‘Internet-for-all needs voice-based apps’, says said Ministry of Tribal Affairs joint secretary

HYDERABAD: The Indian government and private entities must create e-governance applications keeping in mind the digitally illiterate India that struggles to type on phones, said Ministry of Tribal Affairs joint secretary Rajesh Aggarwal. He said the focus must be on developing voice-based e-governance applications that can be used by the rural people.

Rajesh Aggarwal was speaking on the sidelines of the 21st national conference on e-governance. He pointed out that cheap 4G internet was bringing more people from tribal and rural India online, and stressed on the need to keep them in mind while developing government applications.

Recalling his experience in Odisha’s Naxalism-affected areas, Aggarwal said, “I met this rubber farmer who now has an Android phone. Mind you, this village had no mobile network barely two months before my last visit.” He said the farmer had subscribed to a network that provides low cost data and now has access to the internet.

Aggarwal said he has seen low cost data providers change the lives of people in rural and tribal areas. “The farmer now sells rubber directly online,” he claimed. “This man learnt what is useful to him. A private company was able to reach where BSNL could not.”

The joint secretary highlighted that technology adoption would be much faster if the services provided to rural and tribal areas were in local language. The present difficulty in technology adoption in rural and tribal areas of the country is mainly due to the disconnect between the app makers and those who it is intended for.

“Google Hello provides hope for these people, because they don’t have to type in English. Their needs are very simple such as disease diagnosis of plants and cattle. It’s not that people are not tech savvy. They learn WhatsApp within minutes. The problem is with Indian companies such as TCS and Infosys and National Informatics Centre (NIC), “ he claimed.  

Tech has helped bring down crime, says DGP

Adoption of technology in governance has helped bring down major crimes in the city, said Director General of Police for Telangana M Mahendar Reddy. “We have developed a series of apps over time and have brought all of them together in the form of TSCOP,” said the State police chief. He added that the entire focus of e-governance has been to empower field-level officers to do their job well.

“We have been able to ensure that field level officials get the data they want on a real-time basis so that they can analyse and proactively predict what is going to happen and take preemptive action,” Reddy said. “We believe that if small crimes are prevented, then we are in a position to stop bigger crimes. For instance, the e-petty case app captures small petty cases. The app has really helped us identifying the deviants, taking corrective action and rehabilitation measures. As a result in the past three years in Hyderabad we had 40 per cent reduction in big crimes including murders,” said Reddy.

“Telangana has been standing first in adoption of technology for the past three years, ever since the adoption of the passport verification app launched by the state police. The entire process has been made transparent. It now takes just 3 days for police verification and has reduced the passport issue time to mere 5 days,” said Reddy. He also highlighted the uses of the M-wallet app that allows drivers to carry a digital copy of the driver’s licence and vehicle documents.

‘More complaints being registered with CPGRAMS’

Hyderabad: he Centralised Public Grievance Redressal And Monitoring System (CPGRAMS) received nearly seven-times more number of complaints compared to earlier years, but also registered about  90 per cent disposal on an average, said Jitendra Singh, Minister of State for Personnel, Public Grievances
& Pensions, GoI

‘Drone policy needs to be relaxed’
The drone policy drafted in November 2017 needs to be relaxed to improve the penetration of drone technology in the country, said technocrats who took part in the 21st National Conference on e-Governance on Tuesday
Drones are now used in western countries at large farms
They typically cost `6 lakh to `10 lakh in India, a monitoring drone costs `1 lakh approximately
They can be used to monitor weather, climate-related disaster managemnet
The cost of drones can be brought down if we adopt lesser regulation & through 3d printing technology