3. E-gov takes off: National e-governance plan (2006) and its key elements

The National e-governance Plan (NeGP) was formulated by the Department of Information Technology and the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances, in 2006, with the vision of “Make all Government services accessible to the common man in his locality, through common service delivery outlets and ensure efficiency, transparency and reliability of such services at affordable costs to realize the basic needs of the common man”.31 As the following discussion on its key elements reveals, NeGP provided “a well integrated and solid basis for technology and financial enablement of e-governance activity in India which was hitherto missing”.32 However, it failed to chalk out a strategy for how digitally-enabled governance reform can bring about accountable governance towards social inclusion and thus, the gender equality agenda was overlooked.

3.1 STATE DATA CENTRES AND SERVICE DELIVERY GATEWAYS: CREATING GOVERNMENTAL INFRASTRUCTURE FOR E-SERVICE DELIVERY

The NeGP provided for the establishment of State Data Centres to “consolidate services, applications and infrastructure to provide efficient electronic delivery of (digitally-enabled governance) services”.33 In particular, the State Data Centres were entrusted with managing the development of the technical backbones that would enable the transition to online service delivery: the Electronic Service Delivery Gateways and the State Wide Area Networks.

Electronic Service Delivery Gateways are the “standardized interfacing, messaging and routing switch(es) through which various players such as departments, front-end service access providers and back-end service providers can make their applications and data inter-operable”.34 State Wide Area Networks refer to the “converged backbone network for data, voice and video communications throughout a State/Union Territory”.35

3.2 MISSION MODE PROJECTS: A PUSH FOR BACKEND DIGITALIZATION

The NeGP (2006) also focused on speeding up back-end digitalization in specific governmental agencies, in order to enable a quick transition to online service delivery, by instituting 27 Mission Mode Projects – some led by the Union government, others by state governments, and a few that were to be implemented jointly by the Union and state governments.

These Mission Mode Projects (MMPs) mainly supported the design of digitalized service delivery programmes in select areas of governance such as income tax, insurance, pension, passport services, and agriculture, instituting e-service delivery systems at the district level etc. In 2011, 4 additional projects were introduced in the areas of health, education, postal services, and digitalization of the public distribution system in India, which took the total number of MMPS to 31.

In the sections that follow, we proceed to examine 3 MMPs in greater detail:

  1. The health sector MMP, as it is the only one out of this list of 31 which pertains to a public service specifically targeted at women,
  2. ‘Common Service Centre (CSC) scheme’ and
  3. Unique Identification scheme ‘Aadhar’ (UID)

The CSC and UID projects have been crucial in shaping e-governance development in India, as they have tackled head-on the question of developing an effective and efficient country-wide support architecture for digitally-enabled public service delivery. These 2 projects have also, albeit inadvertently, generated considerable public debate about gender issues and concerns around socially marginalized groups in the transition from legacy systems to e-service delivery.

Health sector MMP

The health sector MMP has focused mainly on the development of a centralized mechanism for tracking the delivery of maternal and child health care services (in specific, a Mother and Child Tracking System) by monitoring front-line health extension workers delivering antenatal and post-natal health care services at the village level. Some state governments have introduced their own innovations, such as the IVR-based health information service of the Government of Uttar Pradesh,36 and the Health Advice Call Centre of the Government of Maharashtra.37

However, it is important to note here that the overwhelming emphasis of the e-health MMP has been on the creation of “a bureaucratic apparatus that enables centralized tracking of health spending rather than strengthening decentralized communitycentred accountability mechanisms”.38 This has meant that interventions in this area lack a women’s rights orientation, and tend to pursue a welfare approach.

‘Common Service Centre’ scheme/MMP

The Common Service Centre (CSC) scheme, launched in 2006, has sought to set up a country-wide network of ICT-enabled single window service delivery centres, across all 250,000 Gram Panchayats (village self-government bodies), under a publicprivate partnership model. The scheme’s stated objective is that of “develop(ing) a platform that can enable government, private and social sector organizations to align their social and commercial goals for the benefit of the rural population in the remotest corners of the country through a combination of IT-based as well as non- IT-based services”.39

To realize this objective, the CSC scheme has adopted the following implementation structure:40

  • at the lowest level, a local Village Level Entrepreneur
  • at the middle level, a Service Centre Agency (SCA, loosely analogous to a franchiser). The SCAs are usually big corporate entities.
  • at the top level, a governmental body designated by the state, the State Designated Agency (SDA)

The roll-out of the scheme has been smooth only in the few states that have modified the intermediary structure in the scheme guidelines by instituting a dedicated public sector agency, instead of a corporate entity, to perform the role of the SCA.

