spotlight
Empowered by Technology The Department of Social Justice & Empowerment is entrusted with the mandate of providing the disadvantaged and marginalized sections of population equal opportunities in fields of education, as well as economic and social areas. Today, it is possible to track, trace and monitor the benefits of each of the schemes announced by the department at the click of a button By Rachita Jha
A
ccountability of the government has become much desired from the citizens, both at the centre and state level. Challenged by the daunting task of upliftment of disadvantaged and marginalized sections of the society, the Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment (SJE) has announced several social, educational and economic programmes/ schemes for upliftment of SC, OBC, persons with disability, and senior citizens. Apart from these central government initiatives, the states also announce several steps. It is an overwhelming task to track, trace and monitor the beneficiaries of so many schemes and map the success of each. However, with customised software, it becomes possible for state governments to conduct real time monitoring, assessment and evaluation of all the social benefit schemes . An easy-to-use, cost effective and time-saving tool, the software is designed to help state SJE departments in moving towards e-government and assist them in their commitment to bring the backward communities to the heart of the development agenda.
Governance Conundrum According to Census (2001), the target groups population of social justice and empowerment department includes 16.7 crore SC, 2.19 crore persons with disability, whereas OBC population is estimated at 41 percent of the total population by NSSO, and senior citizens 7.7 crore. Participation of these marginalized groups in the overall growth and development process has been the vision of the Eleventh Five Year Plan, 2011-12 that aims at faster and more inclusive growth. It seeks to achieve inclusiveness through significant improvements in literacy, education and health, greater employment opportunities, and greater focus on disadvantaged groups. Inclusive growth yields broad based benefits and ensures equality of opportunity for all, especially the disadvantaged sections, like the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, Other Backward Classes,
minorities, persons with disabilities and women. The multi-level operations and decision-making machinery of the government has been much critiqued over the years in this regard. In this governance ecosystem, it becomes even more difficult for a petite villager of the backward class to first have awareness of the many schemes that have been announced by the centre/state government and then avail the benefits of the same. “There are states that have more than 40 percent of the population in the backward class and hence for such states it becomes mission critical to monitor and assess the progress of such social upliftment schemes for good governance. We aim to build holistic, structured and process-oriented software designed in sync with the needs of any state Social Justice & Empowerment department. Gujarat is the first state to implement end-to-end solutions, which promise to synchronise more than 200 schemes for the target group that constitutes more than 50 percent of the state populace,� says Mangesh Desai, Group Manager, Government Sales Support (India & APAC), Mastek. December 2011 / www.egovonline.net / egov
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