"As the village epitomizes the soul of India - the development of India as a Nation should rest on a sustained and holistic development of rural India. The infusion of ICT has enabled the rural delivery systems work for the benefit of the unreachable, the rural poor. India is not about interesting pilots, its about projects that scale. E-Panchayat, Rural e-Seva and Wadi are some examples that have scaled," commented Mr Sameer Kochhar, CEO, Skoch Consultancy Services.
Saluting best practices - the Summit also conferred Skoch Challenger Awards 2006 - nation's most premier awards in area of ICT for development and IT-led public growth projects.
The following list the Skoch Challenger 2006 Awardees in various categories:
Skoch Challenger 2006 Awardees
| Sl No | Category | Awardee |
| 1 | Citizen Services Delivery | State of Punjab - SUWIDHA |
| 2 | Education | State of Assam - Rajiv Gandhi Computer Literacy Programme (RGCLP) |
| 3 | Exemplary Use of Technology | State of Sikkim - ICT Initiatives |
| 4 | ICT Man of the Year | Mr A K Purwar, Chairman, SBI |
| 5 | IT & Development | Microsoft - Education Initiatives |
| 6 | Lifetime Achievement | Mr C B Bhave, CMD, NSDL |
| 7 | Public Private Partnership | State of Andhra Pradesh – Rural e-Seva |
| 8 | Social Impact | NABARD - WADI |
| 9 | Rural Delivery Systems | National Informatics Centre |
| 10 | SME Enabler | Software Technology Parks of India |
| 11 | National Significance | ICT in Judiciary |
| 12 | Change Management | Punjab National Bank |
| 13 | Replication Projects | Department of IT |
| 14 | Grassroots Man of the Year | Dr N G Hegde - BAIF |
| 15 | Grassroots Woman of the Year | Naga Siromani - Rural e-Seva |
| 16 | Editor's Choice | AGMARKNET - NIC |
| 17 | Editor's Choice | Panchayati Raj - NIC |
Complementing Mr. C. B. Bhave, Chairman & Managing Director – National Securities Depositories Limited (NSDL), who was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award, Mr. Sameer Kochhar said, " Mr. Bhave not only boldly spearheaded a mechanism to trade in dematerialized securities & shares, but also put India on a global map by becoming the fastest nation to implement paperless trading. Little wonder, Mr. Bhave's NSDL has been chosen by the Finance Ministry to implement the Tax Information Network. "
Yet another significant project, which has brought progress into the lives of thousands of tribals through the power of ICT, is the NABARD – Wadi project, which was awarded the 'Social Impact Award'. Silently changing lives in the tribal villages of Gujarat & Maharashtra, the Wadi project has established several benchmarks in rural e-governance arena:
- Usage of minimum resources to deliver optimal impact.
- The project 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.
- From a situation where the tribals grew just millets and barley without any use of fertiliser or insecticides, Wadi-villages grow cashew and mango, and live in pucca houses today - others have collaborated to form self-help groups and, with the monthly collections, even bought calves and started a milk cooperative.
Rural e-Seva in West Godavari district of Andhra Pradesh is a living example of Public Private Partnership that has brought cheers to the lives of over 2000 people including vegetable vendors, some of whom have become entrepreneurs. ICT has brought economic enablement by providing employment opportunities. It has also brought computer led education to village children. So much so that the e-Seva portal is now being used to market the local produce - lace - in the overseas market.
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 - till date, roughly two million transactions have taken place through these centres. Funded mostly by bank loans the entrepreneurs earn between Rs. 6,000-20,000 a month.
And for its capabilities to reach the unreachable, National Informatics Centre (NIC) was awarded for its pioneering initiatives in the rural delivery solutions. From enabling India to become only nation in the world to declare election results within few hours after polling to solution such as e-Panchayat & Land Record Management Information Systems - NIC has set new standards for what connectivity & Information Technology do for the nation. NIC is also 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 - thus 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. Both e-Panchayat & Agmarknet projects of NIC were also awarded Skoch Challenger Editor's Choice 2006 awards.
Few other pioneering projects, which were recognized 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); Judiciary Project (A Rs. 850 crores project to link Supreme Court & all High courts to put all case listings & judgements, and gradually to link subordinate judiciary later. Video conference facilities with all jails and the courts is also on the cards to allow judges to hear cases without prisoners having to be carted around the place) and efforts of public sector banks like Punjab National Bank & State Bank of India for taking e-banking even to the backwaters of Kerela and strengthening ATM's networks.
Concluding the sessions, Mr. Sameer Kochhar remarked, "E-governance will work only if it involves complete business re-engineering. If the system of giving clearances remains the same as before, merely adding a layer of expensive IT solutions to it doesn't help. We need to keep this in mind if we want our dreams of an e-government to come true.
Quelle: Moneycontrol, 28.03.2006
