Importance of e-Panchayat for Rural Development in India

                   Importance of e-Panchayat for Rural Development in India
                                                                                               Dr.  Shubhangi Rathi
                                                                                                   Associate Professor
                                                                                 Smt. P. K. Kotecha Mahila Mahavidyalaya,
                                                                                                               Bhusawal

Introduction:
            The Information and Communication Technologies play an important role in rural development. So e-Panchayat is a need of present scenario. This system is web-based and n-tiered and functions like an Application Service Provider enabling Panchayat level digital services for all stakeholders. The stakeholders are citizens, elected representatives, Gram Panchayat officials, the governments and the knowledge workers. It is a fact that the developed   50 countries have taken the full advantages of Information Communication Technologies. In the year 2002 the Government declared a comprehensive program to accelerate e-governance at all levels of the government to improve efficiency, transparency and accountability for Government-Citizen interface. Maharashtra State is the sixth best e-Governance state in India. The purpose of study is to know the importance of e-Panchayat for rural development. For this study I have been used secondary data & comparative & analytical methods.
Panchayat Raj System in India:
          In 1993, India has established one of the largest systems of Panchayat Raj of the world through the 73rd Constitutional amendment. Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs) in rural areas signify India’s experiment with direct democracy at the grassroots level. It has adopted a decentralized strategy based on the principles of subsidiary with a more active and area-based approach to rural development. Panchayat Raj have been given a wide range of powers and duties related to rural development.
The main focus of the Panchayati Raj is that the people in the village should undertake the responsibilities of governing themselves. In the present scheme of Panchayati Raj, the villagers have been held responsible for all-round improvement in the village life, including education, sanitation, medical relief curative and preventive, lighting, housing, maternity and child welfare along with the administration of civil, criminal and revenue justice. It was thought that this system would be powerful means for self-preservation in the arena of social life.
Changing Nature of  Panchayat Raj:
         After a more than a decade and half, there is a growing realization that the system of Panchayati Raj needs to be re-energized and strengthened to address persistent development challenges more effectively and also to be responsive to emerging problems such as climate change, water scarcity, natural disasters, etc. Globalization and the information revolution have changed the nature of local polity through increasing competition and awareness among the villagers. The technology that is most transformative in today’s society is Information and Communication Technology (ICT). Information and Communication Technology does not impact physical objects directly; instead, it moves and processes information. U.S. is global leader in e-governance.
Background of e-Panchayat:
          The National e-Governance Plan has identified  Panchayats as one of the Mission Mode Projects(MMP), since Panchayats provide a large number of basic services for millions of citizens living in India’s rural centers. Introduction of e-Governance shall help improve the delivery of services and good governance.
  The seventh Round Table conference of State Ministers of Panchayati Raj, organised by the Ministry of Panchayati Raj (MoPR) held at Jaipur in December 2004 recommended taking e-Governance in Panchayati Raj Institutions (e-PRI) as mission mode through NIC and other solution providers. The MMP has been designed to overcome the challenges being faced in the villages such as lack of reliable communication infrastructure, delay in providing services to the citizens (Licenses, Certificate etc), Low revenue mobilization for implementing schemes at the GP level, lack of   132 monitoring mechanism for the schemes.
Use of IT in Panchayat:
           The e-PRI campaign aims to progressively support all State Governments and Panchayats in the country to make effective use of IT in various activities defined below-.

• Improving internal management processes and decision making in Panchayats
• Panchayats using IT as a tool for transparency, disclosure of services to Citizens and social audit
• Enabling Panchayats to better deliver its mandated services to the Citizens through IT.
• Panchayats using IT for electronic tagging and tracking of funds transferred to Panchayats from higher level of governments, including rapid bank transfer of funds, tracking fund transfers to, expenditures of the Panchayats

Objectives of e-Panchayat:
            The key objectives of e-Panchayat Mission Mode Project are to use ICT for:

•  Automation of internal workflow processes of Panchayats
• Improving delivery of services to citizens
• Capacity building of Panchayat Representatives and Officials
• Social Audit
• Transparency, Accountability, Efficiency and RTI compliance of Panchayats
• Improving Governance of local self-government
• Problems and Prospects of e-Panchayat:

             Establishment of the ePanchayat in every village across the country is an elaborate process. ICT intervention should not be understood in isolation. ICTs function in a socio-cultural, political, and economic milieu. Their efficacy is contingent on the various forces and realities that coalesce to shape the environment into which they are introduced. To equip every Panchayat with a computer and to provide it with Internet connectivity would not be an easy task, if we look at the current status of Internet connectivity and other prerequisites for ICT enabled system of governance in rural areas. A workable system of ePanchayats warrants financial resources, computer applications, skilled human resource and political will.

