India: Sam Pitroda, adviser to the Indian Prime Minister on Public Information and Infrastructure, said the Centre is spending INR 1 lakh crore to bring in a “second-generation revolution” in governance. “Our governance system is obsolete and requires drastic change. If we do not change it, we cannot manage future delivery system for people,” Pitroda said.
“We are running a National GIS programme. Till now 30 different departments of the government used to have 30 different maps of India. But now all of them have agreed to have one map of India. The GIS map of India which is being developed through satellite will have where the road is, where the taluka boundaries are, where the village well is located,” he said.
“The UID project which is being implemented under Nandan Nilekani aims at providing a number to every Indian, and that number will be linked to his entire life,” Pitroda explained.
“The UID will identify each citizen, while the National GIS programme will identify each and every space in the country. Once this is done, it will change the face of India,” Pitroda said.
“We have taken up computerisation of each and every file of the government. Instructions have been given by the Prime Minister”s office to every department to put up their files online, but it is taking some time as all the government officers are afraid,” Pitroda said.
“This step will democratise information, help seekers of RTI and also decrease corruption,” Pitroda said.
“Another important thing that we have taken up is that of computerising all the courts, as 32 million court cases are pending and it takes 15 years for a person to get justice.
“While computerising the courts we realised that they cannot become online until we computerise all prisons and all police stations of the country and we have taken up that also,” Pitroda said.
Hailing the Indian government’s initiative, Pitroda said, “This is the only government in the world which is spending INR 1 lakh crore to implement various schemes for second-generation revolution in telecom sector which will drastically change how we govern our country.”
Source: Economic Times
