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E-the-people

B. S. Raghavan

THE time is not far off when the preamble ``We, the people'' will morph into e-the- people, signifying the enormous efforts being made in true democracies to electronically integrate the people with their governments, making a reality of the oft-repeated mantra of government of the people, by the people and for the people.

In no country has the objective been so assiduously pursued as in the US. It was as early as in 1992 that the Vice-President, Mr Al Gore, fired the imagination of the people by his evocative reference to the ``information superhighway'' for the flow of i deas, capital, technology, products and services in the new millennium ``at the speed of thought'', as per the vision of Mr Bill Gates. Both the US and the UK Governments have launched Web sites to help citizens pin the various branches of government dow n to their commitment to provide sound, effective, hassle-free and people-friendly service 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The US was the first to enact a path-breaking legislation in 1998 -- The Government Paperwork Elimination Act -- with a view to motivating government personnel to attune themselves to work in ``paperless offices'' made possible by information technology (IT) and communications revolution. The Act requires the federal and state agencies to provide the public by 2003 the option of submitting, maintaining and disclosing information such as employment records, tax forms and loan applications, electronically , instead of on paper.

On May 1 this year, the chairman of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee and the Democratic Vice-Presidential candidate in the November 2000 elections, Senator Joe Lieberman, jointly with his Republican colleague, Senator Conrad Burns, introduced th e E-Government Act to prepare the government more fully for the electronic age and enable ``e-the-people'' to hold Federal and State governments accountable in the matter of prompt delivery of services and efficient and timely utilisation of allocated fu nds. The Bill contains a number of provisions intended to promote the use of Internet in the regulatory process, encourage compatibility of e-signatures and protect privacy of citizens and confidentiality of data obtained from them.

India, in this light, presents a mottled picture. On the one hand, there is a lot of hype and hoopla over the phenomenal rates of growth in billions and trillions of dollars projected for IT-enabled services, with a separate Ministry for IT to promote an d monitor the activities and advances on this front. On the other, Central and State Governments are still lumbering on in the same old rut with the same old contempt for, and distrust of, citizens. Even their right to information is either non-existent or truncated. Neither official committees nor those set up by Nasscom or federations of chambers of industry and commerce have shown the capacity to make a quantum leap in imagination to enlarge the scope of IT to usher in e-government comprising the fou r vital elements of G2C (government-to-citizens), G2B (government-to-businesses), G2E (government-to-employees) and G2G (government-to-government) and conforming to the seven guiding principles of being easy to use, accessible to all, innovative, result- oriented, anticipatory and abreast of new developments in IT, cost-effective and privacy-cum-security conscious.

E-government is feared by phony democracies because it forces them to eschew all that has been the people's lot under their age-old dispensations: Corruption, indolence, incompetence, indifference and insensitivity. For that very reason, it can be anathe ma to powers-that-be in India too.