For Electronic Trading of Land

The Article below appeared in Economic Times August 17th .   The Article discusses a very far reaching idea of Electronic trading of land. Many concepts and issues discussed in the article are not self explanatory and merit a larger article

Given that governments have a monopoly over large amounts of data and information, and given the advances made in information and communication technologies (ICT), there is an opportunity for it to enhance revenues significantly by moving to a paradigm of ‘Service Oriented Administration’ ( SOA).

The government, in collaboration with private sector partners can provide citizens with services that were hitherto impossible to provide, for which there are no brickand-mortar equivalents and which have the ability to enhance economic activity in the country.

One of the first such SOA initiatives that would arguably have the highest impact on the citizens could be next generation of land records that could be implemented through a Land and Property Exchange System (LAPEX ). The basic concept of such an exchange is that if stocks worth crores of rupees could be traded online with absolute security and privacy, why we can we not trade land and property through a similar online system?

Karnataka Government Releases RFP for CSC program in Karnataka

The e-Governance department of the Government of Karnataka has released the tender for establishment of approximately 5000 CSC's in the state. The tender documents have been uploaded in the  Government of Karnataka e-procurement platform. The last date of submission of tender is 17th August.

Brief outline of National e-Governance Plan

The document provides a brief outline of the National e-Governance Plan

1      NeGP Objective

1)    Laying  the foundation and provide the impetus for long-term growth of e-Governance  within  the  country

2)    Creating the  right  governance  and institutional mechanisms

3)    Setting up  the  core  infrastructure  and  policies

4)    Implementation of   a number  of Mission Mode  Projects  at  the  center,  state  and  integrated  service  levels  to

5)    Creation of a citizen-centric and business-centric environment for governance.

Brief Career Profile of Shri S.R. Rao IAS Additional Secretary DIT Government of India

Mr. S.R. Rao is a member of the prestigious Indian Administrative Service having joined the service in 1978. In a distinguished career of over 32 years, he has served in several assignments like District Administration, Rural Development, Urban Development, Ports, Primary Health Service Delivery, and Nuclear Energy. He has taken charge of the current assignment as Additional Secretary Department of Information technology in November 2008. Prior to this assignment he served as Principal Secretary Municipal Administration in the State Government of Gujarat.

Mr. S.R. Rao is best known for the transformation of the City of Surat after the infamous attack of plague in the city in 1994. He took several bold and innovative steps for improvement of the infrastructure of the city and Surat for a long time was known as a model city. For this effort Mr. S.R. Rao was awarded “Padma Shri” a civilian honour of the Government of India and Eisenhower fellow and several other similar honours by National and International organisations.

Mr. S.R. Rao did his post graduation in Applied Sociology from Andhra University and followed it during his Government service with an M.A in Rural Development from the University of East Anglia(UK).

Mr. S.R. Rao is about 56 years of age

Below is a link featuring an interview of Shri Rao published in the outlook magazine in November 97 post his clean up of Surat

Interview with Shri S.R. Rao in outlook magazine

Given the popularity of the Post,  a few updates are provided 

• SR Rao, a 1978 batch Gujarat cadre IAS, presently additional secretary in the department of information technology has been appointed as additional secretary in department of telecommunications as of 1st February 2011
• Shri SR Rao was part of the hand picked team of the Cabinet Secretary to take over part responsibility for management of Common Wealth games. He was made responsible for the modernization of Jawahar Lal Nehru Stadium and ensuring that the events in the Jawahar Lal Nehru Stadium happen without a glitch
• SR Rao conducts probe on Tata-VSNL deal (News of 25th March 2011)
  Telecom department’s additional secretary and 1978 batch Gujarat cadre IAS, SR Rao will be conducting an inquiry into Tata-VSNL land deal after telecom minister Kapil Sibal raised concerns over the disinvestment of VSNL in 2002 and the way de-merger of 773.13 acres of surplus land of VSNL was handled.
  A double MA in social work and rural development (UK), SR Rao is still known for his stint as Municipal Commissioner to a traumatized, plague-hit Surat city. He is credited with cleaning up the city and placing it back into normalcy.

   

The Kuppam Hp i-community program

a description of the Kuppam HP i-community program

Kuppam backgrounder ver 2.101 cp december

View more documents from Anirban Mukerji.

Village photographer program of the Kuppam HP i-community

To access the document link Village Photographer program

Village Telecentre program in Karnataka

Nemmadi program in Karnataka

Authors

1.    Shri Rajeev Chawla IAS Secretary e-Governance Government of Karnataka,

2.    Anirban Mukerji – e-Governance Consultant

Published “A journey through three states Common Service Centres Programme (CSC) Review, NeGP, India” for i4D Magazine August 2007 http://i4donline.net/index.asp

“Nemmadi” in Kannada means peace of mind. The Vision of the Nemmadi project is to empower rural citizens, provide direct access of government services to the citizens and bring government services to the doorstep of the citizen.

1. Introduction

Government of Karnataka (GoK) has been a pioneer in leveraging Information technology in easing the lives of both urban and rural citizens. One of the most path breaking of these e-governance applications is Bhoomi that enables “over the counter” delivery of computerized land records to farmers from the 203 taluka (Tehsil) offices of the State. 

While the Bhoomi program tremendously benefited the farmers there was a demand for establishing of delivery centres for land records at the village level itself. The need for decentralization of Bhoomi catalyzed the development of the “Nemmadi program” program of the Government of Karnataka.

The State Government understood that it could not establish and operate computer centres at every village and hence decided to establish these centres in the villages under a Public Private Partnership model. It was also apparent that these village telecentres would not be viable if only land records were delivered from these centres and for viability, other e-governance services also needed to be delivered through these village telecentres.