Digital Dividend for farmers

N JAYALAKSHMI

IT for the masses Education Promoting IT education in schools by introducing IT based education in classes 8 to 10 in certain identified schools; Digitised the Common Entrance Test (CET) allotment of seats for professional courses; and Computerised the SSLC and PUC exam processing and made the results available on the web. Revenue Completing data entry of RTCs for all areas except Coorg, and making it available to the farmers; Organising on-line system to update land revenue data; Established LAN in the revenue secretariat; Implemented systems to track secretariat files and letters; Monitoring Legislative Assembly and Legislative Council questions and assurances; Making all revenue secretariat circulars from the year 1957 onwards available on the web; Developing a link with GIS and facilitating on-line registration of land; Scanning of land registration documents from the year 1998 onwards in Sub-registrar offices of Bangalore and organising scanning of the rest of the documents state wide; Completed SRS for IGR department by NIC; and Computerised the Bangalore South, Kengeri, and Shivajinagar land registration offices. Treasury Computerised payments and receipts in 20 districts out of the 31 districts and 184 sub-treasuries that deal with transaction of about Rs. 20,000 crores; Developed a network centre to handle central database at Bangalore and disaster recovery centre at Dharwad Installing the satellite based VSAT network through STPI. Rural Development Developed a Local Area Network connecting all sections; Developed an office automation package similar to the Revenue department; Installing software for MMR; Monitoring various schemes of the Zilla Panchayat; Implementing system for voucher accounting in select districts; and Developed SRS for a Management Information System in gram in the panchayat, taluka panchayat and zilla panchayat (RDPR). Finance Computerised payment of taxes, filing of returns, dealers registration, vigilance and intelligence activities; Computerised, as Phase I and II of a plan, over 1.5 lakh records of eight tax divisions and digitally monitoring database of over one lakh dealers. Transport Installed hardware and software to record information about vehicles; Developed plans to link vehicle record data with information collected by Bangalore Traffic Police data. Home Equipped 153 police stations with computers with a plan to computerise all future police department activities through the Police IT 2000 program; Computerised police department information such as payroll, PIS, MOB, theft cases, and other records. Developed a digital complaint registration system.

f you thought Indian IT is all about body shopping and ESOPS, think again. For with e-governance fast wiring up State governments and the catchphrase `IT for the masses' gaining currency among our mandarins, infotech is now also being seen as a facilitator for better administration and weeding out corruption. While different Indian States are vying with each other to set in place a technology-enabled network, one particular endeavour deserves attention.

Welcome to the Bhoomi project of Karnataka by which land records in the state have been computerised. The project, which was among 10 finalists for the Commonwealth Award, was spearheaded by the state's Additional Revenue Secretary Mr Rajeev Chawla and had already computerized 20 million records of land ownership of 6.7 million farmers in the state by last year. Significantly, the project curbs corruption, as farmers had to earlier bribe village accountants to get their land records. Now, all that a farmer has to do is pay Rs 15 and get a print-out of their Record of Rights, Tenancy and Crops (RTC). Touch-screen kiosks at district offices help farmers view their records directly. In this system, when a change of ownership takes place through sale or inheritance, farmers can apply for a `mutation' of the land record at the Bhoomi centre. Each application is given a number, which can be later used to check the status of the application. The computer generates notices which are handed over to the village accountants. The revenue inspector approves changes to the land record 30 days after the notices are served, provided that there are no objections. It takes a few days for the approval to reach the Bhoomi kiosk, where it is immediately scanned. The updated RTC is printed at the Bhoomi kiosk and handed over to the village accountant for his or her record. The new owner receives a copy on demand. Importantly, Bhoomi kiosks create scanned copies of the original mutation orders and notices to avoid litigation troubles.

According to a website report, there has been a 50% jump in the number of mutation requests. The computerised land record kiosks have been set up in 140 taluk offices and the remaining 37 taluks were expected to be wired by the project by this year though information is not available on the current status of the project. Also, Mr Chawla was optimistic about recovering the cost incurred on the project by selling data to private agencies and Internet Service Providers (ISPs). It may be mentioned here that the entire cost of setting up the project was Rs 80 million as far as data entry operations for 2 million RTCs in 27 districts were concerned. Besides, the unit cost of providing hardware, construction of computer rooms and kiosks ran to Rs.0.64 million for each taluk. Thus, the total out-of-pocket expenditure on the project was Rs.185 million. This is according to the report written by Mr Chawla himself. While it may be too early to see if all these costs have been recovered, it may be worthwhile to look into the IT initiatives that have gone into it.

The software for the project was developed jointly by the Karnataka revenue and the National Informatics Centre (NIC) and Compaq. It is a proprietary software and incorporates Compaq's bio-logon metrics system, which authenticates users of the software using their fingerprint and makes it tamper-proof. Private data entry agencies tackled the work in an off-line mode at the taluks and the software was also made to accommodate variations in manual records across districts. A training module was also designed jointly by the department and NIC to train village accountants in handling data and transactions.

The state government has also been planning to use the Bhoomi kiosks for generating other information like lists of destitute and handicapped pensioners, families living below the poverty line, concessional food grain card holders etc in the state. Besides, it has been planning to make this data available online for banks and courts so that information on lands and crops is available to enable financial lending and deciding on property dispute cases respectively.

Again, it may be too early to see the tangible benefits of the project, but it shows that 'Silicon Valley' is more than just a glitzy vision.

(N Jayalaksmi is a freelance writer, who writes for dailies like
Times of India)

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