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E-Governance in India
E-Governance has been one of the strategic sectors of reform in India since the late 1990s under the rubric of ‘good governance’ agenda promoted by International Organizations. As India’s policy focus changed towards economic liberalization, deregulation and privatization proliferating domestic and foreign investment, ICT (Information Communication Technology) has been one of the leading areas for such heightened investment. Consequently, there has been a burgeoning interest in deploying ICT, in revamping the public service delivery and eventually the overall system of governance. This book analyses e-Governance in India and argues that such initiatives did not take place in isolation but followed in the footsteps of a broader governance reform agenda that has already made considerable impact on the discourses and practices of governance in India. Employing interdisciplinary methodology by combining approaches from the Political Sciences, Sociology and Postcolonial/ Transcultural Studies, this book presents a qualitative account of the policies and practices of e-Governance reform in India along with a detailed case study of the Common Services Centres (CSCs) Scheme under the National e-Governance Plan of the Government of India and its resultant impact on the overall system of governance. It unfolds general theoretical issues in terms of the relationship between technology and governance and the entanglement of politics, technology and culture in the complex whole of governance. This furthers our understanding of the impact of the transnational governance reform agenda on postcolonial and post-communist societies of the developing world. Making an important and original contribution to the emerging ¿eld of e-Governance and to the existing body of research on governance in general, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of Political Science, Political Sociology, South Asian Politics and Governance. Bidisha Chaudhuri completed her PhD at the South Asia Institute, Heidelberg University, Germany. She is currently a consulting faculty member at the Centre for Information Technology and Public Policy (CITAPP) at the International Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore, India. Her research interests include governance, gender and development, ICT for development, policy reform and South Asian politics.
Routledge advances in South Asian studies Edited by Subrata K. Mitra South Asia Institute, University of Heidelberg, Germany
South Asia, with its burgeoning, ethnically diverse population, soaring economies and nuclear weapons, is an increasingly important region in the global context. The series, which builds on this complex, dynamic and volatile area, features innovative and original research on the region as a whole or on the countries. Its scope extends to scholarly works drawing on history, politics, development studies, sociology and economics of individual countries from the region as well those that take an interdisciplinary and comparative approach to the area as a whole or to a comparison of two or more countries from this region. In terms of theory and method, rather than basing itself on any one orthodoxy, the series draws broadly on the insights germane to area studies, as well as the tool kit of the social sciences in general, emphasizing comparison, the analysis of the structure and processes, and the application of qualitative and quantitative methods. The series welcomes submissions from established authors in the ¿eld as well as from young authors who have recently completed their doctoral dissertations. 1. Perception, Politics and Security in South Asia The compound crisis of 1990 P. R. Chari, Pervaiz Iqbal Cheema and Stephen Philip Cohen 2. Coalition Politics and Hindu Nationalism Edited by Katharine Adeney and Lawrence Saez 3. The Puzzle of India’s Governance Culture, context and comparative theory Subrata K. Mitra 4. India’s Nuclear Bomb and National Security Karsten Frey 5. Starvation and India’s Democracy Dan Banik
6. Parliamentary Control and Government Accountability in South Asia A comparative analysis of Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka Taiabur Rahman 7. Political Mobilisation and Democracy in India States of emergency Vernon Hewitt 8. Military Control in Pakistan The parallel state Mazhar Aziz 9. Sikh Nationalism and Identity in a Global Age Giorgio Shani 10. The Tibetan Government-in-Exile Politics at large Stephanie Roemer 11. Trade Policy, Inequality and Performance in Indian Manufacturing Kunal Sen 12. Democracy and Party Systems in Developing Countries A comparative study Clemens Spiess 13. War and Nationalism in South Asia The Indian state and the Nagas Marcus Franke 14. The Politics of Social Exclusion in India Democracy at the crossroads Edited by Harihar Bhattacharyya, Partha Sarka and Angshuman Kar 15. Party System Change in South India Political entrepreneurs, patterns and processes Andrew Wyatt 16. Dispossession and Resistance in India The river and the rage Alf Gunvald Nilsen 17. The Construction of History and Nationalism in India Textbooks, controversies and politics Sylvie Guichard
