At e-gram panchayat, new windows open

Three years ago, the panchayat of this group of villages had no funds to carry out developmental work. The reason: many families simply won’t pay any tax. Two years back it got a system under which the government has provided the GSWAN (Gujarat State Wide Area Network) connectivity using a BSNL dial-up facility installed at its office.

‘‘There was no proper mechanism available with the panchayat to collect taxes from villagers. After I got elected as chief, I collected Rs 60,000 through public donations to purchase a computer, scanner, printer and web camera for the panchayat office,’’ recalled panchayat president Gunvant Barot. They then got the GSWAN connectivity that was to change their lives.

Data collection followed: names and addresses of villagers, status of their properties, agricultural land records, details about roads, sanitation, education and so on were fed into the system. The panchayat then identified the tax defaulters and launched a collection drive.

What proved to be an added incentive was the facility of getting public utility documents, photo-identity cards etc without any hassles from the office. The panchayat’s annual revenue from taxes had been a meagre Rs 1.60 lakh and the entire amount went towards administrative/establishment expenditure. Now a surplus revenue of Rs 1 lakh has been invested in a Central Government scheme under which the government provides 75 per cent of the total amount while the rest is raised through public contributions.

This is the first group village panchayat in Gujarat to earn the status of an ‘e-gram panchayat’.

Among other things that the panchayat is now able to provide to the villagers are an e-mail facility and information about various developmental and welfare schemes. ‘‘We also display results of the SSC/HSC board examinations for students who had to walk a long distance to reach either the taluka or the district centre for this,’’ says peon Suresh Thakarda at the panchayat office. He operates the system when the sarpanch is away.

Devji Patel, who usually issues land certificates and other utility documents to farmers, says the GSWAN dial-up centre has reduced his burden. ‘‘Now, I can concentrate more on developmental work in the four villages and help the panchayat implement them in time.’’

The public utility documents being issued through this system include birth/death certificates, income and caste/sub-caste certificates and certain documents vital to local farmers like ones which certify the death of their cattleheads and also enable them to sell legally the wood cut from trees grown on their private farm lands.

Narsinh Barot, a local primary teacher, says his loan papers would not have been processed promptly if the panchayat had not issued a no-dues certificate to him. Similarly, college student Rahul Parmar recalled how he could promptly obtain a domicile certificate that was mandatory for him to appear in the recently-held railway recruitment examination in Ahmedabad.

Feeling empowered, the villagers are now experimenting. The panchayat was recently able to cut down the power consumed by streetlights by at least 55 per cent by replacing 95 per cent of the tubelights with 14-watt CFL bulbs fitted with reflectors made from galvanised sheets. ‘‘The idea struck me when I was surfing a website on energy. This experiment is now being replicated by other villages in our region,’’ said panchayat chief Barot.

His only regret is that the dial-up system is slowing them down.

State Secretary (Science and Technology) J N Singh says ‘‘Gujarat has the largest internet protocol (IP)-based IT infrastructure called GSWAN with multi-service facility of voice, data and video, connecting more than 1,400 government offices in all the 25 districts and 225 talukas to the state capital. Now, other states are following us.’’ With the GSWAN connectivity having already been provided at the taluka-level, the government has plans to cover all the 18,000 villages in the state.