Who could you blame for the failure of various welfare schemes meant for alleviating rural poverty? Most people are not likely to site weak tech infrastructure, but it seems to be emerging as one of the main hurdles.
Step into any block development office and you are likely to see officers pouring over reams of paper, recording and sending data to their district headquarters. While some officers at block level feel lucky to have computers to help them do number crunching and transmit data, many still have a long wait for PCs and then software to run it.
“We have to maintain a detailed record of 25,309 families who have got the job card out of 29,703 families in my block. The data comes in raw format from the Panchayat level and we have to compile and key in the data for 35 rows of information for NREGA and we are supervising five such programmes for nine gram panchayats,” explains Sunil Bhattacharya. He should consider himself lucky, despite his tale of woes. His block has a data entry operator, which not every block can boast of. Even those who have computers are awaiting the software from NIC. “Unless we start putting the information on the network from the Panchayat level, I don’t think we would be able to make use of the loads of information we are getting for future,” he says.
Loads of data needs to be recorded for programmes like NREGA - details of the name of the family members willing to work, address, social and economic status, date of application, job card number, kind of manual job allotted, number of days worked, unemployment benefits and cumulative expenditure.
A typical Panchayat would do this through pen and paper. The data sheets then travel to the block office before being entered into the stand-alone computers. Then the data travels to the respective departments of the state capital in printed formats, in CDs or in floppies.
The work would be much simpler and less taxing even if we had basic networks and IT infrastructure at the Panchayat and block level and many more rural welfare schemes would take-off. “It’s not that without computers you can’t do all these, but it makes the entire work process time consuming, inefficient and ineffective,” sums up West Bengal state informatics officer, Subir Roy.
Surprisingly, there seems to be no lack of funding. Money is not an issue to put technology in place in rural areas, says Ranjit Kumar Maiti, a joint secretary in Panchayat and Rural Development Department. “From national e-governance plan to various agencies, there are different sources to get resources to put connectivity and applications in place. The issue is planning, right capacity building and proper execution in a holistic manner,” says Maiti. He insists that it would be difficult to create the right kind of implementation environment without IT infrastructure in place. Already, quite a few anti-poverty schemes like NREGA programme have been plagued with allegations of mismanagement and partisanship like any other anti-poverty schemes.
Implementation of e-governance in rural administration, to many, is like introduction of railway reservation system years ago that brought transparency and reduction in back-door manipulation. Insiders feel that solution is in making the entry at Panchayat level in a web-based software and saving it in a central server and then connecting the entire work process to a number that is recorded.
For many in the state government department, implementation of e-governance in the rural administration would have the same effect like the introduction of railway reservation system years ago in terms of transparency and reduction in back-door manipulation. Each entry in a web-based software would be saved in a central server and the entire work process connected to that number would be recorded, suggest Roy. Says Tapan Karmakar, Block Development Officer of Bhangar II, “The technology has the power to substantially reduce the allegation that the target group is not receiving the benefits.”
You can already see silver lining like Gram Panchayat Management System Software from the Panchayat and rural development department that’s running in 228 gram Panchayats. The software has applications like account ser vices, birth and death registration, data of below poverty line people and trade licenses.
And then, different schemes have their format and it’s not always possible to tweak the application according to the scheme. The right formula seems to be a fixed format for all the welfare schemes from the Centre and a statewide network with required application to store the required information. A look at the success of few digital experiments and the national e-governance plan and you know that a wave of digital change could go a long way in transforming India.
Autor(en)/Author(s): Indranil Chakraborty
Quelle/Source: The Financial Express, 13.11.2006
