Rural Development through E-Governance in India: Initiatives and Challenges

Abstract

In today's era Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) has brought remarkable change in the lives of people in every respect also enabling government to deliver better services even at remotest corners of the country. In every developing country, e-governance has been talked about a lot; some government offices have been taken innovative steps towards certain e-government projects. Since this is a new concept for government officials who are used to familiar methods of work the growth of e-governance is met with resistance and fear, among other infrastructural problems. E-governance has become the key to good-governance in a developing country like India. Ministry of Rural Development (India) and State governments has been taken various initiatives at different levels by way of development schemes to all citizens in rural India. Such developments have facilitated access to innumerable services and information in a very economical manner in a scenario where the cost of accessing information has been a biggest hurdle for the poor people. The government is expanding an enormous amount on cultivating the culture of e-governance through NeGP but despite of the result are not overwhelming. However, different initiatives by government through the developments in ICT have helped e-governance to take off since the beginning of millennium. Different building blocks like increasing literacy rate in rural areas, the initiatives like Digital India campaign help in making the rural people more tech savvy encouraging them to get in contact with Indian Government through just a click of button. So in a nutshell it can be concluded that increasing digital literacy with the help of technical advancements are leading and will lead to rural development in India. This paper deals with the challenges faced in implementing e-governance in rural areas of India, various e-governance projects taken by the government and initiatives that should be taken by the government for successful implementation of e-governance in rural India. The paper is based on secondary data and data is procured from books, research papers and published sources like the websites of Government of India.