Mission technology
Rajesh Kumar Aggarwal

The State, IT and Development
eds. R.K. Bagga, Kenneth Keniston and Rohit Raj Mathur. Sage Publications. Pages 325. Rs 380.

Information technology (IT) and IT-enabled services (ITES) have achieved record growth in recent years. While the number of telephone and Internet users have increased manifold, software development and earnings too have increased to a new high. However, the digital divide between the rural and urban sectors, public and private sectors continues.

The book has been divided into four sections—The Route to Development, Challenges Before the State, ICT Initiatives in Developing India and The Road Ahead.

The first section focuses intensively on good governance. It says that governments are now gearing up to appear SMART (simple, moral, accountable, responsive and transparent) and ICT (information and communication technology) has an indispensable role in social, economic and political development of the state. At the same time, the book argues that ICT is not a substitute for good governance but it can be an enabler of good governance.

President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam in his paper, Vision of Citizen-Centric E-Governance for India, visualises e-governance as "a transparent smart e-governance with seamless access, secure and authentic flow of information crossing the inter-departmental barrier and providing a fair and unbiased service to the citizens". He says the primary data requirement for effective e-governance is a national citizen ID card, which should be a multi-purpose, secure and authentic, similar to the photocopy of an individual, with multifactor authentication such as photograph and biometrics-fingerprints, iris-based systems and digital signatures.

The papers by Jayaprakash Narayan, E.A.S. Sarna and Sameer Sachdeva and Rohit Raj Mathur advocate investment in ICT but cautions that such investments should only be made rationally. It would be detrimental to invest on computers in schools and hospitals, if these institutions lack basic facilities such as proper buildings, blackboards, toilets in schools and medicines, doctors and para-medicals in hospitals.

Even though ICT revolution is being perceived as the new engine of growth, the second section of the book points that there are many challenges before the state such as bridging the digital divide, regulating framework to facilitate universal connectivity in India, implementation of cyber laws, organising process documentation and integration of e-governance. Moreover, there are challenges before the state to combat corruption in public life. N. Vittal, former Central Vigilance Commissioner, recounting his experiences, says ICT can act as a powerful administrative tool that can bring corrupt acts of individuals to the notice of the society at large with a much greater impact.

R.K. Bagga highlights some of the critical messages for digitising governments, which are important for government to business, government to citizen, government to employee and government to government (G2B, G2C, G2E and G2G) decisions.

The section three lists some of the ICT e-governance initiatives in rural and urban India. These are eSeva and Saukaryam (meaning facility in Telugu) in Andhra Pradesh and FRIENDS (Fast, Reliable, Instant, Efficient Network for Distribution of Services), IKM (Information Kerala Mission), and Akshaya (a project to spread mass computer literacy at grassroots level) in Kerala.

The Road Ahead, suggests a bigger role for e-governance in overall development of the nation. It advocates the creation of micro-enterprises around technology, promoting public-private partnership. The last paper by R.K. Bagga and Rohit Raj Mathur summarises some very important recommendations based on the three ASCI (Administrative staff College of India) workshops for G2B, G2C, G2E and G2G groups, and records the suggested future action agenda.

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