18. Political Survival in Pakistan Beyond ideology Anas Malik 19. New Cultural Identitarian Political Movements in Developing Societies The Bharatiya Janata Party Sebastian Schwecke 20. Su¿sm and Saint Veneration in Contemporary Bangladesh The Maijbhandaris of Chittagong Hans Harder 21. New Dimensions of Politics in India The United Progressive Alliance in power Lawrence Saez and Gurhapal Singh 22. Vision and Strategy in Indian Politics Jawaharlal Nehru’s policy choices and the designing of political institutions Jivanta Schoettli 23. Decentralization, Local Governance and Social Wellbeing in India Do local governments matter? Rani D. Mullen 24. The Politics of Refugees in South Asia Identity, resistance, manipulation Navine Murshid 25. The Political Philosophies of Antonio Gramsci and B. R. Ambedkar Itineraries of Dalits and subalterns Edited by Cosimo Zene 26. Suicide Protest in South Asia Consumed by commitment Simanti Lahiri 27. E-Governance in India Interlocking politics, technology and culture Bidisha Chaudhuri
E-Governance in India Interlocking politics, technology and culture
Bidisha Chaudhuri
First published 2014 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2014 Bidisha Chaudhuri The right of Bidisha Chaudhuri to be identi¿ed as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identi¿cation and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Chaudhuri, Bidisha. E-governance in india: interlocking politics, technology and culture / Bidisha Chaudhuri. pages cm. – (Routledge advances in South Asian studies) Includes bibliographical references and index.. 1. Internet in public administration–India. 2. Information technology– India. 3. Communication–Technological innovations–India. 4. India–Politics and government. I. Title. JF1525.A8C45 2014 352.3ƍ802854678–dc23 2013045144 ISBN: 978-0-415-73790-6 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-77521-0 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Re¿neCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk
I dedicate this book to my mother, Mrs Anjana Chaudhuri, for teaching me the meaning of strength and vulnerability at the same time.
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Contents
List of ¿gures and tables Preface Acknowledgements List of abbreviations 1
Introduction
xii xiii xiv xv 1
E-Governance in India: an overview 1 Governance and strategic reform: posing the research questions 5 From government to governance: tracing the North–South trajectory of governance discourse 10 ‘Good governance’: the global agenda of governance reform and changing societies 13 The politics of governance reform: changing patterns of governance in India 16 Politics, technology and culture: an analytical puzzle of e-Governance 19 Conclusion: structure and scope of the book 24 2
Methodology Introduction: a conceptual dilemma of governance and ‘good governance’ 28 Theorizing e-Governance reform in India: an inter-disciplinary approach 30 Evaluating e-Governance reform in India: the framework of analysis 36 Conclusion: methodological challenges of a context-speci¿c analysis of governance 46
28
x
Contents
3
E-Governance in India: an overview
50
Introduction: e-Governance as a strategic reform and the Indian State 50 E-Governance policies: the pre-liberalization policy regime (1970–1990) 51 Shifting policy framework in post-liberalization India 54 From policy to an action plan: NeGP 2006 63 E-Governance practices from the pre-NeGP era to NeGP experiences: a paradigmatic shift? 64 The 11th Report of the Second Administrative Reform Commission (ARC), 2008: a snapshot of practices and recommendations in the post-NeGP policy regime 72 E-Service Delivery Bill, 2011: the future of e-Governance in India 75 Conclusion: the hiatus between policies and practices 76 4
E-Governance in context: a case study
78
Introduction: CSCs and context-speci¿c understanding of e-Governance 78 What are CSCs?: a comprehensive account of CSCs roll out in India 78 Regional narratives of CSCs: an account of four sample states 82 E-Governance reform and regional contexts: a comparative perspective 94 Conclusion: questioning technological determinism 101 5
Negotiating politics, technology and culture
102
Introduction: rami¿cations of e-Governance on the quality of governance in India 102 Politics of governance reform and e-Governance in India 106 Connecting technology and governance: a means to an end or an end in itself? 107 Hybridizing e-Governance reform in India: contradiction or consolidation? 110 Manoeuvring legitimacy with strategic reforms: a democratic dilemma 113 Conclusion: researching governance through the prism of e-Governance 115 6
