E-Governance in India

I recently read an article ("E-governing India" by Sunil Jain, Business Standard, May 3, 2004) that pointed out the ways in which the use of technology is creating fantastic improvements in public services, from railway reservations to customs clearance to the election process.

The landmark e-election just held is of course the most impressive automation exercise ever witnessed in this part of the world at least, and is illustrated in the now-usual manner as testimony to India's acceptance of technology ahead of most developed nations.

But the article also points out some other significant yet widely unknown e-governance projects that hold great potential in benefiting businesses and the public. Here are a few excerpts...

"At a conference on large e-governance projects organised by consulting firm SKOCH, railway ministry officials made a presentation on some of their plans... you can now book your tickets on the Net and, very soon, even download your ticket details onto your printer at home/office, and just walk into the train with this and some form of ID like a driver’s license!"

"At 23 customs offices across the country, the official said, you can file your documents online, and figure out the status of your approvals even before your cargo hits the country’s shores — does your cargo have to be physically inspected, what is the duty to be paid, and so on, all these details can be checked by a series of clicks.

With over 95 per cent of all paperwork filed in this fashion, the number of processing steps has been cut from 18 to 6 for imports and from 15 to 5 in the case of exports."

"Computerising of cases in various courts helped reduced the pendancy (a polite term for cases not getting decided for decades) from 1,20,000 to 22,000. Once the cases were computerised, they could be classified under various points of law, and then it took just one judgement to dispose off thousands of similar cases.

Today, in most high courts, cases are assigned to different benches by the computer, and status of various cases (when is the hearing, before which bench, etc) can be seen online. The National Informatics Centre (NIC) is now trying to do the same in civil courts as well."

"An even more ambitious project, and one that touches a lot more lives, is NIC’s AGMARKNET, a network that links up the major mandis in the country to provide information on 300 major commodities. Seven hundred and fifty such mandis have already been connected, another 2,000 will be connected in the next two years, and the balance 4,000 or so in another 3-4 years."