[India] Madhya Pradesh’s ambitious Gyandoot programme flounders

["Irfan Khan" <khania2@super.net.pk>]

[with thanks to "What's New on Digital Opportunity Channel" -
http://www.digitalopportunity.org ]


MP’s ambitious Gyandoot programme flounders

Madhya Pradesh’s much-hyped Gyandoot e-governance initiative seems to 
be working only on paper. Improper implementation and poor 
infrastructure has meant that it has made little difference to the 
lives of the villagers
 

Gyandoot, an intranet e-governance programme started by The Madhya 
Pradesh government in 1999, in Dhar district, To provide redressal 
services and agricultural Information at the village level, now has 
very few takers. The operator at the information centre in Nalcha 
Block In Dhar has no clients. He has no electricity for hours and His 
information kiosks is deserted.

It would appear as though Gyandoot has not been able to provide all 
the 44 services it was set up to deliver. "The main aim was to 
provide prompt information to the people. But, we are still unable to 
do so," says Mahesh Sharma, block development officer, Dhar.

Thirty-nine information centres were set up to make people in 500 
villages computer literate and serve as one-stop shops for 
information. Of these, seven centres have an average of 35 visitors a 
day and six centres are non-existent, as the phones do not work. The 
rest have very few visitors. "Nobody has told us in the village that 
such a service is available," says Teji Singh Rajen, a villager in 
Dhar district.

The administration, however, refutes claims of the system’s 
inefficiency and ineffectiveness. "Wherever there’s a Gyandoot 
centre, people are using it and benefiting from it," claims Sanjay 
Dubey, collector of Dhar.

The Gyandoot programme bagged the 2001 Stockholm Challenge Award and 
the 2001 Tata Consultancy Award for the use of information technology 
at the grassroots level.

Source: NDTV, January 27, 2003 

http://www.infochangeindia.org/ItanddItop.jsp?section_idv=9