Lokvani Uttar Pradesh
Virendra Nath Bhatt
As additional project director of a project for family welfare, Amod Kumar worked on a software that could monitor schemes launched by the health department. Before he could get the system going, he was posted as district magistrate of Sitapur in 2004.
There Kumar, now special Secretary IT, worked with S.B. Singh, senior technical director, National Informatics Centre, UP unit, and launched Lokvani. Under this scheme, e-kiosks were set up in districts, where a villager could go and file a complaint. The kiosks are run by private players who forward the complaints to the DM’s office, which in turn asks the concerned department to respond to the complaint in a week.
Apart from getting their grievances addressed, villagers can also use Lokvani to check land records online and monitor tenders.
Singh gives the credit for the scheme’s success to the e-kiosk owner and operator. “Actually it’s the kiosk owner who does this scheme’s marketing. He tells the villagers that their problems would be redressed by the district magistrate and district police chief, if they filed the complaint through his e-kiosk,” says Singh.
The expenditure on computer hardware and Internet connection are borne by the entrepreneur and he makes his money from the Rs 10 per page that he charges the complainant.
The success of the project can be judged by the fact that so far over 3.25 lakh complaints have been filed by villagers across the state.
Singh is now busy implementing SWAN (State Wide Area Network), which will link all 71 districts, tehsil and community development block offices with Lucknow, with optical fibre cable by the end of July next. The NIC team under Singh’s leadership is also working on an e-district pilot project in six district—Rai Bareli, Ghaziabad, Greater Noida, Sultanpur, Gorakhpur and Sitapur.
Water and Sanitation Management Organisation (WASMO) Gujarat
BASHIR PATHAN
Chandrikaben Patel is the sarpanch of Dingucha village in North Gujarat. She is also the chairperson of the Pani Samiti, successfully managing the in-village water scheme, ensuring an adequate daily supply of water to 1,800 households (with a population of over 4,800) in her village. “Before we executed this community-managed project with borewells as its source in our village, women had to walk long distances to fetch potable water. Now, the water flows through the taps installed in each of the village households,” she says. Pani samitis were formed by the Water and Sanitation Management Organisation (WASMO), an autonomous body set up by the Gujarat government in 2002, to address the problems of the parched villages of the state.
In the five years that the organisation has been around, it has helped villagers form pani samitis in 10,640 of the 18,000 villages across the state. Women head such committees in about 879 villages and in fact, there are several pani samitis, where the members are all women. They monitor, maintain and even operate the water projects themselves, collecting community contribution and water tariffs fixed by the pani samitis and ensuring equitable distribution of potable water and its quality.
The pani samitis are formed in consultation with the Gram Panchayat and Gram Sabha and have representation from marginalised communities—at least one-third of their members are women. Funds are transferred to the samitis along with the responsibility of implementing in-village community-managed potable water schemes. WASMO provides the samitis with all information, technical, managerial and financial support and helps them implement the water schemes efficiently.
“We have set a target of forming water committees and launch community-managed potable water schemes in the remaining 8,000 odd villages by March 2009. About 27 lakh of the total 58 lakh households in rural Gujarat have already been given water taps under this programme and there are plans to provide water connectivity to nearly 15 lakh more rural households by 2010,” says WASMO CEO Jaipal Singh.
COMMUNITY POLICING Trichy
GOPU MOHAN
Inspector General J.K. Tripathy is an officer who mulls over crime and punishment and the duties of policemen in equal measure. Cause and effect are important in his book and civic issues like power cuts and water supply, and social parameters like literacy and employment are important to him in tackling crime.
“A streetlight that is not functioning is an excellent cover for a criminal and problems in water supply can create unrest among community members, which are often taken to the road,” reasons the 1985-batch IPS official.
“‘When I joined service, I was worried about the poor image and failure of the police in executing their duties. The police look at everybody with suspicion, which in turn creates fear in the mind of the public,” he says.
To tackle this, Tripathy initiated community policing in the Trichy Corporation in Tamil Nadu, where he was commissioner between 1999 and 2001. His first step towards taking the police to the people was creating a beat system where a fixed team of constables were put in charge of a colony and had to interact with its residents.
“This instilled confidence in the community and won respect for the policemen. These ‘beat officers’ knew every possible detail about everyone in the area, enabling them to identify a stranger at first glance. This interaction made the people feel secure and encouraged them to share information with the police without any fear.”
Then he took it further by installing a system where citizens could file a complaint, give information to the police or even register complaints about a corrupt policeman through SMSes or emails. Complaint/suggestion boxes were also installed at many places.
One of the most innovative steps that he took was to organise a slum adoption programme where juvenile criminals were given an opportunity to join the mainstream. That changed quite a few things. For instance, in a slum, Kulapatti in Trichy, most of the dwellers were involved in illegal brewing and criminal activities. In fact, even the police were denied entry there. Tripathy found out that the slum lacked a proper road, which was affecting the lives of its residents.
His offer was simple: stop illegal and anti-social activities and get a road. After a six-month-long probation, the response from the community was so positive that the police co-ordinated with the civic body and NGOs and built a road, which this JNU graduate proudly calls ‘the corridor of bond.’
As a result of all these measures, the number of crimes in Trichy came down from 11,289 to 7,750 in just two years, says Tripathy, who won the prestigious International Community Policing Award of the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP), Washington, in 2001, and also the gold medal for Innovations in Governance by the Commonwealth Association for Public Administration and Management in 2002 for the community policing model he instituted.
RAGHVENDRA RAO
It is rare that a government-run system manages to simultaneously serve the interests of both the administrative machinery and the public. Taking its first tentative steps as pilot project at 23 railway stations in the Delhi area on August 15, 2002, Indian Railways’ Unreserved Ticketing System (UTS) has managed to do precisely that.