Conclusion Transcending the Indian context: from area studies to theory of governance 120
120
Contents xi Shifting discourses of governance 122 Politics of governance reform and changing societies 125 E-Governance reforms in changing societies: mapping the trends 126 Emerging models of governance: innovations or subversion? 127 An interdisciplinary approach to e-Governance: methodological implications 128 Further research 129 Methodological appendix Glossary Notes Bibliography Index
131 136 137 140 149
Figures and tables
Figures 1.1 1.2 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 4.1 4.2
State, society and governance in a modern state The complex of governance: the emerging paradigm A stylized model of governance: realms and actors A dynamic neo-institutional model of governance based on elite strategies Policy network of e-Governance in India The research design Matrix of rural development through e-Governance reform Three-tier implementing structure of the CSCs Scheme
8 11 36 37 39 47 79 80
Tables 2.1 De¿ning indicators of improved quality of governance 4.1 Service status of CSCs 4.2 Comparative status of the CSCs in the four sample states Appendix table 1 Sources of data
40 81 95 132
Preface
This book is an adaptation from my doctoral thesis titled ‘Hybridizing E-Governance in India: The Interplay of Politics, Technology and Culture’ which I completed in December 2012 at the Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences at Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, Germany. This book is driven by a simple endeavour to unravel the technological determinism that existed in the development regime of the Indian State and which still continues to determine the policy paradigm. Given the recent popularity of ICT tools in governance and other development practices in India, it was thought to be an appropriate time to publish this book. The Indian experience of e-Governance reform that appears to be an endless negotiation between politics, technology and culture will hopefully resonate with the experiences in other developing countries that are also confronted with a surge of such wide-scale reform. The ¿eld research which is a crucial pillar of this book was conducted between November 2010 and July 2011. Hence some of the facts about the Common Services Centres (CSCs) Scheme might have been changed. However, since the case study was based on a narrative style qualitative analysis, a few changes in information will not affect the overall argument of the book.
Acknowledgements
I would like to express my deepest gratitude to a few people without whom this book would not have been possible. First of all I am sincerely grateful to my supervisor Professor Subrata K. Mitra for his constant support, encouragement and above all absolute patience throughout this academic journey. He has been a guide in the true sense of the term as his involvement with this book has surpassed mere professional advice. It was his faith in my abilities more than my own conviction which encouraged me to write this book. I would like to thank my friends and colleagues and senior scholars at the Cluster of Excellence: ‘Asia and Europe in a Global Context’ at the Karl Jasper Centre for Transcultural Studies, Heidelberg University for providing a vibrant and ever-stimulating research environment through my doctoral research. The ¿nancial and academic assistance of the Cluster has rendered the process of this work rather smooth and enriching. I would also like to extend my thanks Mr Abhishek Singh (former Director of e-Governance, Department of Electronics and Information Technology, Ministry of Communication and Information Technology, Government of India) and his entire team for supporting my research and for providing all the possible assistance throughout my ¿eldwork in India. I would like to thank the editorial team, especially Dorothea, Jillian and Rebecca at Routledge, UK for their patience and support. I would specially mention Dorothea here as she really thought that I could write this book when I had serious doubts about ¿nishing my dissertation in the ¿rst place. I am also obliged to my present employer, the Centre for IT & Public Policy at the International Institute for Information Technology (IIIT)-Bangalore, India and particularly my colleague Dr Amit Prakash for their unconditional support and mostly for bearing with me throughout the process of preparing this manuscript. Last but not the least, I would like to thank my parents, parents-in-law and specially my husband, Sumit for their love, care and constructive criticism that has provided me with the much needed strength and sanity during the entire period of research that ¿nally led to this book.
