If we have to usher in “minimum government and maximum governance”, city governments also have to be part of the process. Though the third level of governance is not yet empowered sufficiently, there are many areas where the residents of cities and towns have to have constant interface with urban local bodies. The 450 or so larger cities among India’s 4,041 urban bodies have recognised the need for and the importance of delivering better services to their people.
While the e-governance agenda required cities to provide at least eight basic services — such as the issue of birth and death certificates, allowing for the direct debit of utility bills and so on — many cities have gone further, in an attempt to minimise urban resident-municipal functionary interaction. Let us look at a sample of such initiatives across the country.
Nagpur has worked on door-to-door collection of taxes. Tax collectors not only visit houses, but using tablets with internet connectivity, collect taxes, issue receipts and allow people to view their latest tax status as well. Gone are the days when you had to visit a municipal office and spend hours to get an issue resolved. Today, you can go to a kiosk, deposit cash and get a receipt.
Surat’s residents can use either their mobiles or the internet for any corporation-related requirement. A time-bound response is assured. This city has also taken the lead in ensuring energy conservation, thereby guaranteeing that around 20,000 of its poorest residents have a secure supply of energy.
Rajkot’s city corporation provides 24x7 service through kiosks and the internet — as well as an interactive voice response system covering a wide variety of areas, such as the issue of certificates, grievance redressal and the issue of licences.
Ahmedabad’s municipal corporation is implementing a new e-governance platform covering 28 departments. In fact, Gujarat is one of the first states to have a statewide network which has hugely facilitated transferred governance through technology access.
Large municipal corporations in Madhya Pradesh have introduced an automated building plan approval system which has reduced the 30-60 day requirement for approvals to a period of 21 days. A notable characteristic of the system is that once an application is filed, it automatically generates various scrutiny reports. This state has a laudable target of making all its cities open defecation-free by the year 2017, and has already succeeded in attaining such a status for four of them.
Raipur’s city corporation has been able to cover all the poor and economically weaker sections living in slums with urban livelihood programmes.
Hyderabad’s “mee-seva” centres number more than 350. Together with over 1,600 kiosks in other urban areas of the erstwhile combined state of Andhra Pradesh and over 6,000 kiosks in the rural areas, these provide more than 175 state services at the click of a button. Bangalore’s IT initiative provides a one-stop-shop for delivering a wide variety of public services through 92 service centres.
In Meghalaya, there is one district headquarters where vehicle registration has been made simpler using technology — links have been established from the dealer of the vehicle right up to the registering authority, so that a physical visit to an office and long hours of waiting are no longer required.
In one district in Jharkhand, all details relating to a patient who visits the district hospital are fully computerised, thereby taking away the hassle of locating the history of the patient during each visit. Another district head has introduced a SMS-based monitoring system whereby the attendance of children in schools gets reported immediately after start of classes and this enables proper functioning of the mid-day meal programme.
In other such initiatives, in Jabalpur, details of all cases in revenue courts have been brought online, thereby enabling the litigants to be updated about proceedings.
One thing which is common to all these initiatives is that where the city or district administrations decided to take the initiative to be more transparent and more facilitative, the system brought in has resulted in doing away with the usual hassles of dealing with municipal functionaries and others.
Whether it is coverage of taxable property in cities in a transparent manner through GPS; or ensuring that garbage is removed without any failure by empowering citizens to upload images of inaction; or making urban mobility better and convenient through providing minute-by-minute details of individual buses over GPS, life is increasingly becoming more comfortable for city residents.
While technology solutions will be critical in upgrading the present systems of city governance, what will be particularly relevant is how the integrated “smart city” platform being introduced will make administration the smartest possible in all our cities and towns.
The author is a former secretary in the Union urban development ministry
Disclaimer: These are personal views of the writer. They do not necessarily reflect the opinion of www.business-standard.com or the Business Standard newspaper
