Does Goa need Broadband? How many people have a PC at home and can afford to shell out Rs. 522 every month for the Broadband facility? These figures are yet again being quoted now. Nobody has gone through the fine print to check whether the charges are based on the extent of services that you use and how much you use it like the time or amount of data down-loaded like under the BSNL Broadband scheme.
Further is it not logical to have governance first before we have e-governance. How many of our people at the panchayat level will know how to use these e-governance facilities for the benefit of the common man. Do we not have better things to concentrate upon to improve the lot of the common man and for which he has been clamouring for long like better roads, clean drinking water on tap, better schools, better health care facilities etc. The list is long. Will e-governance get him all this?
No. It will only tell him quickly that what he is looking for is not there. Is this the purpose of e-governance? Just because someone comes and tells you that they will wire up the State with Broadband and that too free of charge, should we accept it? Technology should be introduced when you are ready for it, both in terms of its utility and in our capacity to absorb it. Otherwise, if we bring it too early, it will lie there, idle and rusting like the mechanized road sweeping machines in Margao which the SUDA gave the Municipality but the latter has neither the manpower or the money to use the machine. Let Broadband and E-Governance not end up like that.
Autor(en)/Author(s): S Kamat
Quelle/Source: Herald Publications, 15.11.2006
