e-Governance in Rural Punjab

Any nation‟s development depends upon the inclusive growth of the citizens residing in different corners of that nation irrespective of their cast, creed, gender, class, economic or demographic situation etc. In order to have the inclusive growth the efforts are made to eradicate the barricades like corruption, red tapism by adopting the way of e-Governance. Therefore, Information communication technology is the best way for reaching the masses and providing them e-services which leads to a true digitalised transformation. Digitalisation is helping in reaching the underprivileged section of society by providing them the access to the basic services. Through this the movement of e-Governance provides a vision to accomplish the dream of inclusive growth. Not leading behind India is also making efforts towards inclusive growth and in this direction introduced several measures such as NeGP, MMP‟s and recently Make in India, Digital India and Swach Bharat Abhiyan etc. It clearly reflects that India is concentrating upon the power of technology by integrating it with governance and providing integrated e-services to the citizens in rural as well as urban areas. But it is of great grief that the rural India is not yet getting basic services through technology after a decade since the inception of NeGP (MMP‟s), designed to integrate governance processes in digital way in rural as well as in urban areas. The presents research through this paper concentrates upon the affects of discontinuation of Gram Suwidha Centres (a rural e-governance project), an initiative made under mission mode project by Punjab government. Therefore an endeavour to understand the reason of its discontinuation and it‟s after effects on rural people in terms of employment and access to services. The paper is purely based on telephonic conversation done with the VLEs who were created to run Gram Suwidha centres.