Subhash Bhatnagar

Social Implications of Information and Communication Technology in Developing Countries: Lessons from Asian Success Stories

The Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIMA) and the World Bank had organised a workshop titled: Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) for Rural Development to bring together case studies of various applications of ICT that have been demonstrated to make a difference in the delivery of services or products in rural areas. The cases presented illustrate both the opportunities and challenges in the diffusion of ICT within India and for other developing countries. ICT applications can be classified as those that provided decision support to public administrators for improving planning and monitoring of developmental programs, those that improved services to citizens and brought in transparency, and those that empowered citizens through access to information and knowledge. This paper presents successful examples of each type of application of and discusses one application in detail to draws lessons for what needs to be done to promote ICT for rural development.

The Indian software industry: moving towards maturity

Over the last decade, India has made a conscious effort to participate in the global software industry by providing software development services to client companies in the West. We see the Indian software industry as sustaining its competitive advantage and having reasonable growth prospects. In some ways this is a counter-point from many of the earlier predictions in the literature that suggested that the growth of the software industry in India was a temporary phenomenon which exploited an existing opportunity of shortage of software engineers in Western countries and benefited from the consequent moves towards outsourcing.

E-governance for development: a focus on rural India

This book on e-governance for development focuses more on “the governance and development aspects rather than the e.” This, as the author clarifies, is not accidental but rather an attempt to illustrate and bring to focus the social context that plays a major role in the success of any kind of innovation. Going by the title of the book and its setting in the Indian context, it may appear that the book is about the National eGovernance Program (NeGP) and its impact on human development in India. The vision of NeGP is that all Government services should become accessible to common citizens in their locality through a one-stop-shop ensuring efficiency, transparency and reliability at affordable costs. Early experience indicates a focus on regulatory services, rather than the services that can have a high developmental impact. However, the author has used a broad definition of e-governance to include ICT-enabled back-end support activities for planning and monitoring of developmental programs. In that respect, the book will be useful for an audience who is interested in the broader topic of ICT for development and not just e-governance. The first half of the book contains a comprehensive literature review on development and governance, and linkages between the two. The first few chapters quickly acquaint the reader with the history of governance and development research in India. The book then goes on to discuss e-governance in the Indian context. While this half of the book made for an interesting read, we were eagerly waiting for what we considered the meat of the book – the three in-depth case studies on rural e-governance projects, from three different states in India. The first is the study of MIS for SHG (self-help group) projects in Gujarat, the second a study of the Akshaya telecenter project in Kerala and the third case analyzes the reporting system for healthcare projects in rural Karnataka. Each case is from a different sector and while the Akshaya project deals with e-services, the other two are e-administrative projects. It is obvious that the author has spent considerable time in the field studying the three projects – they are detailed and reflect findings at the grassroots level, captured over a span of several months. The case studies reveal important learnings – such as the significance of the role of the state to ensure that the social goals of a project are met along with the economic objectives, and the importance of the field worker to ensure that the project remains locally relevant. While these leanings are significant, many of them apply to any development project and are not specific to an e-governance project. This may not necessarily be a limitation but somewhere along the way, we felt a little short-changed as we were looking for the “e” aspect to have played a greater role in this book – given that the title of the book promised e-governance. The book has a strong focus on exploring the role played by society for successful project implementation and states that “improving systems of governance is a social and not a technological activity.” While the importance of social factors in the success of any ICT4D project cannot be overemphasized, surely the role of technology cannot be disregarded. It is fairly well established by now that considering only the “tech” aspect while ignoring the social aspects in an ICT4D project spells disaster, but the book could have perhaps made an important contribution by elucidating why this happens in most ICT4D projects. The book tries to bridge multiple disciplines and this is a difficult path where few have succeeded. It provides a refreshing perspective on how to evaluate a development project and

Locating social service centres using interactive graphics

The paper explores the feasibility of using interactive graphic based solution procedures in location problems with discrete choices. It compares solutions generated through interactive graphics with those generated through optimization for a problem context where service centres had to be located in rural India. The comparison demonstrates the feasibility of generating near optimal solutions for problems with a certain dimensionality. Broad features of the graphic software are described. The paper also highlights other advantages and limitations of the interactive graphic procedure.

Electronic Commerce in India: The Untapped Potential

This paper discusses the potential of electronic commerce by reviewing the state of the Internet infrastructure, the skill base, and the potential application areas from which Indian organisations can benefit. It identifies the enabling factors as well as the bottlenecks and projects the future growth of electronic commerce in India.

Results from a study of impact of e-government projects in India

The paper presents the results from an assessment study of eight e-government projects from India. The assessment framework measured the total value delivered by a project to various stakeholders on three dimensions: (a) cost to clients for accessing services; (b) perception of quality of service and governance; and (c) agency cost and revenue. Data was collected from randomly selected users encapsulating their experience of using the computerized and manual systems. Impact was estimated as the difference between the rating of the computerized and the manual systems.

Institutionalising decentralised information systems for local level planning: comparing approaches across two states in India

Abstract Since the 1980s, administrative reform in a number of developing countries has been directed at achieving decentralisation of planning through the use of information systems. These experiments have not led to any significant improvement in planning and monitoring of development programmes. In this paper, we argue that a closer look at different approaches to decentralisation is useful in order to draw wider lessons about long-term impact. We trace the process of decentralisation adopted in two states of India, namely Gujarat and Karnataka. While both states are noted for their decentralisation efforts, the degree to which new work practices have become institutionalised has been influenced by differences in the structure of their planning apparatus and different approaches to the implementation of information technology for local-level planning.

A DSS generator for district planning

Abstract This paper describes the experience of the authors in designing a decision support system ( DSS ) for district planning. The iterative nature of the planning process, the need for flexible analysis of large volume of detailed data, the need for frequent interaction with the database, and the potential use of interactive graphics make the context ideal for design of a DSS . The evolution of a DSS Generator through several stages of software designs is highlighted. A proposal is then made for a DSS Generator which will add enough power to existing software that already provides the flexibility needed to cover many application domains in district planning.

Impact Assessment of e-Governance Projects: A Benchmark for the Future

In recent years, a large number of countries have launched “e-government” programmes, and several development agencies and governments have identified e-government implementation as a key policy priority. So, when the Centre for Electronic Governance at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIMA) announced a joint workshop with the Department of IT, Government of India, on Impact Assessment of e-Governance Projects, Vikalpa seized the opportunity to organize a colloquium on the topic based on the proceedings of the workshop.

Decentralised computing for rural development

In most developing countries, the number of micro-computers in use in the field is still very small. For example, only 10-15 micros are in use in district administration in India, whereas each of the 30 departments in the 412 districts in India could profitably use one. Since the expenditure on rural development programmes in India is large, pay off from using computers can be immense. The paper draws upon work done at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIMA) to emphasize the need to provide access to micro-computers at the district level. In addition to large cost savings, there would be other benefits, such as improved quality of data, capability for spatial and model based analysis, and good monitoring and control.