One can lead a horse to the water but can’t make it drink—fits aptly for the city’s denizens as most of them have been very lukewarm to the efforts of mobile governance (M-governance) spearheaded by the Jharkhand Space Application Centre (JSAC) through over a dozen mobile based applications that put the citizens on the driver’s seat and make them more assertive in terms of getting basic issues addressed.
Disenchanted citizens have forced the creators of the platform to shun the idea of propagating the concept until the rest gets recognition.
The JSAC had launched 13 applications that can be accessed through Android based mobile phones however, the only two became popular- main bhi police and e-garbage. Both the apps, main bhi police and e-garbage, have been downloaded 53 times however, the garbage complaint registration bagged more popularity compared to others with 34 registrations, 5 complaint registration and 4 disposals of the complaints.
“There are many ideas but we are not working on those because unless people use these (apps), it is not wise to go ahead with more launches. We would become a subject of criticism if we develop applications but it is not used by anyone. Success of these applications is not in our hands and we cannot make public take interest in applications,” said Director of JSAC, Sarvesh Singhal.
Other applications launched by JSAC chiefly includes ‘M Samvad’, Jharkhand Blood, PMIS, NMIS, ‘e Kishan’, Inspection Report with total download figure barely reached 249. The e-garbage which appears more promising because of the feature of bringing people close to the administration for day-to-day issues alongwith other features such as number of downloads; complaint registered and disposed is also short of expectations of the developers of the applications.
“The e-garbage application was launched as RMC officials cannot be stationed in every lane of the city. So, we decided to create the app and let the citizens tell them where to lift the garbage from. Unfortunately, these are not used by the people,” maintained Singhal.
The easy to use application for garbage collection issues has integrated officials of the RMC with the application and tags the garbage with the Google map so that the garbage is easily located and then disposed. The applications developed by the JSAC ensure flow of information from the ends-user and officials. Even as it allows a user to submit complains of varied nature it has integrated a feedback system controlled by officials of respective departments to update the status of the complaint.
Meanwhile, bugged by disinterested denizens the JSAC is likely to take the road to popularity with advertisements and keep their fingers crossed before launching more mobile applications.