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CYBERSPACE
The
Skepticism Persists
Despite
the happy stories, it's not as if every ounce of scepticism has vanished.
E-governance faces two obstacles. One, it is expensive, calling for heavy
capital expenditure as well as the fact that salaries have to be paid
to armies of human employees who have, in reality, been replaced by a
single machine. Two, to quote a technocrat in Delhi, the problem "of
mindsets, of the digital divide within the government".
More apparent
is the provincial divide. Since citizens come face to face with the Central
government only rarely, e-governance is frankly the states' baby. At a
recent conference it was found that 14 of India's 25 (the number has gone
up to 28 following the creation of new states) chief ministers also held
the IT portfolio. For most it is only a fad. Central officials point to
Andhra Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh-and to some degree Karnataka-as states
where chief ministers are committed to geek governance. Says a senior
civil servant in the Union IT Ministry: "E-governance has to be owned
by the political leadership. Otherwise it will only be a bureaucrats'
game."
Andhra Pradesh,
where some 255 citizen-specific services have been transferred to the
IT realm, is clearly the frontrunner. Aside from the twins multi-utility
billing counters, the state's experience with land registration has found
an echo in even distant Punjab and facilitated both property transfer
and revenue collection. Not surprisingly, in neighbouring Karnataka, among
the government's first e-tasks was to computerise land records of 60 lakh
farmers. These will soon be on the Net.
Not all
states are as enthusiastic. Union IT Minister Pramod Mahajan has declared
2001 "the year of e-governance". In theory, literally millions
of rupees are available given that the IT Ministry has advised every Central
and state ministry and department to earmark "2 to 3 per cent"
of its planned budget for an "it for the masses" project. In
cash-strapped times, this is easier said than done.
Punjab has
allocated less than 1 per cent. As a result, the software for the Punjab
Government Personnel Management System, created two years ago, awaits
the 150 workstations that will run it. The state's Department of Social
Security (DSS) has calculated it can save Rs 50 crore of the Rs 180 crore
it disburses annually, provided it uses IT to weed out bogus beneficiaries.
This e-governance scheme is held up because the DSS is unwilling to invest
the required Rs 1 crore.
Money problems
are a direct consequence of rigid mindsets. As Subir Hari Singh, joint
secretary, IT and head of the national e-governance cell put it at a seminar
recently, "E-governance is nothing but good governance. The e is
only a tool." The computer is as good a system as the human agency
that feeds and uses its data. If a bureaucrat is obdurate and corrupt,
e-governance can hardly help, even if by 2003 IT training does become
mandatory for recruitment into the government.
Nevertheless,
with the computerwallah succeeding where the competitionwallah failed,
the efficacy of e-governance is not in doubt. The key, to borrow another
IT expression, lies in broadening its band.
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-with
Amarnath K. Menon, M.G. Radhakrishnan, Neeraj Mishra
and bureau reports
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Enron
symbolises everything that's wrong with the way reforms were handled by
M/s Rao & Manmohan, says INDIA TODAY Associate Editor