Abbreviations
AP ARC B2C BCP BDO BJP BPR BSNL BSP CAP CBOs CCC CIN CMC CSC CSS CSSs DAC DAR&PG DfID DISNIC DIT DOE DOEACC DOT DR DRDA DTH DTP EC ECIL FGD
Andhra Pradesh Administrative Reform Commission Business to Citizen Business Continuity Planning Block Development Of¿cer Bharatiya Janata Party Business Process Re-engineering Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited Bahujan Samaj Party Central Agri Portal Community-Based Organizations Course on Computer Concept Corporate Identity Number Computer Maintenance Company Common Services Centre Central Sector Schemes Centrally Sponsored Schemes Department of Agriculture and Cooperation Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances Department for International Development District Information System of the National Informatics Centre Department of Information Technology Department of Electronics Department of Electronics and Accreditation of Computer Courses Department of Telecommunications Disaster Recovery District Rural Development Agency Direct-To-Home Desktop Publishing Electronic Commission Electronic Computers of India Limited Focused Group Discussion
xvi Abbreviations G2B G2C G2G GAPs GIDC GOI GPRS GVMC ICTD ICTs IGPVSY IMF IMSC IPSS IT LIC MGNREGA/S MIS MMPs MRTP NASSCOM NDC NeGP NGO NIC NICNET NPM NREGA/S NRHM PAN PDC PMGSY PPP PRIs RAR RIV RoR RSDPs RTI SAPs SCA SCs SDA
Government to Business Government to Citizen Government to Government Good Agricultural Practices Gujarat Industrial Development Corporation Government of India General Packet Radio Service Greater Visakhapatnam Municipal Corporation Information Communications Technology for Development Information Communication Technologies Indira Gandhi Vivah Shagun Yojna International Monetary Fund Inter-Ministerial-Standing Committee International-Package-Switching-Services Information Technology Life Insurance Corporation of India Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act/Scheme Management Information System Mission Mode Projects Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices National Association of Software and Service Companies National Development Council National e-Governance Plan Non-Governmental Organization National Informatics Centre Nationwide Communication Network New Public Management National Rural Employment Guarantee Act/Scheme National Rural Health Mission Personal Account Number Primary Data Centre Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana/Prime Minister Rural Road Scheme Public–Private Partnership Panchayati Raj Institutions Rapid Assessment Round Rajiv Internet Village Land Record Certi¿cates (Record of Rights) Rural Service Delivery Points Right to Information Structural Adjustment Programmes Service Centre Agency Scheduled Castes State Designated Agency
Abbreviations xvii SDCs SKD STD STPs STs STS SWANs TAN TAXNET TNCCs TSTSP UID UIDAI UNDP UNESCAP UNESCO UPS USOF UT VCE VLEs VLWE VOs VSAT WTO ZBB
State Data Centres Simple Knock Down Subscribers Trunk Dialing Software Technology Parks Scheduled Tribes Science and Technology Studies State-Wide Area Networks Tax Account Number All India Income Tax Network Transnational Computer Companies Technical Support and Training Service Provider Unique ID Unique Identi¿cation Authority of India United Nations Development Programme United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Paci¿c United Nations Educational, Scienti¿c and Cultural Organization Uninterruptible Power Supply Universal Service Obligation Fund Union Territories Village Computer Entrepreneur Village Level Entrepreneurs Village Level Women Entrepreneurs Voluntary Organizations Very Small Aperture Terminal World Trade Organization Zero Based BudgetingAppendix table 1 Sources of data
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1
Introduction
E-Governance in India: an overview The relationship between technology and governance is a pertinent yet relatively under researched ¿eld of study. In the last two decades there has been an unprecedented upsurge in the use of Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) geared towards ‘good governance’ goals, both across developed and developing countries. For developing countries it has also been popularized by International Organizations under the banner of ‘E-Governance for Development’ or ‘E-Governance for Good Governance’ and eventually has taken an important position in the governance reform agenda of the national governments. On 15 August 2002, on the occasion of India’s Independence Day, the Prime Minister announced 15 important initiatives to be endorsed by the Government of India (GOI). E-Governance was placed under this list of initiatives which stated that the GOI will formulate a comprehensive programme in order to promote and expedite e-Governance at all levels of the government. The overall aim of this programme will be to improve ef¿ciency, transparency and accountability in government–citizen interface (Mathur et al. 2009). In the same year, the Prime Minister’s statement at the National Development Council (NDC) in December 2002 asserted that e-Governance geared towards better governance, is a priority area for the GOI and this is prominently reÀected in the Tenth Plan (ibid.). The thrust on e-Governance is emblematic of a major shift of discourse from government to governance in the rhetoric of the Indian State. This shift reÀects across a range of policy documents and government reports. The National Human Development Report (2001), published by the GOI dedicated a whole chapter on ‘Governance for Human Development’ which reinforced the importance of governance and ‘good governance’ for sustainable development and promoted subsequent adaptation in the current governance practices by changing the scope and role of the state in relation to the market and the civil society (Choudhary 2007). Similarly, in the Tenth Five Years Plan (2002–2007) and the Eleventh Five Years Plan (2007–2012), governance received special attention of the policymakers and thereby was allotted a separate chapter unlike previous planning documents. A close look at these chapters brings out two important dimensions of this shift of focus from government to governance. Firstly, there is a growing
