State Government’s quest to bring panchayats under e-Governance cloud appears to be more on paper and less on the ground. Even after four years of Panchayat elections information sharing related to activities at Panchayat level is yet to be reflected on the portals maintained by districts or the dedicated portal for the panchayats maintained at the State level.
Information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure in most of the panchayats exposes difference between the State government’s e-Governance mission and its implementation at village levels. lack of power, poor infrastructure, lack of awareness about the software applications picked by State government for implementing e-Governance mechanism and maintenance cost are some of the hurdles that led to failure of the ambitious project. “I will check it with the officials of the department,” said Panchayati Raj Minister KN Tripathi.
Notably, the State government had initiated trial of e-Governance mechanism in five districts in 2012. The project was started on pilot mode in- Ranchi, East Singhbhum, Ramgarh, Hazaribagh, Dhanbad, Gumla, latehar and Bokaro. However the project is in limbo due infrastructural issues and financial problems faced by panchayats.
“A website was developed however we failed to maintain it because of financial constraints. Payment of lease lines acquired, deputation of staffs and their payment made the project meet the same fate as several other projects initiated at gram panchayat level,” said Mukhiya of Murramkala, A Mahto. Interestingly, the State government had picked up two software — PRIASoft and PlanPlus — to implement e-Panchayat Mission Mode project in the pilot districts to address core aspects of Panchayat’s functioning like planning, monitoring, implementation, budgeting, accounting and social auditing.
However, the Jharkhand panchayat portal fetches no search results related of any Gram Panchayat under the pilot districts. Ironically, in 2012 the State Government had trained as many as 300 functionaries of panchayat bodies besides 380 functionaries of elected bodies on basic information communication technology to implement e-Governance. Although, the government initiated e-Governance mechanism on pilot mode in some districts it lost sight of other districts and failed to even spread awareness about the brighter side of the mechanism. Mukhiyas are either ignorant about it or they are not being pushed by Block Development Officers in the direction of e-Governance.
“BDO had instructed us long back but we have no idea about how to proceed on this. I will try to get a portal developed once the Panchayat gets fund,” said Mukhiya of Purna Nagar under Giridih Sadar block, Chotu Ram.