India’s E-Governance Journey: Looking Through Common Service Centres

Abstract

India has seen unprecedented growth of information technology (IT) lead in governance structures in the past decades. IT-enabled systems have ushered in a new era of digital transformation of traditional ways of functioning of citizen service deliveries in the country. Governance, thus, has found a new meaning through the currency of digital change. Services which earlier were exploited as reserved for privileged and classy people have become available for common citizens without any rent-seeking or exploitation. The most important factor associated with digital transformation is nothing but access to information and transparency. Every service has now a trace, a link and a face, which can be analysed at a later stage to provide the efficacy of the system and certain room for improvement. Having said these, it may not be concluded that there are no challenges and stumbling blocks on the way of e-governance, ‘digital divide’ being the most prominent challenge in the way of bigger mandate to reach out to all the citizens by the state. However, growing Smartphones and falling data rates have enabled substantial part of the citizens to avail digital services rendered by the state. Even though the common service centre has been operating for quite some time efficiently and effectively, some important challenges have been flagged in the article. A glimpse of the best practices from leading countries doing good in e-governance initiatives is also included in the analysis.