2
Introduction
importance of the market and the civil society and secondly, this burgeoning stateorientation towards governance is mandated by the transnational paradigm of ‘good governance’. The Tenth Plan de¿nes governance as the management of processes within a society that raise individuals’ choices for realizing their capabilities in an effective environment. It reiterates that, [Governance] covers the State, civil society and the market, each of which is critical for sustaining human development. The State is responsible for creating a conducive political, legal and economic environment for building individual capabilities and encouraging private initiative. The market is expected to create opportunities for people. Civil society facilitates the mobilisation of public opinion and people’s participation in economic, social and political activities. . . . With the acceptance of market liberalism and globalisation, it is expected that the State yields to the market and the civil society in many areas where it, so far, had a direct but distortionary and inef¿cient presence. . . . It means extension of the market and the civil society domain at the expense of the State in some areas. It also implies an increase in the area of their respective overlaps. (GOI 2002, pp. 177, 181) As the Tenth Plan acknowledges the inÀuence of market liberalism and globalization on the framework of governance, similarly the Eleventh Five Years Plan talks about improving the quality of governance within the broader framework of ‘good governance’ which is argued to be covering ‘all aspects of interface between individuals and business on the one hand and government on the other’ (GOI 2007, p. 223). Elaborating on some distinctive features of ‘good governance’ the Eleventh Plan document stresses factors such as accountability, transparency, ef¿ciency of service delivery, decentralization, rule of law or sound legal framework and inclusiveness and so on. The issues and strategies of reform discussed in these Plans range from narrow administrative reform to broader political reform and include right to information, civil service reform, procedural reform, judicial reform, using information technology, people’s participation, decentralization, partnership approach with extra-state spheres and so on (Choudhary 2007). There is another side of this governance reform trajectory which directly relates to issues of economic reform such as privatization, deregulation, disinvestment, corporatization and social sector reforms (ibid.). The underlying agenda of all the discussions concerning reform in India is ‘institutional reform’ which is further illustrated through themes such as decentralization, simpli¿cation, transparency, accountability and e-Governance (ibid.). These common themes have gradually made their way into the checklists of all government ministries and departments under the broader framework of governance reform. Consequently, both the Tenth and Eleventh Plan talk about ‘e-Governance for good governance’ and better service delivery (GOI 2002, 2007). As it emerged from the above discussion, e-Governance has taken up an important position in the state initiatives for overall governance reform in India in recent
Introduction 3 times. There are many conceptualizations of e-Governance. Most of these conceptualizations are formulated either by International Organizations or developed countries which have made considerable progress in the ¿eld. The term e-Governance is often interchangeably used with the term e-government. The 11th Report of the Second Administrative Reform Commission (ARC), 2008 on e-Governance attempts to summarize some of the basic de¿nitions of the term. The World Bank’s de¿nition of the term says, ‘E-Government refers to the use by government agencies of information technologies (such as Wide Area Networks, the Internet and mobile computing) that have the ability to transform relations with citizens, businesses and other arms of government’ (GOI 2008, p. 8). These technologies not only improve the delivery of government services to citizens but also empower citizens through access to information. It further improves interactions of the public sector with business and industry, reduce corruption, increase transparency as well as revenue growth, and also reduce cost for service delivery (ibid.). The United Nations Educational, Scienti¿c and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) de¿nes the concept in relation to the broader concept of governance as it argues, ‘Governance refers to the exercise of political, economic and administrative authority in the management of a country’s affairs, including citizens’ articulation of their interests and exercise of their legal rights and obligations. E-Governance may be understood as the performance of this governance via the electronic medium in order to facilitate an ef¿cient, speedy and transparent process of disseminating information to the public and other agencies, and for performing government administration activities’ (ibid., pp. 8–9). The Council of Europe refers to e-Governance as ‘the use of electronic technologies in three areas of public action: relations between the public authorities and civil society, functioning of the public authorities at all stages of the democratic process (electronic democracy) [and] the provision of public services (electronic public services)’ (ibid., p. 9). The United States E-Government Act 2002 de¿nes it as the ‘the use by the Government of web-based Internet applications and other information technologies, combined with processes that implement these technologies, to (A) enhance the access to and delivery of Government information and services to the public, other agencies and