ON RECORD: A villager gets online assistance on his property assessment

Farmer Bargur Muniyappa never looked forward to visiting the gram panchayat office. The experience almost always left him exasperated but his work kept bringing him back. So every time he applied for a crop loan and sought a land record, he had little choice but to grit his teeth and wait as the village accountant took his own sweet time to pore through dusty registers. For a simple title deed, Muniyappa would have to make at least three trips. Of course, things could be expedited but at a price which the greying farmer was unwilling to cough up.

That was then. Today, the 62-year-old from Belandur near Bangalore, Karnataka, is all smiles as he walks into the panchayat office. With a magical click of his fingers, the same village accountant reels off information, fills in details and completes formalities within minutes. This, he is told, is what e-governance is all about. Not just that. It's also a question of self-governance.

The first gram panchayat to go hi-tech in Karnataka, Belandur has come a long way since the day in 1999 when a UN official visiting the village casually remarked that computerisation was a good idea. It is to the credit of the villagers that they took the suggestion seriously and set about the project on their own, without any help from the Government or any NGO.

"As a farmer, I was determined that we should get on the computer bandwagon," says Krishnappa Jagannath, the 40-year-old head of the gram panchayat who initiated the whole process three years ago. With tips from a computer-savvy brother in the US, Jagannath drew up a plan and convinced others of its merits. Within no time, he was able to raise Rs 65,000 from the public, enough for the purchase of two assembled Pentium II computers.

That was easy enough. But who would operate these machines? Jagannath decided that it had to be the villagers themselves. He got in touch with a software company, which agreed to train the villagers. Although wary initially, the people knew it was worth a try. As they realised it was not so difficult, more and more villagers joined in. Those like T.S. Shobha who showed a greater aptitude were sent for extensive training courses of three months. Today, Shobha has pride written all over her face as she sits in charge of a small office that issues computer-generated birth and death certificates, property certificates, tax assessments, demand notices and water bills. Around 6,000 people in 2,500 households across five villages under Belandur benefit from such services.

Thanks to this new level of efficiency, the panchayat has been able to increase its annual revenue generation from Rs 15 lakh to Rs 1.25 crore. Gowramma Narayana, 62, who comes to Belandur to pay her water tax, exemplifies how this has come about. "Earlier I used to come here but wouldn't be sure of how much to pay," she says. Now it's all there on the screen. "The surge in collections is largely due to e-governance," agrees panchayat official B.S. Bhaskar. Spurred by the success, the gram panchayat is now planning to tap the cable network. For starters, it arranged for a live telecast of one of its weekly meetings. The local body also wants to go online with several government projects. The idea is to eliminate middlemen and be in touch with administrative departments directly.

In a self-reliant mode now, the villagers want to use the money collected from taxes for development schemes like building roads and underground drainage systems and to ensure adequate water supply. Clearly, all of this is a measure of the new sense of empowerment that the villagers have discovered. Some of those working on the wonder machines in the panchayat office seem as comfortable and e-savvy as those at the headquarters of infotech giant Wipro which happens to be in the neighbourhood.

The new-found confidence has also seen the villagers take on Infosys-in a way. The Karnataka Government is considering a proposal to acquire 100 acres of fertile agricultural land in Belandur to allot to the software major, something the villagers are opposing tooth and nail. They admit that Karnataka Infotech Secretary Vivek Kulkarni has commended Belandur for being a "good model" of village-level e-governance, but they cannot understand why their land should go to tech companies. "The Government does not recognise the strides we have made in e-governance," laments Jagannath. Ironically, the process of getting a plot of land registered can now be completed within a day compared to the 10 it took earlier.

A vision, a willingness to try out new things, a readiness to accept changes-these have worked in Belandur. The same prescription can bring changes elsewhere.