Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Evolving e-Governance in India

The power of the net and its hold over the youth of today has made every political party sit-up, take notice, and refresh their websites!! There are facebook groups, orkut communities, fan followings etc all over the place. Has india reached a stage where it is ready to finally acknowledge that the internet has become an integral part of our lives? The government certainly seems to have realised it. Now with the election process coming to a fever pitch my inbox is getting flooded with all sorts of emails about political parties and their candidates and about groups that have now woken up at this last moment to create awareness and fight against certain issues prevalent in politics today.
The present government seems to have taken pains in creating a number of websites. But they have hardly bothered to give them any publicity or advertisment. So they remain less known and hardly used. I hope they are not classifed Top Secret!!
The Kerala government has a very good and comprehensive website http://www.kerala.gov.in/ they even have a section called 'Mail to Minister" :-P hmmppff... if u threaten to drop dead in front of them they wouldn't listen to your pleas against an issue; so the very thought that pains would be taken to redress an issue after reading emails seems extremely funny.

Thrissur district has 2 official websites!! One maintained by the Kerala Government and one by the Central Government!! and both seem to be equally futile :-P anyway they are not used much by anyone.. so then whats the big deal ... right??
Will there ever be a time when we will never even have to step out of our homes to get government stuff done??
My personal Favorite website is http://www.irctc.co.in/ It has really truly revolutionized our ticket booking process. Hoping other websites will have achieve almost same or even wider reach than it.
PS: Praying that Jaagore reaches their target of a billion votes!! :-)
at

2 comments:

  1. UnknownMarch 26, 2009 at 12:19 AM

    Anumol,
    I agree with your opinion about websites.. Its really very helpful and interesting.. But recently, when we were taking ammuma's passport(she had a passport before but expired in 2004 and we had to take new passport) our experience was not at all tolerable. We submit the passport thru TATKAL scheme. It means passport should be ready max. within 3 days.. And their WEBSITE is very interesting. We all thought- WOW! very nice. esp. maman.was very excited about their site. After submission next day onwards STATUS of passport was written "PASSPORT WAS READY ON SO AND SO DATE" (MEANING NEXT DAY)..one week gone. same msg.. no change. After many try i got to speak to a stupid central govt. employee. To my surprise, he informed me to send ammuma (she is 82) to send to kochi again..some papers missing. My point is that to have a website is really WOW. but someone young and educated should be behind to update it continuously..Otherwise its real stupitidy, if someone really depend on to it..We want all Govt. Employees shoud retire minimum at the age of 40..(Exceptions are there!!)Instead of sending them for training in computers/ IT, waste of money and time..) Give a reasonable amount of pension and let them sit at home and enjoy the rest of time.. at least no public nuisances like this!! what you say!

    -Vellimma

    ReplyDelete
  2. KunjoottyMarch 26, 2009 at 1:04 AM

    @ mini: Yes i totally agree with you!! what our government really needs in these case is young blood! ppl who can really make these things work properly and make them useful.
    the older govt employees just do now see the usefullness of these things and moreover they see them as a bit of a threat as it endangers a few of their jobs!! :-P

    ReplyDelete