E-Governance Enabled Empowerment: Role of IT in Delivering Public Services in Rural Areas of India
Umesh Kumar Arya · SSRN Electronic Journal · 2011
The study investigates the empowerment aspect of community Information Technology (IT) project named Gyandoot in remote villages of Madhya Pradesh. The online delivery of Government to Citizen (G2C) services led to a considerable improvement in the parameters of social and economic empowerment coupled with the development of confidence in the people’s own capacity. ‘Money saving’ and ‘earning opportunities’ aspects of economic empowerment were found to be most effective, while aspects of ‘awareness regarding surroundings’, ‘development of positive attitude’ and ‘access to officials’ were satisfactory on social empowerment factor. The aspect of ‘development of confidence in people’s own capacity’ had the options of ‘sending complaints to officials’ and ‘gathering more skills’ on the top. IT helped in opening up a channel of horizontal communication among the community. Some ‘incidental’ benefits accrued to the people which were not the objectives of Gyandoot. The much discussed issues of ‘urbanisation’ and ‘gender specifics’ relating to development were present in IT also where empowerment was positively related to gender (male), education and people above poverty line. ‘Intermediation’ in IT-enabled development efforts is here to stay.