other Government entities; or (B) bring about improvements in Government operations that may include effectiveness, ef¿ciency, service quality, or transformation’ (ibid., p. 9). In an attempt to adapt the concept to the Indian context, former President of India, Dr A. P .J. Abdul Kalam promoted the idea of ‘A transparent smart e-Governance with seamless access, secure and authentic Àow of information crossing the interdepartmental barrier and providing a fair and unbiased service to the citizen’ (ibid., p. 10). By conjuring up all these diverse formulation of the term e-Governance can be de¿ned as deployment of ICT for improving information and service delivery, encouraging citizen participation in the decision-making process and making government more accountable, transparent and effective through greater coordination among private sector and civil society organizations (Deva 2005). It is also important to distinguish between the concepts of e-government and e-Governance. E-Governance is a broader idea which encompasses a political as
4
Introduction
well as a technical dimension. The political dimension relates to the state’s institutional arrangements, decision-making processes, implementation capacity and the relationship between, the government with citizen, businesses and the civil society. The technical dimension refers to the issues of service delivery and public management. E-government, though sharing some goals with e-Governance, is better understood as a subset of e-Governance concentrated on increasing administrative ef¿ciency and reducing corruption (Bhatnagar 2009). The other two terms that need some elucidation here are ‘change-management’ and ‘businessprocess re-engineering’. These two terms appear quite extensively in most of the literature and they are crucial in understanding both e-government and e-Governance. ‘Change Management is a structured approach to transitioning individuals, teams and organizations from a current state to a desired future state. It involves a series of changes beginning with vision, introduction of skills, adding incentives and resources and designing an action plan bringing positive results’ (Sachdeva 2009, p. 109). Business Process Re-engineering (BPR): [I]s the redesign of business processes and the associated systems and organizational structures to achieve a dramatic improvement in performance . . . [It] requires . . . an agency to implement substantive reform in organizational structure, initiate a change in culture and mind-set, train and improve skills of its people and put in place an appropriate supporting ICT infrastructure to enable online processes that are timely and ef¿cient to both the user and the government agency. (Bhatnagar 2009, p. 78) E-Governance has been one of the strategic sectors of reform in India since the late 1990s under the rubric of the ‘good governance’ agenda promoted by International Organizations. Since 1991, India’s policy focus changed towards economic liberalization, deregulation and privatization proliferating domestic and foreign investment. Information Technology (IT) has been one of the leading areas for such heightened investment. Though the Indian government has been taking interest in IT infrastructure development and computerization of public administration already since the 1980s, until the late 1990s, the use of ICTs in public service delivery has been pretty low. It is around 1997–1998 that using ICT tools oriented towards development goals became more and more popular within the public sector. However, the majority of these reform initiatives were initially aimed at urban middle-class citizens for improving their experience of public service delivery. This picture slowly changed as the potential of ICTs for rural development caught the fancy of policy-makers. Hence, since the beginning of the twenty-¿rst century, comprehensive policy frameworks have been formulated at the national level to implement e-Governance across India reaching out to even remote rural areas. The policy goals of such initiatives are two folds: to widen the outreach of public services and to improve the quality of public services (Sreekumar 2008; Madon, 2009). This policy-orientation towards e-Governance reached its crest with the approval of the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) in May 2006 which envisages:
Introduction 5 [To] Make all Government services accessible to the common man in his locality, through common service delivery outlets, and ensure ef¿ciency, transparency, and reliability of such services at affordable costs to realise the basic needs of the common man. (GOI 2006b) The NeGP along with 27 Mission Mode Projects and eight components adopts a holistic approach to streamline all e-Governance initiatives across the country. This marks a shift in the governmental approach towards e-Governance as most of the initiatives before NeGP were tackled in an isolated manner with individual impetus. There was a severe problem of sustainability even for successful initiatives and there was hardly any scope for sharing the experiences. Evidently, NeGP addresses these gaps by bringing in an integrated approach to all e-Governance initiatives. Besides engaging in the administrative reform by improving public service delivery model, NeGP also deals with broader issues of governance reform espoused by the GOI. One such example is the public–private partnership model and thereby the active role of private sectors in the implementation of most of the initiatives undertaken under the NeGP. It is in this context of recent policy shifts towards e-Governance as a strategic sector of reform by the Indian State that this book sets out to analyse how such reform initiatives are shaped up by the continuous interplay of politics, technology and culture. In addressing this analytical puzzle, we need to ¿rst cast our glance at the concept of governance, reform and its relevance for the research questions that this study aims to address.
