Introduction:
E-Governance or electronic governance can be characterized as the “provision of government services and, by electronic means, information to the public.” In short, such means of information delivery are sometimes referred to as information technology or ‘IT’. The use of IT in government promotes the distribution of information to the public and other agencies and the execution of government administration activities through an efficient, speedy and open process. Less corruption, greater accountability, greater comfort, sales growth, and cost savings could be the resulting advantages.
India’s emergence of e-Governance
The Indian State was one of the few early responses to the possibility of using ICTs in development administration in the developing world. It should be noted that in the 1970s, the Indian State began to plan and introduce rural development programs with relatively noticeable ICT content, although international interest is a relatively later phenomenon to leverage the potential of ICTs for development activities. The Gyandoot Project has emerged, according to analysts, as a benchmark for progress in e-governance and e-commerce (Sood, 2001). In coordination with the local authorities, the Government officials have started ICT kiosks run by unemployed young people who have been selected and trained to run these kiosks by the Gyandoot Samiti. It was intended to address the daily needs of a large section of rural communities.[1]
What is Gyandoot?
Gyandoot is an intranet-based G2C service delivery portal that was commissioned in January 2000 in the MP district of Dhar. The goal of Gyandoot is to build a cost-effective, replicable, economically self-reliant, and financially viable model for the rural masses to benefit from ICT. Gyandoot is operated by a society registered under the MP Societies Registration Act, called Gyandoot Samiti. The District Collector is the Samiti Chief. The president is assisted by the CEO of Zilla Panchayat (an officer of the IAS) as secretary and the various departmental heads as members of the Samiti. Zilla Panchayat, Civil Supplies, Regional Transport Office, etc., and can be accessed by any person upon payment of a nominal transaction fee from any Gyandoot kiosk (soochanalay).
Initially, 20 kiosks (‘soochanalayas’) were set up in different rural centers, with each kiosk usually serving a population of 20,000-30,000 villagers. There were a further 18 kiosks added later. Each kiosk was run by a professional operator and can provide a variety of services ranging from about US$0.10 for ‘ask the expert’ to US$0.20 for registrations to US$0.50 for use of the marriage site (many villagers subsist on less than US$2 per day) for a nominal service fee.[2]
Kiosks were built in the buildings of the Panchayat village. Information kiosks provide dialup connections on optical fiber or UHF links via local exchanges. The server center is a Remote Access Server located in the Panchayat District computer room. At the kiosks, user fees are paid for the services rendered. Local rural youth, operating these knowledge kiosks along commercial lines, serve as entrepreneurs. It was determined at the start of the project that further expansion of kiosk centers would only take place when local young people come forward to start new centers as private enterprises.
A local person can be chosen as an operator with a ten-year education (matriculate). He/she only needs maintenance, minimal typing (menu guided software), and skills in numerical data centering. For the initial kiosks, three candidates were chosen by each village committee to undergo district council training. The best trainees were chosen to run a kiosk at the end of the class.
Working: The physical space, invested in hardware and other facilities, was provided by the Gram Panchayat or Janpad Panchayat, which is then managed by a qualified individual, called the soochak.
A local businessman who has applied and registered as an owner of soochanalaya and has made all the investments (may have taken a loan from the government). It is anticipated that such Soochaks will pay Rs.5000 to Gyandoot Samiti every year. This is known as the Entrepreneurial model.
Purposes and Targets
- Ensuring fair access for marginalized parts of society to new technologies.
- To create a cost-effective, replicable, economically self-reliant, and financially viable model that will allow the rural masses to benefit from IT.
- Implement a modern grass-roots entrepreneurship paradigm with the inclusion of non-traditional communities of entrepreneurs.
- To provide local rural youth with self-employment through entrepreneurship. Improving the efficiency, pace, and sensitivity of the State distribution apparatus to the needs of local people.
- Will have an effect on the government-citizen interfaces as a guiding power, such that the advantages of the information economy will specifically hit the disadvantaged ones-nots and know-nots.
- Searching for the capacity of rural economies in the digital realm Evaluating the mechanisms and modalities involved in the socio-cultural climate when introducing technology to the marginalized communities
Services offered at Kiosks
- Produce Agricultural Auction Centers Tariffs: Prevailing rates of prominent crops are available online for a nominal charge of Rs.5/- at local and other recognized auction centers around the world. On-demand, the amount of incoming agricultural product, previous prices, etc., are also given.[3]
- On-the-spot documentation relating to land records like khasra (record of rights) shall be given at the cost of Rs.15/-. Every cropping season, approximately 0.2 million farmers need these extracts to obtain loans from banks to purchase seeds and fertilizers.
- Earlier, villagers had to make multiple trips to the local revenue court to file petitions to receive certificates of income/caste/domicile. Now, at a cost of only Rs.10/- they can submit the application from a kiosk. Notification of the readiness of the certificate will be sent via e-mail to the appropriate kiosk within 10 days. To collect the certificate, only one trip is required.
- Online Public Grievance Redress: A complaint can be filed and a reply received within 7 days for a cost of Rs.10/-. These can include complaints regarding drinking water, quality of seed/fertilizer, scholarship sanction/disbursement, employee establishment matters, functioning of schools or village committees, etc.
- Availability of auction facilities to farmers and villagers for land, agricultural machines, vehicles, and other renewable resources. One can place one of the products on sale for a fee of Rs.25/-for three months. You will search the list of saleable goods for Rs.10/-.
- Updated statistics on recipients of social security pensions, beneficiaries of rural development programs, information on government grants to village councils, public distributions, family data below the poverty line, etc. are all available on the Intranet, which allows the government more open.
- Online marriage advertising, information about government initiatives, a website for school children to ask questions, ask an expert, e-mail are other resources available at the kiosks. Photocopying devices, STD PCO, and horoscope facilities have also been introduced to several kiosks.
Conclusion
The initiatives for e-governance and G2C (Government to Citizen) also provide good news for Indian business. As demonstrated by the ITC initiative, the private sector may help empower rural customers and enriching them. This is especially true for companies that depend primarily on agricultural produce or rural markets. As such initiatives are being massively introduced in the government sector; there will eventually be a great demand for IT-related products and services.
Until e-governance technologies will make a difference in the lives of people, there are still a lot of problems that need to be solved; the e-government is not a solution to any disease that affects the government structures. It is just an instrument for good governance. Instead, the computerization of public services entails high costs. With a literacy rate of 65% and very few machine literates, it is a long way ahead before the advantages of IT and e-governance can be substantially enjoyed by Indians.
References:
[1] T T Sreekumar, Decrypting E-Governance: Narratives, Power play and Participation in the Gyandoot Intranet, fgks.in, (January 20, 2021, 08:40am), http://fgks.in/images/pdf/papers/43.pdf
[2] Alok Kumar Sanjay, Gyandoot: Trying to Improve Government Services for Rural Citizens in India, egov4dev.org, (January 20, 2021, 05:00pm), http://www.egov4dev.org/transparency/case/gyandoot.shtml
[3] Dr. B.B. Mansuri, E-GOVERNANCE: A Case Study of Gyandoot Project, citeseerx.ist.psu.edu, (January 21, 2021, 09:30am), https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.997.8691&rep=rep1&type=pdf
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