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Major e-Governance Projects and e-Governance Initiatives

Gyandoot

Gyandoot is an intranet in Dhar district of Madhya Pradesh, connecting rural cybercafes catering to the everyday needs of the masses. The web site is an extension of Gyandoot intranet, for giving global access.

The site has these services to offer: Commodity/ mandi Marketing Information System; Copies of khasra, B1/khatauni and maps; On-line registration of applications; Income Certificate; Domicile Certificate (mool niwasi); Caste Certificate; Landholder's passbook of land rights and loans (Bhoo adhikar evam rin pustika).

Warana

The primary objective of the recently launched Wired Village project is to demonstrate the effective use of IT infrastructure in the accelerated socio-economic development of 70 villages around Warana Nagar in the Kolhapur and Sangli districts of the state of Maharashtra.

The existing cooperative structure has been used in concert with high speed VSATs to allow Internet access to existing cooperative societies.

The project aims to provide agricultural, medical, and education information to villagers by establishing networked facilitation booths' in the villages.

E-Governance in Noida city

Compaq India has joined hands with Electronics Research and Development Centre of India (ERDCI), Noida, to set up a competence centre that would enable e-governance in Noida city and various other states.
Residents will be able to pay electricity and phone bills, file I-T returns, register marriages and deaths, among other things at information kiosks located in the city.

Once the project becomes fully operational citizens can pay utilities, get grievance redressal and a variety of other essential jobs through these info kiosks.

"RajNidhi": Information kiosks

"RajNidhi" is a web enabled information kiosk system developed jointly by Rajasthan state's Department of Information Technology and Rajasthan State Agency for Computer Services (RajComp).

Earlier on March 23, 2000, Nayla became the first village of Rajasthan to have a "Raj Nidhi Information Kiosk" when the US President, Mr. Bill Clinton visited this village to observe the functioning of a Gram Panchayat.

"Raj-SWIFT": Rajasthan government's Intranet

The Rajasthan States Department of Information Technology (DoIT) has developed Governments own Intranet called as "raj-SWIFT". SWIFT here stands for Statewide Intranet on Fast Track.

This system which has been built using Internet technology and tools, would facilitate online data, text and e-mail communication between the office of the Chief Minister and all the 32 District Collectors on one-to-one basis, thus bringing the Chief Executive of the State and the district administration close enough to be just a mouse click away.

Mechanism of Single Window Clearance System

To overcome the inordinately long time required to obtain the statutory approvals/licences etc. from various government departments/agencies, the Bureau of Industrial Promotion & Office of the Commissioner (Investment & NRIs), Government of Rajasthan, has introduced a Single Window Clearance System through a Single Composite Application Form.

Centre for Electronic Governance, Ministry of Information and Technology, Govt. of India

The MIT website features the Centre for e-governance set up by the Ministry of Information and Technology (MIT), Govt. of India.

Apart from offering e-governance solutions and services, the Centre showcases applications by various IT majors like C-DAC, CMC, IQ Virtuals, Microsoft, NIC and Oracle. This list will expand soon.

The Centre aims to offer services such as technical consultation, proof of concept and thematic presentations, apart from creating awareness amongst decision makers at the Central and State level and helping them in defining and implementing process and policy changes for effective e-Governance.

Centre for Electronic Communities

The IBM Centre for Electronic Communities, Institute for Electronic Government, is a leadership resource in strategy, policy and development of online resources in Government, education and healthcare.

Commonwealth Secretariat's Centre for Electronic Governance

As part of its activities on Public Services Management, as mandated by the Commonwealth Programme "Towards a New Public Administration", the Management and Training Services Division of the Commonwealth Secretariat has announced the launch of a special focus centre under the name of The Centre for Electronic Governance. Currently the Centre is a virtual organisational entity.

The status of the Centre's physical manifestation is the subject of discussions and consultations with a number of organisations and institutions.

National Informatics Centre

This is the site if a premier IT organization in India which provides state-of-the-art, solutions for the IT needs of the Government at all levels

The NIC home page gives access to a comprehensive Directory(http://goidirectory.nic.in/) providing links to web sites of Government of India Ministries, Departments, States, Organizations, Union Territories.

Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances

This is a section of the website of the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances under the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions of the Indian Government.

It has well categorized links to E-Governance initiatives from around the world and a review of the Indian experience with E-Governance.

eGov 2.0 is an evolutionary step towards a more efficient, inclusive and participative government through adoption of a set of new trends in business models, operational models, financial models and technological models. Gov 2.0 is about "putting government in the hands of citizens.” The government’s role is to provide open data, web services, and platforms as an infrastructure.

A website is just the beginning of eGov. In departments’ websites, FOUR stages can be identified: One, just basic website; Two, Interactive website in the form of email, feedback, and downloadable forms; Three, complete and secure transactions based; Four, Transformation based . There have also been efforts to use of Social Media (Facebook, blogs etc.) to get citizens feedback. This is being called eGov 2.0

Delegated Legislation

Delegated Legislation and why it is necessary

 It is also called subordinate, ancillary, delegated, administrative, secondary or Quasi-legislation. In modern times, it is not always possible for the legislatures to make laws providing every detail. In view of newer areas emerging, law-making today has become not only time consuming but also an increasingly complex and technical affair.

