5. e-Kranti/ e-revolution: Revamping e-service delivery and integrating it within an ambitious umbrella programme for a ‘Digital India’

E-Kranti, the re-booted national e-government plan seeks to: “redefine NeGP with transformational and outcome oriented e-governance initiatives, enhance the portfolio of citizen centric services...promote rapid replication and integration of e-governance applications and leverage emerging technologies (such as cloud and mobile)...and provide integrated services via inter-operable systems, and build sustainable organisational and human resource capacities”.⁶¹

E-Kranti, as part of its proposed portfolio expansion, is planning to initiate 11 new Mission Mode Projects, one of which will be in partnership with the Ministry of Women and Child Development. This proposed MMP aims at the ICT-enablement of existing services for “welfare and support...training for employment and income generation, awareness generation and gender sensitization”, currently being undertaken by the Ministry.⁶²

E-Kranti further lays down some key priorities such as emphasis on transformative process re-engineering, designing integrated rather than individual e-service projects, and utilizing the possibilities of cloud technologies in designing e-governance applications.⁶³

On the whole, e-Kranti is an improvement over NeGP 1.0, for the following reasons. NeGP 1.0 was a stand-alone programmatic framework for building a common technical support structure for e-government, through back-end digitization and the creation of digitalized service delivery platforms.

E-Kranti, on the other hand, positions e-service delivery as one dimension (albeit a crucial one) within a larger umbrella programme called Digital India, for transforming India “into a digitally-empowered society and a knowledge economy” with 3 inter-related objectives:

1. on-demand provisioning of governance services through digital platforms,
2. universalizing access to digital infrastructure, and
3. the digital empowerment of citizens.⁶⁴

Launched in 2014, Digital India seeks to build on existing e-government initiatives, as well as initiate new programmes as required, across these 3 axes. The programme addresses some of the problems of NeGP 1.0, with a strong focus on connectivity infrastructure development and citizen participation dimensions along with the supply-side e-service delivery architecture. However, the gender blind-spot remains, as Digital India does not have an explicit vision for women’s empowerment and gender equality. e-Kranti, addresses the ‘service delivery on demand’ axis of Digital India. We now proceed to examine how Digital India addresses its other stated objectives.

5.1 UNIVERSAL ACCESS TO DIGITAL INFRASTRUCTURE IN DIGITAL INDIA’S VISION

As far as the area of universalizing access to digital infrastructure is concerned, Digital India has attempted to push the pedal on the following preexisting initiatives:

• The Common Service Centre scheme described above,
• The Mobile Seva service delivery gateway launched in 2011 that enables government departments to deliver services to citizens over mobile and tablet interfaces,
• The National Optic Fibre Network scheme,⁶⁵ launched in 2012, that seeks to establish a country-wide high-speed optic-fibre network, to provide broadband access to the 250000 Gram Panchayats (village local self-governments) in the country.

Progress on the ground on the NOFN scheme has been plagued by “delay in timely delivery of material, not having daily monitoring at the Panchayat (village self-government) level, missing coordination between state-run entities involved in rolling out, and (lack of) proper and timely allocation of funds”.⁶⁶ To address these issues/ concerns, the Government of India set up an expert committee earlier this year, to look into the question of speeding up the implementation of the scheme. In addition to reworking the timelines for implementation and setting a new milestone of December 2017, the Committee has recommended that state governments be encouraged to develop their own models for rolling out the broadband network, in partnership with private players where necessary.⁶⁷

The completion of this scheme is clearly an important milestone for enhancing the maturity of the e-government ecosystem, considering the poor status of last-mile rural connectivity. But in and of itself, in its present form, the scheme may not be able to build an inclusive, infrastructural backbone that can enable women and other marginalized groups to access the benefits of e-government. As a key informant from the Department of Telecommunications⁶⁸ contacted for this study observed:

“While imagining a broadband infrastructure, it is important for us to go beyond a unitary imagination of the broadband at the last mile as an undifferentiated pipe – and think about the different types of services that will run on it. In specific, capacities to handle data-rich services need to be assessed and adequately planned for. Also, it may not be correct to assume that the last-mile broadband retail will be automatically taken care of, by market forces, once the basic infrastructural network up to the Panchayat level is provided by NOFN. As at this point, in rural areas, demand for broadband may not be large enough to attract private players, and so, other creative models for last mile retail involving women’s collectives, Gram Panchayats, local cable operators, need to also be examined. Finally, there needs to be investment in developing relevant content services for the rural population using the digital opportunity, in addition to providing for the infrastructure.”

One scheme that has attempted to demonstrate a model for the development of such ‘relevant content services’, for rural women – is the Sanchar Shakti initiative of the Department of Telecommunications (DoT). Under this scheme, DoT enters into pilot projects with private sector partners, for providing subsidized mobile-based value-added services such as information about crop prices, governmental programmes, health and social issues etc., to members of women’s collectives, in select locations in the country, for a period of 12 months. The subsidy is drawn from the Universal Service Obligation Fund.

