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Journalism of Courage
The sugarcane state of Maharashtra has finally caught up with Bangalore and Hyderabad in the cyber race. Recently it won three of the five annual e-governance awards at a function organised by the Nihilent Computer Society of India (CSI) at Hyderabad.
Three of its state departments were chosen in categories such as best citizen-centric project, best revenue system and best website. But a few glaring holes remain in this cyber success story.
For instance, the website of state registration and revenue stamps is rather hard on the eyes. There is no Marathi version of the site (mahaigr.org) and according to independent Internet solution providers it is rather confusing.
The Department of Registration and Revenue Stamps, won the award for the best revenue system. Being highly paper dependent, the department was under constant pressure to perform better.
A major computerisation drive was initiated in 1998. A pilot implementation in select offices and the website: http://www.mahaigr.org was inaugurated. As a result, transferring an original document to a concerned party is now possible in less than 25 minutes. Earlier the transfer took at least a few months. The project is now all set to be implemented across the state on a Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) basis.
Says Prashant Deora, MD, Puretech Internet: ‘‘The official website is too content heavy and does not straightaway tell the citizens how they can get help from it. It is not regularly updated and there is no Marathi version of the site.’’ He however, added that it was good of Maharashtra to take an initiative in e-governance.
Thane district Collector I S Chahal is a happy man. His collectorate won the best citizen centric project award. ‘‘Earlier, if a student or a farmer wanted a caste or land ownership certificate, they would have had to make several trips to the collectorate before finally getting the requisite document in five or six months time,’’ says Chahal. ‘‘Today, thanks to e-governance in our office,’’ he adds, ‘‘a certificate can be handed over to the citizen within 24 hours.’’
This project, called SETU—which means a bridge in Marathi—was initiated last year by the collectorate to first try out e-governance in the state. Its hit formula has encouraged the state government to implement it in all the 35 districts and 356 talukas (tehsils).
‘‘Our plan was actually quite straightforward. There was a maximum demand for 24 types of certificates in our collectorate — related to caste, land, birth, death, senior citizens and ration card among others — and for this we opened 19 counters, solely handled by NGOs who could do efficient data entry,’’ says Chahal. After the data entry is made, the forms are checked by government officials such as the tehsildar, and the required certificate is handed over the next day. A Rs 20 fee is charged per certificate for the self-sustainance of the system.
Maharashtra PWD Department won the award for best website. The most significant feature of the website (mahapwd.com) is the section on traffic situation on busy routes like the Mumbai-Pune highway and the Mumbai-Nasik highway which is updated every two hours.
The website has almost 350 MB of information spread across 30 sections maintained by a board of trained PWD officers. PWD Online portal provides Government-2-Citizen, Government-2-Business and Government-2-Government details. ‘‘The site has been totally developed by departmental staff,’’ says a deputy engineer of PWD.
Another private website content manager, Wayne Alvardo, feels that though the PWD site is user friendly, it can be improved with an efficient e-mail feedback link for citizens. Says Maharashtra secretary of information technology Mukesh Bhullar: ‘‘The official state website: maharashtra.gov.in, has a Marathi link. And all the e-governance projects initiated by the state will be further improved.’’