Legislature can lay down the policy and purpose of the legislation and leave it to the executive, experts and technocrats to provide for working details within the framework of the enactment by way of rules, regulations, bye-laws or other statutory instruments.

Provisions made for delegated legislation aim to obtain flexibility, elasticity, speed, and opportunity for experimentation. Emergence of modern welfare State and the complexity of law making arc the primary causes for the delegated legislation. Subordinate legislation contains details necessary to ensure that the Act will operate successfully.

Subordinateness’ in subordinate legislation has two dimensions:

Executive which is subordinate to the legislature and
nature of the legislation itself.
Delegated legislation is ancillary and cannot replace or modify the parent law nor can it lay down details which are contradictory to substantive law. If subordinate legislation tends to replace or modify the provisions of the basic law to attempts to lay down new law, it is struck down as ultra vires.

Factors Responsible for the Growth of Delegated Legislation

a. In India, legislature meets for about 100 days in a year. There is pressure on its time. Therefore, it legislates on the broad principles and leaves marginal and minor details- essentially operational- to the Executive

b. Legislation is increasingly becoming technical like intellectual Property Law, biotechnology, genetically modified organisms, tax laws etc. Parliament is not expected to have knowledge over these matters

c. Democratisation of rule-making process by providing for consultation With affected interests”.

d. Further, socio-economic schemes being experimental in the initial stages, practical difficulties cannot be foreseen by the broad law. For example MGNREGA.

River Water Disputes In India

The Seventh Schedule of the Constitution contains the legislative powers of federal and state governments. Water is a state subject and is included as entry 17 in list 2 (i.e., subject matters for state legislation). This entry reads: “Water, that is to say, water supplies, Irrigation and canals, drainage and embankments, water storage and water power subject to the provisions of Entry 56 of List 1”. The role of federal government is stipulated in entry 56 of List 1: “Regulation and development of inter-State rivers and river valleys to the extent to which such regulation and development under the control of the Union is declared by The Parliament by law to be expedient in the public interest”.

When a “Water dispute” arises between two or more state governments, the following is the procedure to resolve the same:

Article 262 of the constitution empowers the Parliament to make laws for the adjudication of inter-state water disputes. That article also permits the Parliament to exclude such disputes from being referred to the Supreme Court.

The Inter States Water Disputes (ISWD) Act, 1956, was enacted by the Parliament to deal with inter-state water disputes. Government of India can set up a tribunal to settle such a dispute when one or more riparian states of an inter-state is/are of the opinion that their interests are (or are likely to be) affected by actions or plans of other states, they can request the government of India to constitute a tribunal under the Act. Within a year ‘of receiving such a request and when convinced that such dispute cannot be resolved through negotiations, the government of India shall constitute a tribunal to hear the disputes concerning claims of water sharing and adjudicate an award. Such a tribunal should have three members who should be judges of the supreme court or the high court and are appointed by the Chief Justice of India; the government of India can appoint up to two persons to assist the tribunal; after considering all the aspects as may be necessary, the tribunal gives its report to the government of India; if the riparian states or the government of India need any clarification, they can apply seeking such clarification from the tribunal within 90 days; the tribunal may give further clarifications. Then the report, called award, is published by the government of India in the official gazette. Once it is published, the award is binding on all the Parties and it is deemed equivalent to an order or decree of the Supreme Court. The act also empowers the central government to make schemes and constitute an authority to implement the tribunal’s award.

So far, five Inter-state water disputes tribunals have been constituted

Krishna Water Disputes Tribunal (1969- 1976)
Narmada Water Disputes Tribunal (1969- 1979)
Godavari Water Disputes Tribunal (1969- 1980)
Ravi and beas Waters Tribunal (1986 and report is still to be submitted)
Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal (1990-2007).
Changes in the 1956 Act made in 2002 by Parliament

The fo1lowing provisions were introduced through an amendment to the 1956 Act in 2002

The limit of one year from the date of receipt of a request by government of India to constitution of a tribunal
The requirement for the tribunal to give its award within three years (with a provision that government of India can extend this by another two years)
The provision for central government to appoint two assessors to assist the tribunal.
River Boards Act, 1956

In order to promote integrated and optimum development of waters of inter-state river and river valleys, under Entry 56 of List-I of the Constitution (Union List), Parliament enacted the River Boards Act, 1956. The Act contemplated the appointment of river boards by the central government in consultation with the state governments. These boards are expected to promote development of irrigation, drainage, water supply, flood control and hydro-electric power.

Cauvery Water dispute

  The Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal’s final verdict has granted Tamil Nadu 419 thousand million cubic feet (tmcft) of water out of the 740 tmcft in the river basin, though the actual release from Karnataka to Tamil Nadu will be only 192 tmcft annually.

Karnataka, which was allocated 270 tmcft of the water, has decided to file a review petition before the same panel. Kerala is granted 30 tmcft Puducherry the fourth riparian state (UT) has been granted seven tmcft of water out of the 192 for Tamil Nadu.

The tribunal was constituted in 1990 and had given an interim order allocating 205 tmcft of water to Tamil Nadu in 1991. The final order would supersede the agreements of 1892 and 1924 between the then governments Madras and Mysore.