E-panchayat applications will curb graft

Kewal Sharma
Additional Director, Panchayati Raj Department, Shimla

The Panchayati Raj system has been a matter of concern in our rural development process ever since its introduction in 1959. While it is considered to have generated factions and party politics in village communities, it is also seen as the only hope for activating people’s participation in the democracy. 

One of the greatest deficiencies of our parliamentary system has been poor representation. Just about 750 Members of Parliament and 4,120 Members of Legislative Assemblies represent more than 125 crore people. The 73rd Constitutional Amendment Act, 1992, ensured a broad-based representation as there are more than 28 lakh elected members of Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs), about 45 per cent of them women. The constitution of gram sabha ensures communication by giving voice to the people living in about five lakh villages. 

Notably, Panchayati Raj functioning has being recognised in all plan documents and guidelines have been framed from time to time about the role these institutions can play in development. Central and state governments have done a lot to give a central role to PRIs in the planning and implementation of schemes. But the big question remains:  how far have the PRIs succeeded in delivering the goods? 

One of the major areas of concern is corruption in PRIs. Speaking on April 24, National Panchayati Raj Day, the PM urged members of the PRIs to focus on the right utilisation of funds, with transparency in the budget allocated to the panchayats and panchayat members ensuring that it is fully implemented. The statement points towards the allegation of misutilisation of funds at the panchayat level.

It is worthwhile that no survey at the national or state level has been carried out to show the levels of corruption in the PRIs. Thus the extent of corruption in the PRIs is mostly perception based. Weak reporting system, poor accounting of income and expenditure, lack of unitary cost of public works and improper budgets and planning systems lead to corruption. 

No political party has made corruption in the PRIs an election issue; only discussions at various meetings and Assembly sessions are held. Institutions of local government provide an opportunity to introduce measures to further governance that is more responsive and accountable. Without an adequate and effective institutional mechanism to monitor the use of public funds, the institutions of local government will only add to the layers of client list network and claimants for commission of payoffs. 

Access to information and the quality of information are factors that may contain corruption in the panchayats. This is possible with the use of technology. 

In view of this, the Ministry of Panchayati Raj (MoPR) started the E-Panchayat project in 2006 with a view to transforming the functioning of 2.5 lakh panchayats and making them more transparent, accountable and effective as organs of decentralised self-governing institutions. This project aimed at automating the internal workflow processes of rural local bodies. E-Panchayats is one of the 31 mission mode projects of the GoI under the national E-governance plan. Citizens, state line departments, line ministries and PRIs were identified as major stakeholders. 

As many as 11 core software applications were developed for the use of panchayats. Emphasis has been given to implement Priasoft (to capture receipt and expenditure details through voucher entries and automatic generation of cashbooks, registers, utilisation certificates etc). Plan Plus and Action Softs help in the preparation of Gram Panchayats Development Plan (GPDP) and monitoring of its implementations (physical and financial). For providing various services, there is a dynamic Meta data-based service delivery portal to help in electronic delivery of all services. 

Given the poor connectivity, untrained manpower and non-availability of hardware etc, implementation of the software is slow. Panchayats and their officials in some states are finding it difficult to implement this project fullydue to lack of connectivity and poor technical training. Once implemented, it will enable the citizens to monitor the working of panchayats, specifically financial transactions. 

As per the website of MoPR, 13 states are using Priasoft applications for the maintenance of accounts. Tripura is at number one on the table and Himachal Pradesh at number two. Similarly, Plan Plus and Action Soft software are being implemented in 28 and 26 states, respectively. With this, citizens can see the expenditure details of the panchayat online.

Secondly, common people are not aware of the benefits and usage of these applications. There is need to educate the rural people about these software applications besides providing connectivity to far-flung panchayats. Increase in transparency will increase accountability and, in turn, minimise the chances of corruption. All this will increase the faith of the citizens in the Panchayati Raj system which is the best model of democratic decentralisation. Hence, panchayats should proactively take steps to adopt the E-Panchayat application to ensure transparency in their functioning. This will lead to containing corruption in PRIs.