The primary technological factors that can impede the reach of ePanchayats are the lack of infrastructure and trained human resources. Despite India being called the Information Technology capital of the world, its computer and Internet penetration (at 2.7 per cent and 4.9 per cent, respectively) are among the lowest in the world. ( The Financial Express, Connectivity, Penetration keep IT away from Rural India , May 7, 2009). Teledensity in rural areas is around 14 per cent. (Ministry of Finance, Government of India , Economic Survey 2008-09, p. 246)

           Slow progress in rolling out common services centers would delay process of ePanchayats. 100,000 common services center were to be opened up in rural areas by March 2009, but only 50,008 have been rolled out until now. Some states, namely Bihar, Jharkhand, Gujarat , Sikkim and Haryana have already operationalized more than 75 per cent of common services centers while others such as Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh , Jammu and Kashmir , and Uttarakhand lag far behind in the process. (http://www.mit.gov.in/download/CSC310809.pdf)

Key Challenges in e-Panchayat:

                   The key challenges being faced for implementation of computerization in Panchayat include

• The issue of electricity comes first. More than half of the rural households are still not connected with electricity.
• Most Gram (village) Panchayat representatives and villagers are not computer-literate; even a simple computer application would be difficult to handle for them.
• Content creation in local language is another challenge. English is still an alien language in rural areas.
• High Capacity Building
• No Back-end support at all levels of PRIs/  PR Departments for
• Operationalising computerization of services 136
• No Centralized decision support system ( MIS) for monitoring the
• Schemes and taking informed decisions
• The genuine problems of infrastructure and other prerequisites for ePanchayats in rural India.
• Application of ICT is a political issue because it has the potential to transform the socio-political dynamics of national and local polity.

Process of e-governance:

           The process of e-governance has already been started. The Government of India has decided to open one lakh common services centers across the country under National e-Government Plan (NeGP) in order to make all Government services accessible to the common man in his locality, and ensure efficiency, transparency and reliability of such services at affordable costs to realise the basic needs of the common man. (http://www.mit.gov.in/default.aspx?id=837) Now the Government of India has initiated the process to equip all Gram Panchayats with computers, or provide access to computers with broadband connectivity. All Panchayats at all levels need to be equipped with computing hardware and connectivity over the next few years. The approach would be to first use the kiosks being set up under the NeGP’s Common Services Centres initiative. For the remaining Panchayats, it is proposed to engage independent service providers who would be selected on the basis of a bidding process. It has been also planned to equip all Panchayats with necessary software and skills to handle e-Governance for better delivery of services to citizens. The other major component of ePanchayats would be that of capacity building of functionaries of Panchayati Raj Institutions. The infrastructure that is proposed to be created through e-PRI would be utilised for training of elected representatives about their responsibilities and for giving them functional knowledge of the schemes that are implemented through the Panchayats or their statutory committees.( D. K. Jain, “ePanchayats in India ”, I4D, Vol. 7, No. 4, April 2009, pp. 6)

Action Taken by Indian Government:

           Governments at both the central and state levels have the vision and strategies to bridge the digital divide and provide supporting infrastructure in rural areas to enhance the capacity of Panchayats. Under the Bharat Niram programme, the Government of India has emphasized connectivity and other basic facilities. The Ministry of Power has introduced a scheme that aims at providing electricity in all villages and habitations within four years, thereby providing access to electricity to all rural households.(Ministry of Power, Government of India, Bharat Nirman-Electrification)It has been also proposed to achieve a rural tele-density of 25 per cent by means of 200 million rural connections by the end of the Eleventh Five Year Plan. The Eleventh Five Year Plan has also targeted providing broadband connectivity for all secondary and higher secondary schools, all public health care centers and Gram Panchayats. (Ministry of Finance, Government of India, Economic Survey 2008-09, p.247)

Conclusion:

           Lastly, I conclude that  ePanchayats are the need of the hour as people in rural areas are still deprived of basic facilities for a decent life. Common wisdom says that poverty and deprivation exist not only due to lack of resources but also persist because of inefficient and malfunctioning institutions. In the emerging knowledge society and information revolution, Panchayats should not be left in isolation. They should be provided with adequate technological resources in order to be able to play a meaningful role in the course of development.

References:

1.  C. S.R. Prabhu (2007), Cost Effective Solution for Effective e-Governance-e-Panchayat, Computer Society of India, accessed on 11th September 2009,
2. Department of Information Technology, (Ministry of Communication and Information Technology, Government of India), CSC Implementation Status Across India as on August 31, 2009, accessed on 17th September 2009, http://www.mit.gov.in/download/CSC310809.pdf
3. D. K. Jain, “ePanchayats in India ”, I4D, Vol. 7, No. 4, April 2009, pp. 6
4. http://www.yourarticlelibrary.com/essay/panchayati-raj-system-essay-on-panchayati-raj-system-in-india/31327
5. Ministry of Power, Government of India, Bharat Nirman-Electrification, available at  http://powermin.nic.in/bharatnirman/bharatnirman.asp