Satyavir Singh elaborates on how the administrations of the Village Panchayats of Gujarat have gone the digital way, after the implementation of an e-programme in the state.
Despite being one of the key IT players in the world, rural areas of India are still majorly cut away with technology. There is no doubt that technology can boost the rural economy and also improve administration of a village. But, this would be unfair to say that rural area of every state is deprived of technology. In fact, there is an e-programme already running in the underbelly of Gujarat for past two years, which is empowering the Panchayat rule across the villages in the state. Implemented by the Gujarat CM Narendra Modi, the project E-gram-Vishwagram is turning out to be a boon for rural administration.
Linking the Gram Panchayats through broadband connectivity, the programme is running across 13,693 village Panchayats. After bringing about economic and social revolution in 18,000 villages by providing three phase electricity supply for 24 hours through ‘Jyotigram’ Yojana, the CM has given a new message to the villagers of India by successfully strengthening the villages through technology. “This government has infused a new life in to the entire Panchayati Raj system by introducing them to technology. An era of technology enabled rural empowerment has begun,” said Modi during the launch of the programme. Of these, 7,400 village panchayats have Ku Band facility and are well connected to the Bhaskaracharya Institute for Space Application and Geo Informatics (BISAG), Gandhinagar, for two-way audio and one-way video facility.
Currently, all the Village Panchayats are entitled to give few services to villagers like birth certificate, death certificate, and farmer’s status certificate, document for caste certificate, income certificate, tax collection receipts and application forms for various development schemes
Now, technology provider companies like Google, Microsoft, Intel and Cisco have also roped in the programme to bridge the digital divide between rural and urban Gujarat. Google has signed an agreement with the state government for running the e-Gram website. Software giant Microsoft has also joined hands with the state government to devise an e-learning curriculum for village entrepreneurs, while Intel is helping in spreading computer literacy among the village children. Cisco is providing ICT-based agricultural services like soil health cards, SMS-based alerts and agri-resource directory services.
Gujarat has become well known in the world for its road infrastructure network of ‘Rajmarg’ so also now it has been known in the country for ‘Rural Communication Digital Road Map’. The power of the ‘E-Gram’ and ‘Jyotigram’ projects is so immense that this government wishes to fulfill the dream of remarkable improvement in the education of the villages, and to see that the villages get the facility of ‘Telemedicine’ for health care.
He also stated that, after the grand success of ‘Vibrant Gujarat’, the government of this state equally cares for its common man of the villages, and for their comforts and care.
