Panchayat computerisation a disaster: study

By P. Venugopal the hindu july 18 2004

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, JULY 17. Contrary to the media hype over the last few years, the panchayat computerisation project of the Information Kerala Mission (IKM), for which the Planning Commission had given Rs. 30 crores way back in 1999, is a "complete disaster", according to an independent field study conducted in May, this year.

C. K. Raju, former Associate Professor at the Kerala Institute of Local Administration, M. Arun, a member of the Free Software Foundation of India, and R. Dinesh and Joseph C. Mathew, software professionals, conducted the field study.

They visited the panchayats which were being projected as `big success stories' and found little merit in IKM's claims.

The employees of the Vellanadu panchayat (described as the `first fully computerised panchayat in the country') have not heard about eight of the 12 software packages, which, according to the claims of the IKM and the Government, were `fully functional and operational' from January 2003. They told the team that they had information about four applications that had been installed in their office: the first for issuing birth and death certificates and accessing pension details, the second for maintaining accounts, the third for entering attendance details and the fourth for issuing receipts.

"As on May 29, 2004, `Sevana', the package for registration (of births, deaths, etc.) is the only software that can be said to be somewhat functional," the field study report says.

The report further says that even this package was not found user-friendly and that `numerous bugs' hampered its response. The Vellanadu panchayat employees told the team that they expected to get the software corrected soon. The IKM had claimed as early as in 2000 that this software was complete. The panchayat employees were yet to decipher the complexities of the software.

Besides Vellanadu, the IKM had selected four other panchayats in Thiruvananthapuram district -- Vilavoorkal, Madavoor, Amboori and Kattakkada -- for the pilot deployment of the computerisation programme and it was officially inaugurated on September 17, 2001 by the Minister for Local Administration, Cherkulam Abdulla.

The team found that the sole computer installed at the Madavoor panchayat was not working, so far as the software developed by IKM was concerned. It was being used as a word processor to type out letters, etc.

The avowed objective of the IKM's project was to network all local self-government institutions in the State with the State Planning Board to ensure efficient monitoring of the planning and scheme implementation process. Five years of much hyped endeavours of the IKM have taken the programme nowhere even in the pilot panchayats, although several crores of rupees had been spent on it. The team suggested a detailed probe to `demystify' the functioning of the panchayat computerisation programme in the State.

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