Fulfilling satisfactorily the twin mandate of financial sustainability and inclusive service delivery has proven to be a tall order for the CSC scheme. In fact, Ray and Kuriyan (2007: pp 1, 10) who studied CSC centres have concluded that the village level entrepreneurs, because of the pressures to break even, may not focus enough on vulnerable groups and marginalized women, who “are less than ideal customers because of their lack of ability (or willingness) to pay for services on an ongoing basis”.41

Also, in a bid to strengthen the implementation of the CSC scheme, in 2009, the Government of India set up a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) entitled ‘CSC e-governance Services India Limited’, incorporated as a private company, to monitor the activities of the SCAs. Paradoxically, the SCAs are also shareholders of the company. This raises concerns about the interests that drive policies for the introduction of ICTs in public service delivery and digital learning programmes.42 It also highlights the potential accountability deficit in public-private partnership approaches in e-government implementation.43

The discussion shows how in single window programmes for last mile access the state’s intent to empower women and the entrepreneur’s profit motive can be at loggerheads. This can undermine women’s right to access public information and services.44 Weak governance of Private Public Partnerships can also compromise citizen interests of women beneficiaries.

Unique Identification Number/ Aadhar project

The ambitious UID ‘Aadhar’ project is an effort to “create a universal identity infrastructure, a foundation over which public and private agencies can build services and applications that benefit residents across India...(through) issuing every resident a unique identification number linked to the resident’s demographic and biometric information, which they can use to identify themselves anywhere in India, and to access a host of benefits and services”.45

In other words, the UID project aims at creating a mechanism that will enable the assembling together of various data traces associated with a specific individual, which are currently scattered across multiple data-bases of different agencies.46 This project was formally rolled out in 2009, under the aegis of a governmental agency expressly constituted for this purpose – the Unique Identification Authority of India/ UIDAI.

Aadhar is a critical pivot in the Indian government’s current plans for a complete switch-over to direct benefit transfers in lieu of subsidy spending, in order to minimize ‘leakages’ and corruption in welfare schemes. The support infrastructure the government envisions for this new welfare paradigm goes by the moniker ‘JAM’ – which stands for Jan-Dhan Yojana (financial inclusion scheme),47 Aadhar Card and Mobile Number. The idea being that bank accounts of welfare beneficiaries can be seeded (the process of linking a database to Aadhar numbers) with their Aadhar Card Number, and mobile numbers linked to Aadhar Cards, in order to create an authentication mechanism for Direct Benefit Transfers (either into bank accounts or using mobile money transfers).48

Civil society activists have highlighted a number of problems with the project. Firstly, it was launched without prior parliamentary approval. Secondly, this country-wide personal data collection exercise has not been backed by adequate data protection and privacy safeguards. This is a grave issue as India lacks a strong privacy legislation49 with well-rounded clauses on informed consent, and time limitation and purpose limitation of data collection exercises.

Thirdly, there is the danger of “functionality creep”.50 There is no legal provision that requires the government to re-evaluate the effects on individual privacy, in every instance of Aadhar-seeding (the process of linking a database to Aadhar numbers). What this means is that the government can create massive interlinked databases about citizens.

A Public Interest Litigation (PIL) was filed in the Supreme Court of India in 2014, challenging the constitutionality of the Aadhar project. And In its final judgment delivered in 2015, the Court ruled that the linking of Aadhar to welfare schemes could be done on a voluntary basis, but no person could be deprived of any benefit because of the lack of an Aadhar Card. However, in the current context where there is a huge push for Aadhar-enabled Direct Benefit Transfers (DBTs), it may well become ‘mandatory by default’. In January 2015, the Union Government announced its decision to roll-out such Aadhar-enabled DBTs for 33 different schemes of 14 ministries/departments.51

 


