If there is a way to tackle corruption in administration, it is through e-governance. E-governance has been successfully implemented in a gram panchayat near Bangalore, said former faculty of Institute of Socio-Economic Change (ISEC) B.S. Bhargava at the State-level Political Science Teachers' Conference in Moodbidri, Karnataka.
He said that e-governance facilitates transparency in administration. The experiment at Belanduru panchayat in Bangalore Urban district with e-governance has resulted in a gram panchayat, with no extraordinary sources of income, gaining an annual revenue of Rs. 3 crores. This panchayat has a council room where meetings are televised through cable network and it has computerised data on tax collection to check defaulters.
The panchayat maintains an electronic public service registry, which takes care of water, power, road and drainage problems.
He urged political science students to research the benefits of e-governance in a democracy. E-governance will open new horizons in public administration, he said.
Coalition politics, which is a relatively new entrant in Indian politics, came in for some sharp remarks from political scientists and politicians at the conference. Speakers at the conference had positive and negative things to say about coalition governments.
Yuva Janata Dal leader Y.S.V. Datta stressed on the importance of coalitions, particularly in a diverse country such as India. He divided the last century into the Gandhian era, the Nehruvian era, one influenced by the ideology of Jayaprakash Narayan and the coalition era which is a new trend since the 1990's. Mr. Moily and Mr. Datta agreed that coalition governments are here to stay considering the prevailing socio-economic conditions of the country.
More
|
