Success of "Bhoomi" - eGovernance project of Karnataka state govt.

Slowly and steadily, e-Governance projects have started making a mark in India. From: Right click to e-asy governance- The Times of India article:

- It just takes 2 min. to get your land records. (Compared to endless queues earlier + bribes etc.)
- 4.06 crore farmers have used this service, paying about Rs. 61.94 crores for the service; roughly about Rs. 15/- per use. (This is probably for period of about 2000 to 2005.)
- Most important, the service is available via 203 kiosks all over the state.
- To ensure there is no unathorized tampering of records, officers have to use their fingerprints to get access.
- Linked online with banks and courts, all associated processes (such as taking loans, resolving litigations) have become much simpler and taking less time.
- Estimated Rs. 2500 crores savings from controlling losses due to tampering from Bangalore alone.

This successful implementation and goes a long way to give confidence in the eGovernance systems.

Even in Maharashtra, the system has been put into place.

Maturity from the governing class is still slow to come. In a recent local news, the corporaters of Pune Municipal Corporation demanded a return to manual system to collect the taxes because servers were not functioning properly for a month. They could have as well demanded to know why PMC is not able to maintain its servers in nice way. (Perhaps it is due to common problem of not having to find right people/companies who can provide such services in reliable manner.)

Whatever it is, we see strong winds of change, and it is bound to take everyone along with it ...