The Goa government earlier this month launched an initiative to make services offered by panchayats available at the doorstep of the people. Revenue Minister Rohan Khaunte announced the ‘Gramin mitra’ (friend of the villagers) concept through which services available in panchayats, like issue of key documents would be taken to the doorstep of the people. The project taps e-governance and digital routes to provide hassle-free and quick services to the people.
He said the concept revolves around a government representative named ‘Gramin mitra’ who will be armed with mobile and IT gadgets such as a printer, scanner and audio-video equipment to disseminate information and provide important documents. Further, he said, the initiative is a part of the mission to improve governance and deliver services to the doorstep of the common man, wherein the villagers can apply for a residential certificate, income certificate or similar documents which would be made available at their homes.
This concept has been already introduced at Succour panchayat in North Goa, and will be introduced in all panchayats in a phased manner in the months to come by the Revenue Department. However, there is a need to look at the failures of the Information Technology Department in the past.
The much hyped about, Goa Broadband Network (GBBN), a pet project of the former IT minister Dayanand Narvekar, which was expected to empower a minimum of 80,000 households in the State with high bandwidth connectivity at very affordable rates by 2016 has failed in its objectives. The project has been able to reach out to just 2000-odd households in the past 11 years since its implementation, thanks to the hostile approach and exorbitant rates charged by the company. This is just 1.75% of the base target household connectivity figure of 80,000.
Nearly 11 years down the line, the highly decorated project has not been able to benefit the citizens of the State as envisaged during the planning of the project. Neither are the services available nor is affordable connectivity offered to the people. As per the UTL officials the company has laid more than 2000 kms of optical fiber across the state using GPON Technology for fiber distribution. But the only beneficiaries of GBBN are a few government offices, departments, corporations. Moreover, just a handful of them use the full potential of the network.
What more, the project was commissioned by none other than then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and was billed to be first of its kind in the country connecting all taluka headquarters. But by and large the common man is yet to receive his due share of this connectivity superhighway. With the kind of money the public exchequer has pumped into commissioning of the GBBN project, Goans surely deserved a much better deal.
Thereafter came the announcement of the State’s integrated information infrastructure (I-3) Project. The project also involved setting up of 208 Citizen Service Centres (CSCs) and a State Data Centre. The project, billed to be a pioneering effort by the government as it would provide citizens access to a comprehensive integrated system allowing them to avail of G2C services through both, CSCs as well as a web interface, and so also the project would also have the capabilities to provide various B2C and B2B services. But this project never saw light of the day.
Then came the IT Habitat at Taleigao plateau, which was supposed to give jobs to thousands of Goan IT professionals to stop the brain drain but that too was lost in a needless controversy. Later, the Laxmikant Parsekar government announced the IT Parks at Tuem and at Chimbel but those also are under a cloud of controversy. While there has been lukewarm response from companies at Tuem, locals are against the IT park Chimbel. So, while the efforts of new IT Minister need to be appreciated, he also needs to keep in mind that the department made an umpteen number of promises to the Goans which have not been fulfilled.