Five years down the line, the UTS has evolved as one of the greatest IT success stories in the government sector, offering round-the-clock ticketing facilities to almost 16 million passengers daily, operating from 3,700 counters across 1,300 railway stations in the country and fetching Railways revenues worth Rs 23 crore per day.
In addition, the system has obviated the railways’ need to keep stocks of lakhs of pre-printed, destination-wise card tickets for various classes and innumerable trains which, in the past, used to lead to high costs. The UTS essentially allows rail passengers to buy unreserved tickets up to three days in advance, either from counters at railway stations or automated ticket vending machines (ATVMs) on a 24x7 basis (even the Passenger Reservation System (PRS) for getting reserved tickets shuts down between 12 midnight and 3 am for maintenance every day). The importance of this can hardly be overemphasised—after all, out of the 17 million passengers carried by Indian Railways daily, 16 million travel in unreserved coaches and thus, form the bulk of the railways’ clientele.
“The UTS handles these 16 million passengers, most of who land up at the railway station to buy tickets on the day of journey,” says Vikram Chopra, the man leading the 28-member team that got the PM’s award. “If we can’t give them tickets, these people would either travel ticketless or take a bus which eventually ends up as a lost opportunity for the Railways,” he adds.
In addition to allowing a passenger the flexibility of buying an unreserved ticket three days in advance, the UTS also offers the facility of buying a return ticket and also the option of buying the ticket from any railway station in a given division so as to avoid the rush. “For instance, for a journey from New Delhi to Patna, a passenger can buy the ticket from the Safdarjang station,” explains Chopra. Also, the UTS allows up to four passengers on one ticket and the ticket is valid for the entire day for all trains going in a particular direction. “This means that a passenger with an unreserved ticket can board any train going in the direction of his destination till midnight on the date of journey,” he adds.
Figures available on the system explain its success. “During the first three years, we could only increase the penetration of UTS from 23 to 125 stations. However, between 2005 and 2007, the number of stations went up to 1,300,” says Alok Chaturvedi, an Indian Railways Traffic Service (IRTS) officer who was a key member of the team. “In 2004, the system sold 2.36 lakh tickets daily to 4.86 lakh passengers earning Rs 25.96 lakh as revenue. Now, it issues 31 lakh tickets daily to 1.03 crore passengers,” he adds.
Interestingly, only six out of the 28-member team are from the Railways—four working with CRIS on deputation and two absorbed, while the remaining 22 were picked up from the private IT sector. Of the 22 IT professionals, seven have quit CRIS to join the corporate sector, while 15 are still working at CRIS, which is a registered society having autonomous status under the Railways ministry.
The CRIS, meanwhile, already has set still targets for itself. “By 2010, we plan to take UTS to 6,200 railway stations and have a total 15,000 counters. In addition, we plan to install 6,000 ATVMs from whom passengers will be able to directly get unreserved tickets using smart cards or cash. By the end of this year, we plan to begin a pilot in cities like Mumbai, Chennai and Bangalore where passengers will be able to procure unreserved tickets in the form of an SMS on their mobile phones,” says Chopra.
Effective Management of Protected Areas Uttarakhand
S.M.A.KAZMI
She made the flowers bloom again in the Valley of Flowers. As director of the Nanda Devi Biosphere from 2002 to 2005, of which the Valley of Flowers is the buffer zone, Jyotsna Sitling cleared the garbage out with the help of the local community.
She and her colleague A.K. Banerjee, then DFO of Joshimath, not only cleaned up the Nanda Devi Biosphere Reserve, a world heritage site, they also evolved a democratic, community based, sustainable, ecologically friendly programme for the locals to earn their livelihood based on tourism.
The 19-km stretch from Govindghat to Hemkund Sahib, the famous Sikh shrine, near the Valley of Flowers was lined with dhabas and the garbage spilled over to the Valley. Sitling cleared the area of many dhabas and with the help of the local community, cleaned up the Valley. The litter gone, many species like inula, anemone and potentilla are back.
Sitling involved the locals, particularly women, in collecting 44 tonne of garbage accumulated over the year in Nanda Devi.
“Initially it was difficult to convince people who were hostile to the forest bureaucracy but finally interaction with the community and incentives, made it possible,” says Sitling, currently Director of the Livelihood Programme for the Himalayas. The eco-development committee (EDC) that she set up, paid people Rs 1,000 a month to collect garbage —with additional incentive of Rs 5 per garbage bag.
“It was difficult for us to even mange sacks to collect the garbage. Sacks worth Rs.1.5 lakh were bought to store the garbage which kept on accumulating as our Operation Clean-up caught momentum,” says Banerjee, who supervised the operation.
Nanda Devi and the Valley of Flowers had a different set of problems. After being ravaged and littered for years by mountaineering expeditions, entry was banned in the Nanda Devi National Park in 1982. The ban took away livelihood opportunities from the locals. On the other hand, the tourism overdrive in its buffer zone, Valley of Flowers National Park, destroyed many of its plants.
When the Nanda Devi National Park opened to mountaineers again in 2003, Sitling involved the locals. About 32 trek routes were identified, developed and popularised. More than 371 trekking teams have been helped by 263 guides trained under this initiative.
Meanwhile, in the Valley of Flowers, Sitling persuaded locals to reduce the number of dhabas from over 400 to 76.
A total of 208.6 tonnes of bio-degradable and plastics were removed by the locals in the area for recycling between 2003 and 2006.
“Besides building a successful sustainable model, another major achievement was setting up a plastic densification plant in private-public sector at Srinagar (Garhwal) to recycle plastic waste being accumulated in the Himalayas,” says Banerjee, now DFO, Mussoorie.
