E-governance may be the government?s long-awaited redemption for the common man. Ironically though, the government itself may come between the gigantic initiative and its wider spread, but more about this later.

For now, the Rs 25,000-crore scheme, launched in May 2006, is taking off surprisingly faster than the government apparatus would allow. Mobile service providers are raising capacity for data and picture access in rural India, while IT companies have got into partnerships with states to ride the business opportunity that a 600-million rural population offers.

For its scale and the patronage by PMO, awareness about the project is still low. At a recent meeting of a multilateral institution in New Delhi, nine out of ten delegates from business, medicine, law and education said they had no idea about the programme.

The case for e-governance is robust. The National Sample Survey Organisation data shows about 56% of India?s population live off agriculture. The farm sector makes up 17% of the country?s GDP. ?If, through e-governance, there is even a 1% growth in agriculture there would be a multiple growth impact on the economy?, Sandeep Raina, senior vice-president (North), Cisco, told FE.

So what are the services states and local bodies would render to villages and small towns through e-governance? There are ten basic offerings like pension drawl status, birth and death certificates, ration card related services and right to information services.

The problem is, these services fall in the domains of different departments, and none likes to lose the chance for citizen interface and become backroom boys. The Second Administrative Reforms report on e-governance cites a PwC survey that says even in Karnataka, which has done much work in the filed, the targeted 19 departments were found reluctant to hand over their Websites to a common state-level data centre.

Agrees Shashank Ojha of the World Bank?s global information & communication technologies department, ?IT can play a major transformational role in turning developing countries into developed nations. e-governance, if done right, can help rural Bharat join mainstream India by bringing them the same knowledge inputs and access.? The bank has been a funding channel for many e-governance initiatives.

Despite the project being rolled out almost three years ago, the government is still working on a pilot project, eDistrict initiative, that will be extended to all districts. But there are bright spots as well.

The ministry of corporate affairs has rolled out an electronically compatible limited liability partnership rules from April 1, 2009. This will make life easier for self-employed people.

Law firms and chartered accountancy partnerships are expected to migrate to the new corporate structure pretty soon.

In its simplest form, e-governance will provide all government services through a computer or mobile platform to the common man.

So the breadth of the e-governance initiative could touch lives across India, improving lives for the poorest through the electronic rollout of the employees state insurance corporation (ESIC)—-a healthcare and insurance provision for workers earning less than Rs 10,000 a month in the manufacturing and services sector.

Till now, illiteracy was cited as a reason why a large percentage of the population needs assistance with government formalities such as getting land records, birth records, death records or even their ration cards or voter IDs. This help and much more can now be sought through common service centres?the lowest level of the three-tiered National e-Governance Programme.

At full performance, 100,000 CSCs will be accessed by 600,000 villages and will empower people in rural areas to create their own opportunities so that, unlike in China, citizens will not need to migrate from the interiors to the big cities.

Next: CSCs–A case study in e-governance infrastructure and connectivity.