egov india 2010
ICT for Rural Development
It’s got to be a data-drill Standardisation and interoperability of panchayat-level data is as important as capturing it rightly in the system
(L - R) Maj Gen. (Dr) R Siva Kumar, Head–NRDMS; Rakibul Hasan Khanm, Local Development Associate, Access to Information Project, Bangladesh; Rajgopal A Srinivas, Sr VP, Tulip Telecom; Dr Naimur Rahman, Director, OneWorld South Asia; Niten Chandra, Joint Secretary, Rural Development, GoI (Chair); S K Hudda, OSD, Department of Panchyats, Gujarat; S B Singh, DDG, NIC–Uttar Pradesh; K Manohar, GM (Bangalore), Railtel
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iten Chandra, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Rural Development, Government of India, session chair, provided an overview of the rural scenario of India, informing that rural India had more than 17 crore people living in nine lakh habitations. Government of India is spending around Rs 90 crore per year in rural development programs that are development, project or area-oriented. The issues that the ministry is grappling with in this regard include data capture, transformation of data, loading of data into data warehouses, data mining and data analytics, for which it seeks support of ICT experts. The panel included experts from both government and non-government secors. Major Gen. (Dr) R Siva Kumar, Head,
Natural Resources Data Management System (NRDMS), Department of Science and Technology, Government of India, highlighted the use of spatial data for better planning of rural development programmes. He however, emphasised the need for standardisation and interoperability of data. Recalling Providing Urban Amenities in Rural Areas (PURA) program, which has connectivity as its base, Dr Siva Kumar said, “Spatial data is the underlying requirement of PURA.” Rakibul Hasan Khan, Local Development Associate, Access to Information Project Prime Minister’s Office, Bangladesh, shared his country’s experience with ICT interventions in rural development. The government is trying to strengthen the union parishads (similar to panchayats in India) in Bangladesh through ICT to deliver services to people at their doorstep. For this, it plans to establish 3,396 union information services centres by December 2010.
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SK Hudda OSD, e-Gram, Department of Panchayats, Government of Gujarat shared the e-Gram Vishwagram project, which aims at providing e-services at panchayats. e-Governance application entails computerisation at the village level itself for instant processing of birth and death registration, and issuance of certificates such as agriculture, caste, income and electricity. For access, broadband Internet connectivity has been provided to all 13,693 gram panchayats, using the VSAT technology. Niten Chandra applauded the project, saying that, “e-Gram implemented by Gujarat government is a very innovative project and even the Ministry of Rural Development has drawn a lot of lessons from it.” Dr Naimur Rahman, Director OneWorld South Asia & MD, OneWorld Foundation, India, informed about the joint partnership program between Ministry of Rural Development and OneWorld Foundation to bring in transparency and public accountability in MGNREGA by e-enabling all the processes. These include biometric-based registration, demand for work, issue of dated receipt, allocation of work, recording of attendance with GPS coordinates and work measurement using hand-held devices like mobile phones. SB Singh, Deputy Director General, National Informatics Centre (NIC), Uttar Pradesh State Unit, provided an overview of various programmes that Uttar Pradesh was doing in rural development using ICT. “If e-Governance is moving in Uttar Pradesh, which is such a large state and thereby has so many challenges, in smaller states, the technology application by government should not be an issue.” Rajgopal A Srinivas, Senior VP, Tulip Telecom, discussed how Tulip discussed some of its solutions for rural India such as rural on-line banking, e-literacy and e-enabled education centres, healthcare, e-posts, Internet telephony and video conferencing. K Manohar, General Manager—Bangalore, Railtel India, emphasised, “e-Governance is associated with access to broadband connectivity.” He apprised that Railtel was on its way to provide countrywide broadband and multimedia network to help Government of India achieve 200-500 million broadband users by 2015. Talking about the challenges in rural broadband, he suggested use of simple technology that would be manageable. The complexity should be pushed to the network, he said. September 2010 / www.egovonline.net / egov
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