The key intended results envisaged by the architects of the scheme, were to “create a demand for information/VAS/ICT services in rural areas (enable the) digital inclusion of rural women, reduce the exploitation and harassment (of women and marginalized groups) due to information asymmetry in rural areas (with respect to) their … entitlements from the government and equip them to demand greater accountability from the local government machinery”.⁶⁹

The scheme seems to have been partly successful in meeting these objectives. As an independent evaluation of one of the pilot projects undertaken under Sanchar Shakti observed:⁷⁰

“(The design of the scheme) cater(s) to a limited set of needs, bringing benefits, but not adequately covering what may be needed to change the information power equations in the local context. The women (beneficiaries) may have queries, and may have citizenship based needs that are not possible to address without human facilitation that entails other resources and investments. A service provider approach may stop at a point from where other pathways for women’s information needs may have to be explored such as institutionalized mechanisms at the grassroots for supporting women in acting upon the information received, by demanding their rights and entitlements.”

5.2 EMPOWERMENT, THE DIGITAL INDIA WAY: MAKING CITIZEN PARTICIPATION EFFECTIVE

Digital India focuses on the following pathways for realizing the vision of a digitally empowered citizenry:

• Using digital opportunity for enhancing informational transparency
• Promoting dialogue between government and citizenry
• Universal digital literacy

Using the digital delta for enhancing informational transparency: The push for open data

The Indian government’s forays in the realm of Open Data predate Digital India. In fact, the Open Government Platform, was considered “an open source data and content management system that can be customized easily to develop open data portals for various types of agencies, including national government”⁷¹ and was one of the numerous Indo-US collaborations that emerged from the 2010-11 visit of the US President Barack Obama. The development of this platform in 2011 coincided with the drafting of the National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy, and “the dominant focus of the Policy (was) towards describing the desired functioning of the Open Government Data Platform of India”.⁷²

The first version of this common data platform (http://data.gov.in/) built on an Open Source technical architecture, was launched in May 2012, and an upgraded version in February 2014. All ministries, departments, subordinate offices, organizations, and autonomous bodies (agencies from now on) of the Government of India are required to share all publicly generated non-sensitive data⁷³ on this platform, in human-readable and machine-readable formats.⁷⁴ Though the launch and up-grade of the Open Government Data portal (OGD) and the adoption of the National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy are significant milestones in the journey to enhancing transparency of government systems, there is much scope for improvement, as detailed below.

1. There are implementation lags in enforcing the NDSAP.⁷⁵ As a recent 2015 research study on OGD reflects, “of the total 52 ministries,⁷⁶ only 32 have uploaded datasets of which 7 have uploaded less than the mandatory 5. Moreover, it remains unclear whether the remaining 25 ministries that have fulfilled the mandatory requirement, have in anyway uploaded all the remaining datasets”.⁷⁷
2. The NDSAP does not establish adequate linkages with older legislations for informational transparency in governance – such as the provision of the Right to Information Act 2005⁷⁸ that mandates every governmental agency to declare the total list of datasets maintained by it (in text, audio or video formats), on its website.
3. Decisions about the extent of granularity that is permissible in open data sets, must be taken, with the recognition that privacy of socially disadvantaged individuals, such as marginalized women, are not compromised because of open data publishing. For example, the state government of Karnataka published personal information collected about women from the backward classes, as part of a Socio-Economic Caste Census exercise, on the website of the Backward Classes Commission, a decision that invited adverse comment from the High Court of Karnataka, for the privacy violations involved.⁷⁹

ICT possibilities for furthering state-citizen dialogue

The major initiative under the Digital India umbrella has been the creation of a digital portal in early 2014 (https://mygov.in/) where citizens from across the country can “come together to share their expert thoughts, ideas and suggestions with the government in areas related to various policies, programs, schemes etc....and work hand-in-hand with government.”⁸⁰ This portal thus attempts to explore the e-consultation possibilities offered by new digital technologies on a wide range of areas – spanning open discussions on proposed policies and bills, to suggestions on naming government schemes and services that are going to be shortly introduced, to invites to citizens for developing governance apps such as the wire-frame for the Prime Minister’s Office’s proposed mobile-app. Even gender issues such as girls’ education have been discussed on the portal. However, as online deliberations are not tied to a concrete policy formulation/revision process, the portal does not succeed fully in its objective of enhancing citizen-voice in policy forums.

In a context where only 15% of the population has Internet access⁸¹ and a significant proportion of the population is textually non-literate, citizen participation in online spaces tends to exclude marginalized women. Numerous civil society interventions have demonstrated the need for context-appropriate hybrid strategies to support women’s local engagement with government such as: participatory mapping using GIS tools to create evidence-based dialogue between women’s collectives and local government,⁸² digitalized news portals to enhance community reporting experiments with marginalized women, and so on.⁸³ Significant e-government innovation is still absent in this area, except for one initiative of the Government of Kerala, the Sree Sakthi portal, that is detailed in Box 3.

