IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

It was on June 27 that the Kerala chief minister won an UN award under “Transformative e-Government and Innovation: Creating a Better Future for All” though the focus was on his mass contact programme. In its push to emerge a total digital or e-literate state by 2015, the Oommen Chandy government has professed to leave no stone unturned while ushering in e-governance. Therefore, when it rolled the much touted e-documentation programme as an option to the public going in for property transactions no one had an inkling that a 4,000-strong community of document writers would successfully smother it in a matter of only a month. The government has succumbed to the pressure from a miniscule community and has “temporarily frozen” the e-governance initiative pending discussions.

This was but a small step forward before the government was to usher in e-stamping for property transactions. While there has been no version of Abdul Karim Telgi so far in Kerala, every nook and cranny of a sub-registrar office reeks of corruption, rendering land transactions minus bribes as stuff for wild dreams. Clearly, the state government has squandered a golden chance to prove that its heart is in the right place.

This is not the first time that the state government has dilly-dallied when faced with tough questions on its intent to govern, electronically or otherwise. It has a history of yielding to pressure brought in by marginal political groups, whether it be in the case of jobless people sitting in dharna to protest against the imposition of toll on national highways or minority communities stoking trouble to get education policy framed in their favour. It is high time the government decided that its allegiance lies with 3.5 crore Keralites and not with pressure groups numbering a few thousands.

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Quelle/Source: The New Indian Express, 05.09.2013

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