that we see so often in various government departments. The accent on the information part of IT has to be understood. The e-governance initiatives have to reshape the internal organization and recast the government-citizen interface and it should be understood that technology is only a catalyst and should not be considered as a reagent. An e-governance initiative should be sustainable and should attempt to do simple things simply. Most of the complex problems have simple solutions and the attempt should be made to keep to that. Before embarking upon an e-governance initiative, it is important that it is driven by a leader who believes in it and has the patience to make others believe in that. It would also require some perseverance and courage as many a times it is going to disturb the existing applecart. The bottom line is to win the heart of the public through such projects as they can alone ultimately become the champions of such projects and help ride through the various challenges.