The portal now enables women from different locations of Kerala state to discuss and debate a number of women’s rights issues – ranging from political participation and VAW to health. Women with low levels of digital literacy are assisted by office-bearers of Kudumbashree in using computers at the village level offices to participate in discussions. Also, when the portal was launched, a cascade model of trainings was adopted to introduce all members of Kudumbashree women’s collectives to the basic features of the portal.

Though government-initiated citizen participation initiatives are not yet mature, civil society organizations, especially feminist groups, have been actively using social media and social networking spaces as vibrant arenas for their activism.⁸⁵ However, until recently, the scope of citizen engagement and political voice on these forums was restricted by law; Section 66 A of the Information Technology Act 2000, that made cyber-communication of a “grossly offensive” nature, punishable with 3 years imprisonment and a fine. When it was introduced, this provision of this section was presented as a safe-guard against online hate speech and cyber-abuse, and also as a means of addressing online gender-based violence, as India does not have specific laws safeguarding women from online violence and harassment. However, the ambiguity around the definition of ‘grossly offensive’ created a grey area, which could allow for attempts to silence activists and members of the public who strongly critiqued their actions.⁸⁶ Only rarely did the legislation help women fight online violence.⁸⁷ In March 2015, the Supreme Court struck down Section 66 A for being ‘unconstitutional’ holding that it was arbitrary and disproportionately restrictive of the right to free speech.⁸⁸

Universal Digital Literacy

Universal digital literacy has received a massive push under Digital India, through the adoption of a scheme entitled “Digital Saksharata Abhiyan” (National Digital Literacy Mission), that aims at training 50 lakh (5 million) people across the country, in “digital literacy ... which would enable the beneficiaries to use IT and related applications to participate effectively in the democratic process, and enhance their livelihood”.⁸⁹ The scheme, launched in 2014-15, is being implemented through a public-private partnership model across the country. State governments are required to appoint partner agencies who will oversee the entire implementation, right from appointing training centres at the local level to supervising the work of the training centres, and ensuring the maintenance of training standards at all centres under their purview. A bidding process is prescribed for the selection of partner agencies, and selected partners are to be paid a piece-rate compensation for successful completion of the qualifying exam by training participants.⁹⁰

At this nascent stage in the roll-out of the Digital Saksharata Abhiyan, one innovative experiment in Kerala demonstrates a possible pathway for designing an effective women-directed digital literacy intervention, under a partnership model. See Box 4 for details.

The Digital Saksharata Abhiyan (DISHA) has been recently extended to cover all Accredited Social Health Activists (front-line health workers who are in charge of delivering maternal and child health care services at the last mile) and workers of the government-run child care centres/creches, across the country.

A key informant from the Department of Electronics and Information Technology⁹² contacted for this research study reflected on the rationale for extending the scheme to female front-line health and child care centre workers, thus:

“Out of the 50 lakh (5 million) individuals we reach out to through the digital literacy scheme DISHA, we recognize that it is important to ensure that women are covered. Women need to be digitally literate to effectively access their entitlements. It is well-known that when women benefit from public services, the whole household benefits. As a conscious strategy to reach out to more women in our digital literacy efforts, we are extending DISHA to cover Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHAS) and government creche workers, as women community workers are directly engaged in the delivery of public services specifically targeted at women...”

It is important to recognize that the importance of digital literacy efforts directed at women, was acknowledged, even prior to Digital India. For example, in 2013-14, the Gender Budget Cell of the Department of Electronics and Information Technology identified digital skills training as a key priority area for undertaking gender budgeting exercises. Around the same time, a pilot project (entitled ‘e-vidya’) was undertaken as a partnership project between CSC e-governance Services India Ltd and the National Mission for Empowerment of Women (NMEW) for providing training on basic computer concepts to 25,000 women across 6 states in the country. This was completed in September 2013; and NMEW is taking stock of the lessons from the pilot, presently.

The key informant from the Department of Electronics and Information Technology, also shed light on this trajectory in the evolution of digital literacy programmes:

“In the Department, we are cognizant that digital skills training enables women’s empowerment by opening up their access to the employment opportunities offered by the IT sector. Also, this is a space that has traditionally been dominated by men...and skills training programmes specifically focused on women hence become crucial, and so, we have been prioritizing this area”.

On the whole, the most significant shift enabled by Digital India has been its assertion of the importance of demand-side issues in e-governance debates. However, gender related articulations and concerns seem to elude the programme vision and its implementation. In fact, one of the officials interviewed for this research, when asked about the programme’s strategic perspective on gender, said: “ In Digital India, we are committed to inclusion; this means like accessibility for the disabled, we will also think about women.”⁹³

While some top level officials in the system do seem to see targeting women as useful and even important, these sentiments and the islands of innovation spurred by individual leadership in governance hardly amount to a coherent framework for gender mainstreaming. These lacunae are also compounded by overzealousness to simplify targeting through a unique identity system without privacy safeguards. As key components of Digital India, such as digital literacy, are beginning to be rolled out on a nation-wide scale in right earnest, the complete lack of vision about equipping women and the marginalized towards digital citizenship poses additional concerns.