ICT for Rural Development: An Inclusive Framework for e-Governance

Rural e-Governance applications in the recent past have demonstrated the important role the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) play in the realm of rural development. Several e-Governance projects have attempted to improve the reach, enhance the base, minimize the processing costs, increase transparency, and reduce the cycle times. Several states have initiated the creation of State Wide Area Networks (SWAN) to facilitate electronic access of the state and district administration services to the citizens in villages. Studies and experiences of Center for Electronic Governance at Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (CEG-IIMA) indicate that significant efforts are required to design, develop and internalize the ICT solutions through well managed reengineering of back-end processes and capacity building efforts to ensure sustainability. Suitable public-private partnership models have to be adopted to ensure rapid development and cost-effective solutions. This paper presents a brief review of the technologies, the rural ICT projects and the issues associated with the use of ICT for rural e-Governance applications.

igi-global.com

Inhibitors and Facilitators of Digital Democracy

2011

Participation in the processes related to e-Governance provides a sense of ownership to the citizens and helps enhance their cooperation in its implementation. However, little attempt has been made to elicit citizens’ participation whilst designing e-Governance initiatives in the rural areas resulting in the neglect of contextual factors in e-Governance initiatives. The present study attempts to evolve suitable mechanisms for eliciting citizens’ participation in rural e-Governance initiatives. Citizen Consultation Round (CCR) was conducted with the participation of 73 villagers from various Indian villages to identify the needs and expectations from Rural eGovernance initiatives (ReGI). To understand and incorporate the local concerns in ReGI, there is a need for the evolution of a series of collaborative and systematic mechanisms. Such an inclusive approach towards the design of ReGI is expected to make these initiatives more responsive to the contextual reality and hence instrumen...

IBMRD's Journal of Management and Research, 2015

In Tripura, E-governance is available for health, education, and livelihood sectors and it provides services like Utility services, Rural Banking, Training Courses (Computer) , Microcredit, Insurance service, Health Services, Online PAN card facility, Adhar Card, Commercial services through Common Service Center (CSCs) to the people residing in the remote areas. CSCs are playing a vital role for rural development through providing various services in the rural areas which were not available before implementing e-governance. Because of e-governance the rural population easily accesses the several services in nearest to their village & also e-governance playing crucial role in the field of rural development. Present study provides an insight into the role of e-governance in providing essential facilities to people of Tripura. The study attempts to reveal the socio- economic status of the rural people in study area; level of awareness among rural peoples regarding e-governance; the services available in the Common Service Centre (CSC) under e-governance. It also makes an attempt to identify the problems during access the services and make necessary suggestion for better e-governance in rural areas.

The Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are being increasingly used by the governments to deliver its services at the locations convenient to the citizens. The rural ICT applications attempt to offer the services of central agencies (like district administration, cooperative union, and state and central government departments) to the citizens at their village door steps. These applications utilize the ICT in offering improved and affordable connectivity and processing solutions. Several Government-Citizen (G-C) e-Government pilot projects have attempted to adopt these technologies to improve the reach, enhance the base, minimize the processing costs, increase transparency, and reduce the cycle times. A large number of rural E-Government applications, developed as pilot projects, were aimed at offering easy access to citizen services and improved processing of government-to-citizen transactions. Some of these have drawn international attention and have won prestigious awards for their innovative approaches. They have demonstrated the power of ICT in rural context and are seen as reference models for future e-government project implementations.

International Journal of Electronic Government Research, 2008

Proactive economic policies combined with the ICT revolution of the past decade have brought about many changes in managing businesses and organizations in developing countries like India. The prowess achieved through this revolution has also led to exploitation of ICT for better governance and rural development. As a result, several ICT projects have been initiated to foster improved governance and facilitate rural development by appropriately linking public and private institutions. RASI (Rural Access to Services through Internet) is one such government-private initiative to promote e-governance and ICT enabled rural development. Our longitudinal research is to analyze the factors related to access to and usage of the services offered through this project in Erode district of the state of Tamilnadu in India. Data for this empirical research was collected through survey and interviews during two time periods (2004 and 2006). Our findings show that the project has largely deviated f...

IAEME PUBLICATION, 2020

Indian polity has been striving for establishing democratic goals through modernizing its political and administrative institutions. With a change in development paradigms, the focus of development planning has shifted to participatory development with social justice and equity. It called for decentralized administration, ensuring people’s participation in decision making and giving priorities to their local needs. The 73rd Constitutional Amendment Act 1992 made the provision for ensuring local self governance through empowering local governments. Rural e-Governance applications in the recent past have demonstrated the important role the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) play in the realm of rural development. Several eGovernance projects have attempted to improve the reach, enhance the base, minimize the processing costs, increase transparency, and reduce the cycle times. Several states have initiated the creation of State Wide Area Networks (SWAN) to facilitate electronic access of the state and district administration services to the citizens in villages. Against this backdrop, present paper attempts to examine the role of ICT in democratic decentralised rural governance in India

National Press Associates, 2018

As we talk about the emerging economies in Asia, the Indian economy is growing faster with 70% of population living in rural areas which develops tremendous pressure on government to give more focus on various kinds of development of rural India. Basically India is a country of villages and to improve the conditions it is important that national E- governance plan (NEGP) seeks to lay down the foundation of different projects. ICT helps to eradicate rural poverty and acts as a major opportunities provider for rural livelihoods. Government of India has a goal to achieve a milestone by 2020 were they can exhibit citizen government interaction at all levels by electronic mode (E- governance). There are various initiatives which are already functioning at ground level like E-Choupal, Kissan Call Centres, Akashganga, Gyandoot, Tata Kissan Kendra etc. Which the help of this government can achieve more transparency and successful administration. This paper gives brief introduction about various technologies, ICT and E-governance projects and the different issues like how to use ICT Technologies for the betterment of E- governance in rural India. This Research is based on secondary data; the secondary data covers different insights from researchers.

E-Governance is an evolutionary path, whose effective implementation requires a complete understanding of its various elements and at the same time taking a holistic view to stay focused on its overall objectives. E-governance journey encounters several milestones that need to be identified and modeled so that efforts invested can be assessed and an appropriate course of action are taken by both the central and state governments to further its way on the path of e-governance. In this context, the paper explains about various issues and challenges of e-governance in India.