Government of Indias National e-Governance Plan has a clear vision. It aims to make all the government services accessible to the common man in his locality, through common service delivery outlets and by ensuring efficiency, transparency and reliability of such services at affordable costs.

Like all other UPA-led Congress projects this one too is ambitious with a heavy focus on the aam adami. Not many doubt that the NeGP project is the single most important project that binds together all the individual e-governance initiatives under one roof to ensure availability of government services right up to the grassroots. It is under this project that the government intends to create 1,00,000 technology-enabled points-of-presence called Common Service Centers (CSC) for 6,00,000 villages. The project, which is one of the largest IT public-private partnerships in the country, intends to reach out to the rural have-nots in a big way.

It is not so difficult to imagine how transformed Indias rural interface would be once the CSC scheme, under the NeGP, which will serve as a single window for availing all government and private services, turns into a reality. Senior officials claim that streamlining grass-root governance would not be a Herculean task once the CSC scheme is successfully rolled out. Imagine the transforming capacity of these CSCs to serve rural markets of six lakh villages using technology. One is surely led to believe that rural India will be brimming with vibrancy and life.

It sounds like an alluring dream. The government is trying hard to turn it into a reality by March 2009. However, the fact is that the project has already missed a few deadlines in 2007, after which it did get an extension. While the Government does need to be applauded for conceptualizing such a scheme, what we need to ask ourselves is whether the ground level implementation is really on track.

Some of the other government mega projects are notoriously delayed. Take Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana. The much-touted time bound road development plan under the Bharat Nirman initiative is likely to miss its targets, according to reports. Through this project, the government was looking to provide connectivity to 66,800 rural habitations across the country by building 146,000 km of road by 2009. That too is likely to be delayed till 2011.

Considering that bijlee, sadak, pani are so politicized as election issues and there is no confusion over what a road means, if this project could be delayed so much, it will of course be nave to expect that CSCsa well-intended but completely new conceptwould happen without hiccups.

What is notable is that despite all these, some states like Jharkhand have really progressed well on the targets. So, it will be too simplistic to conclude that the newness of the concept itself is the only reason behind the delay.

Deadline Hiccups
As things stand today, there is no deadline for NeGP; it is only the various schemes and the individual projects under it that are time-bound. Other than CSC, there are two major schemes under the project, the State Wide Area Network (SWAN) and the State Data Center (SDC). SWAN, which was the first scheme to get approval, was meant to be the backbone on which all applications and the services would run. A delay in implementation of SWAN by a state would then translate into a delay in the implementation of the CSCs, as the states would be bound to look at other alternatives for connectivity. Till date only a handful of states have officially launched SWAN, among which HP, Haryana, and Jharkhand were the firsts.

R Chandrashekhar, additional secretary, Ministry of IT and Communications explains: If the SWAN is not in place, then some minimal connectivity can be had through the broadband and the normal network although it may not be a dedicated and reliable network. If the CSCs are not there then you really do not have a mechanism to deliver services in the villages.

He is however subdued when he says, It is not that you will be reduced to zero if anyone of them is not there, but if you really want things to function properly then you need all the three (SWAN, CSC and SDC).

He points out that the ministry had put up a precondition that before states implement CSCs, they should have implemented the SWAN, and before they implement the SDC they should have implemented both the CSC and the SWAN. He adds, So some states which got delayed in the SWAN also got delayed in the CSC and we have tried to make up for that by saying that at least you can take concrete steps for implementation of SWAN.

A person using a touch screen at an ICT kiosk

CSC has been conceptualized as the delivery center for the entire NeGP project. The CSC has been designed as an ICT-enabled Kiosk having a PC along with basic support equipment like Printer, Scanner, UPS, with wireless connectivity as the backbone and additional equipment for edutainment, telemedicine, projection systems, etc, as the case maybe.

The Scheme, as approved, envisions CSCs as the front-end delivery points for government, private and social sector services to rural citizens of India, in an integrated manner.

At a time when inflation is at its peak and the government is already drawing ire from all corners, the delay of the project could well open doors for some more flak. Looks like the aam adami will have to wait a little longer before he enjoys services at his doorstep.

Moreover, with 2009 being an election year, there is a lot of sorting out that the government needs to do to successfully implement the project.

The scheme had been approved by the Union Cabinet in 2006 at a total cost of Rs 5,742 crore, of which the Government of India was estimated to contribute Rs 856 crore and the state governments Rs 793 crore. The balance was to be mobilized from the private sector.

Industry sources point out that when the Union Cabinet approved the program in 2006, the challenges were subdued, as the deadlines were not assessed realistically. Says an official, What is the hurry of rolling out the project? We could have had more realistic deadlines. It is because by three years your IT infrastructure becomes zero value if we dont rollout fast. The ground level blueprint to make a CSC really operational involving front-end and backend stakeholders is also something that is not clear to many, he says.

Senior government officials claim, off the record, that there are huge gaps in the project, and it is unlikely to meet the deadline. Says an official from the West Bengal Government; Nobody doubts the seriousness of the center to push it but there are a bundle of issues that need immediate attention. Connectivity and bandwidth being one of them, if that is not in place how will the project leap forward? We dont have people like Rajeev Chawla (of the Bhoomi fame) in every state. He raises a serious issue of leadership in the states for driving the project.

To that a senior official from the DIT adds, Apart from these serious issues, it is sad that there are hardly any technology savvy leaders with dedicated thought process who can drive such projects, create an enabling environment and bring people together. Constant transfers of IT secretaries too add to the problem.

Other than that there are a whole lot of other issues like the massive power crisis in rural India, which again is quite a dampener, he says.

Under the given circumstances, senior officials closely associated with the project at the center and states admit that the probability of missing deadlines is very high.

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