Among the 37 projects surveyed by globally renowned strategy and management consultancy company Skoch, the project to trade in dematerialised securities and shares, implemented by National Securities Depositories Ltd (NSDL) has had the greatest impact in rural areas.
According to C B Bhave, Chairman and Managing Director of NSDL, the demat project has put India on the global map by becoming the fastest nation to implement paperless trading.
‘‘Little wonder that NSDL has been chosen by the Finance Ministry to implement the tax information network,’’ he added.
Yet another significant project, according to the survey, which has brought progress into the lives of thousands of tribals through the power of IT, is NABARD’s Wadi project implemented in the tribal villages of Gujarat and Maharashtra.
The project, which has established several benchmarks in rural e-governance has enabled moving more than 25,000 tribal families to a self-sustaining level of development through agriforestry, water conservation and management and improved ways of farming.
Another rural IT project surveyed was e-Seva in west Godavari district of Andhra Pradesh.
In less than four years, there are over 200 e-Seva kiosks which offer a range of services from the government-linked provision of income and caste certificates to e-learning and even meter-reading.
Roughly two million transactions have taken place through these centres. Funded mostly by bank loans the entrepreneurs earn between Rs 6,000 and Rs 20,000 a month.
National Informatics Centre (NIC) has worked on several pioneering projects in rural delivery solutions. Prime among them has been e-panchayat and land record management information systems.
NIC is currently working on some new path-breaking initiatives, such as Agmarknet, which would connect 750 mandis across the nation to provide real-time data on 300 commodities, enabling farmers to get much better prices for their produce.
NIC is also working on a landmark project to connect around 1,500 depots of Food Corporation of India (FCI) and link them to all FCI distribution centers, thus enabling citizens to track real-time movement of various critical commodities.
Other pioneering projects that were surveyed for their social contribution, included Microsoft’s Project Shiksha, which aims to take education to 3.5 million students over five years through e-learning and to deliver IT literacy and skills development to 80,000 teachers across the country in special IT academy centres.
The judiciary project is a Rs 850 crore project to link the Supreme Court and all high courts to put all case listings and judgements, and gradually to link subordinate judiciary later.
Video-conference facilities in all jails and courts is also on the cards to allow judges to hear cases without prisoners having to be carted around the place.
Quelle: Newindpress, 29.03.2006
