AP boasts of country’ s first e-village

Nandita Singh

BANGALORE: Ramachandrapuram panchayat in Medak district of Andhra Pradesh is on its way to becoming a model worth replicating. As the pilot of EkPanch — electronic knowledge-based panchayat, goes live in Ramachandrapuram, this month, it will become the first e-panchayat of the country. Conceptualized, designed and developed by National Informatics Center (NIC), AP, it takes into consideration all the information and knowledge management requirements of a gram panchayat.

"Comprising 30 main modules and about 150 sub-modules in consonance with the 30 sectoral functions of the gram panchayats, it is a comprehensive web enabled solution for the villages" says AP State Informatics Officer CSR Prabhu. He also reiterates that consequently, "EkPanch project will be extended to all the 29,000 panchayats in Andhra Pradesh".

Ramachandapuram qualified for the EkPanch project, by virtue of it being in the industrial belt and has close to 50 people on the panchayat payroll.

Using multipurpose household survey data, the social security identity (SSID) numbers for the entire population of the panchayat has been entered in the database. The SSID is the critical component around which all the citizen services and the works are built in the software.

Amongst the citizen services already available are birth and death registration, house tax and trade licenses. So far 1,500 births, 200 deaths and 6,500 house tax assessments have been registered. A host of other services included are requests for water connection, advertisement tax, sanitation, etc. which will be made available as soon as the requisite data from the various departments comes through and is updated.

The software is also an effort to plug in the loopholes in the Food For Work program by introducing a coupon system - wherein a wage earner gets coupons for foodgrain, which he can encash at the fair price shops. The software also ensures accountability of foodgrain stock which can be tallied and verified by the officials.

EkPanch also has financial management system, which is an integrated solution for the atomic unit panchayat. It helps generate the financial statement of the year and maintain account of the annual budget of the gram panchayat.This data is to be integrated with the mandal and district level and in a phased manner will be brought up to the data center at the state level.

Not only does EkPanch take care of the internal Panchayat administration, which includes using biometrics for attendance of work, but also bridges the information gap characteristic of a rural milieu. The kiosk at the panchayat gives audio-visual pre-recorded advice regarding farming and various other areas in the local language. Along with the counseling services, the latest agricultural market rates are also available along with the market requirements throughout the state.

(CNS)