Treasures of the Earth

The World Bank defines e-governance as the use of information
and communication technologies by government agencies to transform relations
with citizens, business and other arms of the government. These technologies can
serve a variety of different ends: better delivery of government services to
citizens, improved interaction with business and industry, citizen empowerment
through access to information or more efficient government management.

According to a more conservative school of thought, only
those IT related initiatives within government agencies that lead to palpable
and measurable improvement in G2C (Government to Citizens) or G2B (Government to
Business) relations, comprise e-governance.

The Karnataka government’s e-governance initiatives span
this rather broad spectrum — from computerization of the motor vehicles
department and the Common Entrance Test (CET) process to putting up agricultural
planning related data like weather forecast, crop prices etc on the net.

The most impressive Karnataka government project however, has
to do with one of the most difficult areas of e-governance: land records. When
the Prime Minister’s IT Taskforce set out an agenda for e-governance
initiatives at the state-levels, it recommended that land records be the last to
be touched and stipulated a deadline of 2005. Yet, Karnataka’s Land Records
project was not only among the first to be launched, it was also the first big
one nearing completion (it is already operational in 155 of 175 talukas.)

Bhoomi

Karnataka’s Computerization of Land Records System, also known as Bhoomi,
is part of a broader state policy called ‘Mahiti’ that aims to use IT for
rural development. It was started over a decade ago as a central sponsored
scheme in 1991-92. However, the project lay in cold storage for a while till
about three and a half years ago when Rajeev Chawla was posted as additional
secretary to the Revenue department. Chawla, a computer science graduate from
IIT Kanpur, kick-started the process again.

Karnataka has 67 lakh owners of rural land, spread across 177
talukas and nearly 30,000 villages. Together, they account for 20 million
records of rights, tenancy, and certification (RTCs). Says Chawla, "It’s
the sheer size of the database that is the most exciting part of the whole
project. There are 20 million records. Each record has 45 fields. That’s a
total of 70 million fields."

DIGITIZING KARNATAKA: The Salient Facts 67 lakh rural land holders 20 million records of rights, tenancy and certification System ready and operational in 155 talukas, 22 more in the process of validation Records available from over 150 kiosks set up across the state for a charge of Rs 15 per record. Request for changes and updates can also be made from the kiosks A unique biometric security system that uses a person’s (in this case the relevant official’s ) thumb print instead of a password The department has already collected Rs 75 lakh from user charges and is considering ways to make the system eventually pay for itself Finally, hand-written land records to be made illegal to prevent redundancy and fraud

Initially, the revenue department tried to get its officials
at the taluka level to enter the data in each of their talukas. The idea however
found no takers. So Chawla began to hunt around for private data entry operators
(DEOs) in each taluka. By itself, that was no mean task. However, the greater
difficulty lay in trying to ensure that the DEOs had at least a minimal
understanding of what they were doing so as to get as accurate a database as
possible.

To facilitate this, Chawla put all data entry operators
through a rigorous training program. Besides, 9000 village accountants — the
middlemen of the land records system — had to be assured that computerization
would not kill their jobs. They then had to be trained in order to be able to
use the system.

The citizen connection

If rural land holders still had to beg the local village accountant for the
status of his holding or visit the local taluka office 10 times to get his
records, the entire process would have been an exercise in futility. So the
government has set up over 150 kiosks across the state, where at Rs 15, any land
holder can get a legal copy of his holding.

Copies of the new printed RTCs have been sent to land-holders
in rural Karnataka through the 9000 Vas and the process of registering
complaints is now on (these complaints relate to data entry errors, not land
disputes).

The Secretariat LAN project

This is essentially a file tracking system where in any file, letter or
tapal that is sent to any office in the secretariat can be tracked on a local
area network .To begin with, the revenue department across three floors of the
Karnataka MS building has been put on the LAN and 70 officials up the level of
section level officers have been connected to the network. Eventually, the
project hopes to connect all section level officers and their senior across all
the 40 departments at the secretariat. Each person in each file is given a code
number and the file is tracked based on both this code number and the file
number.

About 300 nodes are up while another 525 are in the process
of being installed. By February 2002, the government hopes to have 1000 nodes
connected to the LAN with long term plans of upgrading this to 1600.

Khajane–The treasure

This project essentially involves the computerization of 225 treasuries all
across the state. Karnataka’s treasury payment system handles over Rs 20,000
crores annually. This consists of, among other things, payments to 13.5 lakh old
age pensioners, physically handicapped people, and destitute widows, and 4.7
lakh other pensioners including retired government officers. The government is
in the process of setting up VSAT links for an exclusive treasury network. Since
these treasuries also act as banks for 4500 local level offices, the idea is not
only to have a comprehensive data on money spent, but also to provide proper
checks and balances on withdrawal. The system will, for instance, not allow any
local level official to withdraw more than his budgeted amount for that period.
According to the office of the IT Director, Khajane should be up and running by
March this year.

Other Karnataka government initiatives include among other
things, the computerization of the Commercial Taxes Department and the Motor
Vehicles department beginning with five regional transport offices in Bangalore.
So, is this good progress? Sometime ago, Anderson Consulting conducted a study
on e-governance initiatives across various countries. And while it found that
these initiatives varied vastly according to the maturity levels of each nation,
there was one thing that was common to most — even the most mature countries
have tapped less than 20% of the potential. Critics of Karnataka’s
e-governance initiatives insist that there is little the state has to show for
itself but Bhoomi. They all agree however that Bhoomi is certainly an exemplary
project.

Sarita Rani in
Bangalore