India is far behind in e-gov: Advani

CHENNAI: According to Deputy Prime Minister LK Advani, India is still far behind in its overall e-governance performance. He was speaking at the Inaugural session of the 7th National E-Gov Conference in Chennai. "I am told that in the e-governance Index of 133 countries, India’s score is 1.29 as against the global average of 1.62. Our rank in the world is 77, and our performance is categorized as ‘minimal’." But he stated that this is paradoxical where India is today globally recognized as one of the leading powers in IT. Yet India is behind in introduction of IT for e-governance. "Our government is committed to removing this mismatch at the earliest," he added.

Advani till some time back had the belief that IT could be used only in economy, edutainment, education, entertainment etc, but never in governance. "I knew of course, G-Governance, stands for Good Governance or Su-raj. It has been my longstanding belief that, although India won Swaraj in 1947, the dream of the stalwarts of our Freedom Movement that Swaraj (self governance) would usher in Su-raj (good governance) is not yet fulfilled. Today after seeing India’s shining progress in the field of Information and Communication Technology during the past five and a half years of our Government, I am fully convinced that e-governance is indispensable for G-Governance."

Advani said that measures are being adopted by the Central Government to give thrust to e-governance. In his speech, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had announced that their Government would soon implement a "comprehensive program to accelerate e-governance government levels. " Advani himself had chaired an empowered sub-committee of the National Development Council (NDC) on Governance Reforms with special reference to E-Governance, set up by the Planning Commission in March this year.

Similarly, the Department of IT and the Department of Administrative Reforms and Personnel at the Center has prepared an "e-governance National Action Plan", which was presented to the Prime Minister on November 6. The Government will soon take a decision on how to implement it in a time-bound manner and in the coming months they will be rolling out the first missions in various sectors.

Starting the inaugural address on a lighter note, Advani said that his acquaintance with IT began 20 years back with an Organizer. The media reacted sarcastically, where he was photographed using his Organizer to check for appointments with the footnote, "Advaniji is this Swadeshi."

(CNS)