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Digital Inclusion, Local Government

Appeal for billion-dollar e-governance project in India

By Robin Hicks | 25 January 2010

A development programme director for India’s poorest regions has called on foreign and domestic service-providers to help with a local government capacity building exercise for an area that covers 40 per cent of the country. Sudhir Krishna, Additional Secretary, Ministry of Panchayati Raj, Government of India, told FutureGov that the 1000 crore rupees (US$217 million) project needed best-of-breed providers to ensure its success. Another project, known as e-Panchayat, will see around 4500 crore rupees (US$978 million) spent on improving service delivery at the village level.

Krishna’s appeal followed shortly after a buyer-seller meet held at the Habitat Centre in New Delhi saw more than 100,000 participants respond to an open advertisement in the national press. The Panchayat Raj is acting as the third party between buyers and sellers.

“We have found that the traditional mode of training and capacity building through state-owned institutions to be inadequate in this case. They would not able to handle the size of the tasks at hand,” said Krisha. “So the market is open. We want to capitalise on the entire country’s skills and resources as well as of those abroad. This is an open invitation.”

Krishna advised foreign service providers that partnering with local companies would be a more effective way to exploit business opportunities created by the programme.

“Capacity building and training is an ongoing process. But the clock has started ticking, and we hope to complete the first stage of the programme in 12 months.” said Krishna. “We know that there are the resources available in the market. It is just a question of bringing them all together.”

The Ministry of Panchayati Raj was set up in 2004 with a mandate to decentralise several administrative functions to the village level. The Panchayats, home to an electorate of 520 million people, are run by 2.8 million elected officials. However 20 per cent of officials are illiterate and many lack the skills needed to govern at a local level, so training is sorely needed.

The project covers the full gamut of local government functions, including water provision, housing, sanitation, and environment management. Krisha noted that while boosting literacy was important, more basic capabilities such as managing Panchayat child care centres were a higher priority.

The Ministry of Panchayati Raj is also working on plans for a huge e-governance scheme that would provide a “quantum leap” for IT capabilities and access for local government and citizens at the Panchayat level. The project, dubbed e-Panchayat, is expected to cost around 4500 crore rupees (US$978 million), although the scope of the project is still being finalised, Krisha explained.

“The functions of the Panchayat do a good job. But they could do a much better job if they were equipped with a computer that is connected to the internet,” said Krishna.

Ideas for the project include a one-stop portal that would provide tax payment, accounting, land ownership and information services. Krisha said he hope to bring the overall cost of the project down by renting hardware rather than buying it, and he would like manpower to be part of a supplier’s package.

“Many Panchayat villages are geographically isolated. So even if we can get computers to these areas, there won’t be ICT specialists in the area to set the systems up, keep them running and train people how to use them. We are looking to work with suppliers that can provide staff too.”

Krisha added that the Panchayats present low-cost ICT vendors with an enormous market to tap. “So many households have the capacity to buy a computer, but they don’t have access to the market. Vendors should investigate the market - it could run into millions.”

IT is a key part of two other major capacity building initiatives in the Panchayats, the Backward Regions Grant Fund (BRGF) and the Rashtriya Gram Swaraj Yojana (RGSY) schemes. The total funds available for ICT per year for these schemes are 250 crore rupees (US$54 million) and 40 crore rupees (US$9 million), respectively.

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