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(The Gist of Kurukshetra) E-GOVERNANCE IN RURAL INDIA-october-2017

E-GOVERNANCE IN RURAL INDIA

What is e-Governance and what is its importance in India? There are about 6.5 lakhs ofvillages in India that represent more than 72 percent of the total population. The rural mass in the nation comprises the core of Indian society and also represents the real India. There was a time in the past when people lost their faith on governance system because of the hardship they had to endure in the form of expenses, inconvenience, multiple visits, demotivating. For rural mass, these hardships were more adverse. In order to develop these rural mass, Government of India already considered the key growth areas from various economic & social sectors in the right policy formation.

The key strategy of rural development mainly focuses on poverty alleviation, better livelihood opportunities, provision of basic amenities and infrastructure facilities through innovative programmers of wage and selfemployment etc. For such developments, a need was felt to improve the overall trust relationship between the Government and citizens. It was realized that the challenges like poor public services, unemployment, housing, crime and violence, health, education for all etc. could be successfully addressed through extensive use of ICTapplications for the improvement in the processes of government functioning to bringSMAET, i.e. Simple, Moral, Accountable, Responsive and Transparent Governance.

National e-Governance Plan (NeGP)

The National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) was launched in 2006 with a vision to make all government services accessible to the common man in his/her locality, through delivery outlets named common services centers (CSCs) and ensure efficiency, transparency & reliability of such services at affordable costs to realize the basic needs of the common man.

31 Mission Mode projects covering a wide range of domains, viz. agriculture, land records, health, education, passports, police, courts municipalities, commercial taxes, treasuries, etc. were initiated. Most of these projects have been made operational and have started providing services. However, despite the successful implementation of many e-governance projects across the country, e-governance as a whole has not been able to make the desired impact and fulfill all its objectives especially in ensuring anytime anywhere availability of services and their seamless integration. Even though India is known worldwide as a powerhouse of software, the availability of electronic governance services to citizens is still comparatively low.

Digital India

In order to transform the entire ecosystem of public services through the use of Information Technology, the Government of India has launched the ‘Digital India’ programme in 2015
with the vision to transform India into a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy.

Vision Areas of Digital India

The Digital India programme is centered three key vision areas:

1. Digital Infrastructure as a core utility of every citizen

2. Governance & services on demand

3. Digital Empowerment of citizens. It is a fact that transforming the entire rural populace into a digitally empowered society under Digital India flagship programme is a huge challenge in case of remote & rural areas. Butdelivery of e-Governance services to the remote corners in a meaningful & locally relevant manner may result in a successful building of rural India with the advent of the most advanced ICT and by leveraging various existing infrastructures and integrated manner. As we know that e-Governance deals with the ways political & social powers are organized & used, it has enormous capacity to transform relations with citizens, business and other arms of the Governments.

Growth of eServices and eTransactions

after Launch of Digital India After the launch of Digital India, the number of eServices has grown from 2,221 in 2014 to 3,433 at present. That shows that Average monthly count of eTransactions per month has grown up from 29.80 crores to 90.82 crores, which is 205 percent growth.

Vision and Objective of CSC

“ The primary objective of the CSC is provide e-governance services within the reach of the citizen, by creating the physical service delivery ICT infrastructure.” It helps in making a transparent service delivery mechanism and eliminating citizens’ effort is visiting government offices. The CSCs also aim to provide individual access to internet and access devices to citizens in rural India where the ICT intervention is very low, thereby, creating a digital divide. CSCs being well equipped ICT enabled centres necessarily play a significant role in enabling universal access to plethora of eServices for citizens and acting as cornerstone for the citizens’ digital empowerment, hence creating a transparent governance ecosystem.