  1. Government of India (2006), National e-Governance Plan, http://india.gov.in/e-governance/national-e-governance-plan, Retrieved 17 November 2015.
  2. Singh,P. (2008), Recommendations for meaningful and successful e-government in India,op.cit., pp 17.
  3. http://deity.gov.in/content/data-centre , Retrieved 17 November 2015.
  4. http://deity.gov.in/content/nsdg-dpl-e-infra-str, Retrieved 17 November 2015.
  5. India has a quasi-federal polity, comprising of states/union territories that are integral parts of the Union of India. For more on State Wide Area Networks, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Wide_Area_Network, Retrieved 17 November 2015.
  6. Khurana, M. (2014), Aarogyam – An ICT-based community centric approach for improving reproductive and child health, http://nisg.org/files/documents/UP1418303342.pdf, Retrieved 17 November 2015.
  7. Rao, A.K. (2014), Case studies on e-governance in India, http://nisg.org/files/documents/UP1418304090.pdf, Retrieved 17 November 2015.
  8. Gurumurthy, A. and Chami, N. (2013), Digital technologies and gender justice in India – An analysis of key policy and programming concerns, http://itforchange.net/sites/default/files/IT%20for%20Change%20-%20HLPC%20Submission%20-%2016%20April%202014-1.pdf , Retrieved 17 November 2015.
  9. Department of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India (2006), Guidelines for implementation of the Common Service Centres Scheme in states, http://nisg.org/files/documents/A02010001.pdf, Retrieved 17 November 2015.
  10. Ibid and IT for Change (2012), Exploring an institutional model for Community Knowledge Centres: A research study for the Karnataka Knowledge Commission, http://www.itforchange.net/node/969, Retrieved 17 November 2015.
  11. Kuriyan, R. and Ray, I., (2007), Public-Private Partnerships and Information Technologies for Development in India, http://tier.cs.berkeley.edu/docs/Renee-ppp-ictd2007.pdf, Retrieved 17 November 2015.
  12. For example, CSC e-governance Services India Limited has held public consultations that call to question the legitimacy that a corporate entity can have in undertaking policy discussions with the wider public 43 Singh, P.J. (2013), Technology in governance – An agenda for centralisation, privatisation and depoliticisation, http://www.itforchange.net/Technology_in_governance-An_agenda_for_centralisation_privatisation_and_depoliticisation, Retrieved 20 November 2015.
  13. Singh, P.J., Gurumurthy, A. and Nandini, C. (2012), Exploring an institutional model for community knowledge centres – A research study for the Karnataka Knowledge Commission, http://www.itforchange.net/taxonomy/term/317, Retrieved 20 November 2015.
  14. UIDAI website (2012), page now offline.
  15. Lips, A.M.B. 2006. E-Government Under Construction: Challenging Traditional Conceptions of Citizenship. In: V.Koutrakou and P.Nixon (eds) Ctrl, Alt, Delete: Re-booting the State via e-Government. London: Routledge and Chattapadhyay, S. 2014. Information, infrastructure, inclusion: Research Notes on Materiality of Electronic Governance in India. http://itforchange.net/inclusionroundtable2014/blog/view/94/information-infrastructure-inclusion-research-notes-on-materiality-of-electronic-governance-in-india Retrieved 15 January 2015.
  16. The Jan Dhan Yojana is a financial inclusion scheme that aims at enabling members of marginalized households to open zero-balance bank accounts.
  17. Press Information Bureau (2014), Wiping every tear from every eye: The Jan Dhan Yojana, Aadhar, and Mobile Numbers Provide the Solution, http://pib.nic.in/newsite/PrintRelease.aspx?relid=116028, Retrieved 20 November 2015.
  18. Singh, S. (2014), Panel rejects Govt claim that IT Act protects citizen privacy, http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/info-tech/panel-rejects-govt-claim-that-it-act-protects-citizens-privacy/article5685809.ece, Retrieved 20 November 2015.
  19. Menon-Sen,K. (2015), Aadhar: Wrong Number or Big Brother Calling, Socio-legal Review, Vol 11(12).
  20. Ramachandran, R. (2015), Narendra Modi government pushes for UPA’s direct benefit transfer scheme, http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2015-01-28/news/58546672_1_bank-accounts-beneficiaries-dbt, Retrieved 20 November 2015.