Mahatma Gandhi in 1946 had pronounced his vision that every village ought to be a Republic. He should be happy with all the talk at out bestoming power to the Panchayats. But, the yawning gap between the current rhetoric and reality would turn his joy into sorrow. While the Panchayati Raj System (PRS) itself is yet to find firm footing, the government is hastily trying to introduce e-governance in the panchayats.

The objective of forming panchayats was to decentralize planning for the upliftment of the people at large, particularly, in the rural areas. Decentralization seemed to be the right answer to usher in local self-governance and to transform the top-down approach of centralized administration. However, as the politics is reluctant to give powers in the hands of common people, PRS couldn't take off in the real sense. Moreover, the electorate is not fully empowered to hold elected panchayat representatives accountable, and the inept ways of administration at the state-level are being used at the panchayats also. As a result, the Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs) have failed to evolve as support establishments for the commoners.

"Members of the village panchayats are like puppets in the hands of government bosses who are not allowing panchayats to function freely," says KV Sundaram, chairman, Bhoovigyan Vikas Foundation (an organization working to achieve sustainable development) and former advisor in the Planning Commission, looking after rural area development and multi-level planning. "So the PRS is not quite successful."

Governance first
When governance itself is in a mess, it would be interesting to see how e-governance works in the PRS. Experts believe that right governance should precede e-governance. "Radical changes are required in the PRS to ensure grassroots-level development," opines M Moni, deputy director general, National Informatics Center (NIC), which is engaged in e-governance implementation at various levels including in the PRS. "E-governance can be applied only when the village-level information on various parameters is available."

But as there are nearly 650,000 villages in the country, it would be difficult for the government alone to collect information at such a large scale. "For this, panchayats can involve educational institutions as development alternatives. Students from these institutions can be encouraged with small incentives to collect micro-level data for each panchayat," suggests Moni. This data can be on, say, number of schools, hospitals, water resources, wasteland, information centers, and on all other local needs.

This is going to be a mammoth task considering the number of panchayats existing in the country. The passage of the Constitution (73rd Amendment) Act, 1992, provided constitutional status to the PRIs; 227,698 panchayats at village level, 5,906 panchayats at intermediate level, and 474 panchayats at district level have been constituted in India. About 3.4 mn elected representatives are managing these panchayats.

As the government may not be willing to deploy the traditional workforce for the systematic collection of data on these panchayats, using students for the task seems to be the right option, which would be cost-effective, quick, and unbiased. This data can be analyzed to define village-level needs for which e-governance could be introduced.

However, e-governance projects at panchayats would need special treatment. "E-governance shouldn't stop at data collection in digital format. It should convert raw data into useful information required for village-level planning," says Sundaram. The government would not like to repeat its approach followed in various states for the e-governance projects that generate only a few certificates-like birth and death certificates-through sketchy websites. "E-governance is not just about creating a website. Rather, it should delve deeper to build robust information systems on which information technology could be applied," says Moni. In other words, it's not just enough to first create the technology infrastructure for carrying information. But it's also important to create the content and information that could use the technology platforms.

This content could be related to healthcare, agriculture, education, and general infrastructure in the rural areas. A blind attempt to create a website involving these application areas would go futile in the absence of empirical data on these areas for each village under a panchayat. For example, if a village (or a cluster of villages) under a panchayat needs education support, the information centers in these villages can be linked with the website of NCERT-that can be developed for such a demand-from where the necessary books and education content could be downloaded. Similarly, if the farmers in a village are interested in the commodity prices, they could be connected with a facility like the Agmarknet, a web-based service that's supposed to inform farmers on wholesale prices of various commodities among other agricultural details (story carried in the May 31 issue).

Implementation approach
The supply of e-services should be based on specific demand in a particular area. In this case, there will be an unconventional demand-supply equation because the rural consumers-most of them are uneducated-are not clear about their requirements or expectations from e-governance facilities. So the onus will be on the marketers to spread adequate awareness among consumers about the advantages of e-governance.

Instead of following a herd approach, the government should first select only a few village panchayats (say, not more than 10) as a sample. With limited investment, these panchayats should collect the data from the villages under them. With the help of local people, this data should be analyzed to know the exact demand that would need the support of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) for e-governance and other automation requirements. After running the e-governance systems thus created for a specific time period, their impact should be analyzed through a feedback system involving local consumers.

If the impact is encouraging in terms of villagers' response, productivity, efficiency, transparency, and return on investment, the model can be emulated at other panchayats in a phased manner. This way, the government can save public funds from being squandered, as huge investments are involved in projects of such a large scale-assuming that for each panchayat, the capital cost of the ICT infrastructure is Rs 1 lakh; over Rs 2,000 crore would be required for automating village panchayats alone. Besides, there would be other operating and maintenance costs for the infrastructure and manpower training in the PRIs. The government should earmark and spend this money cautiously, because the vulture outfits-including the government ones-are trying to create an artificial demand for e-governance in the PRS, as they are eyeing big bucks in such projects.

Even the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) should link the allocation of funds with the success of the projects. UNDP has committed a budget of $5 mn during 2003-2007 and expects to mobilize $25 mn of additional donor support for "ICT for Development" projects in India. The areas selected for financial support include capacity building of institutions of decentralized governance (like PRIs) and e-governance.

For systematic monitoring of funds, NIC has developed a software package christened "Panchayati Raj Institutions Accounting Software" or PriaSoft. It also records the expenditure pattern and local revenue-generation streams at the panchayat level to generate reports that could be used by various fund-monitoring agencies. The donor organizations can also develop their own customized processes to measure the performance of e-governance projects and to keep a record of the funds.

Overall, the initiative of introducing e-governance in the PRS needs delicate handling. A toe out of line can jeopardize the entire exercise. Government should deploy technology effectively to accelerate the pace of transferring powers to the panchayats. Only then Gandhiji's dream will become a reality.

Rakesh Raman The author is an independent technology journalist and market analyst.

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