Governance and strategic reform: posing the research questions The statement – ‘[G]overnance, more than the innate cohesion of Indian society and culture, or the speci¿c context of colonial rule and transfer of power, is the key to India’s resilience’ (Mitra 2006, p. 2) – unequivocally hints at the instrumentality of the concept of governance in explaining the strength and sustainability of a postcolonial nation such as India. However, undoubtedly it is not just an Indian problem. The signi¿cance of governance as a political and social problematic has caught the fancy of policy-makers, academicians, development practitioners and social activists with similar rigor and severity. Consequently, in recent times one can witness an increasing focus on governance across developed as well as developing countries, albeit varying in terms of their origin and contexts. The international political scenario has essentially changed since 1989 as the bipolarity of the Cold War period gave way to a multipolar locus of power in world politics. This was soon reÀected in the shift in the international development discourse. The focus was now on democracy, participation, ef¿ciency, accountability and so on. Unlike the previous decade, the 1990s brought the limelight back on state and institutions and consequently ‘governance’ moved into the agenda across a wide range of discussion involving academicians,
6
Introduction
development practitioners, politicians, bureaucrats, private sector entrepreneurs and civil society activists. This swing became more prominent in most of the changing societies of postcolonial and post-communist nation-states where governance reform became a priority for governments and a prerequisite for economic development. However, this new agenda setting around governance (or governance reform) in the international political and development discourse and the issues emerging from these debates were already confronted in most of the Western democracies already in 1970s. Three main concerns of these debates were focused on three main functions of the state, namely regulation, welfare and development which in turn addresses the issues of ungovernability related to distrust and disagreement with the state, crisis of welfare state in the face of increasing demand related to public sector de¿cit and lastly the incapability of the state to perform unilaterally to solve social and economic and other developmental problems (Kooiman 1993). These concerns led to different measures by different states, which found its expressions in terms like privatization, deregulation, agenci¿cation, decentralization, development of policy networks, public administration reform and so on (Kjaer 2004). Parallel to these reshufÀing in the role of the state was a growing citizen demand for better and more responsive public service delivery which also resonated in the mounting power of the media and the inÀuence of the civil society (Fritzen 2009). In post-Cold War times, these issues became relevant in most developing and changing societies1 which were further forti¿ed by a renewed interest in democracy and sustainable development. Evidently, while the recent focus on governance in Western developed nations rose more or less from the internal issue of governability, in developing nations the impetus came mostly from external forces such as the international donor agencies. Amidst myriad attempts at governance reform, the concept of governance went through considerable recon¿guration. On one hand international development paradigm and policy-makers take predominantly a techno-managerial position in addressing the issues of governance, while on the other hand social science research maintains to view governance as a function of orderly rule and a synchronized relationship between state and society. Although these spectrums by no means suggest an exhaustive account of all the possible perspectives on the concept, they nonetheless demonstrate the contentious nature of the concept. However, before delving further into the speci¿c dimensions of governance and governance reform that this book undertakes to investigate, it is worthwhile to dwell a little deeper into the concept of governance itself at the outset. The basic dictionary meaning of governance describes it as an act or manner of governing of a state or an organization (Oxford Dictionaries Online 2011). The term has often been used synonymously with government which changed during 1980s when political scientists included civil society actors into its de¿nitions. Even within political science, different sub¿elds treat the concept rather differently. Scholars in public administration and public policy while talking about public sector reform refers to governance as a self-organizing network involving a plurality of actors and organizations which further blurs the
Introduction 7 traditional boundaries of public and the private (Kjaer 2004). For the theorists of international relations, the focus is more on global governance which refers to a system of rule at all levels of human activity aimed at decision-making of transnational nature (Rosenau 1995). Of course, the de¿nition of global governance is conceived differently by its proponents, even though the spotlight remains on the creation of global organizations such as the World Trade Organization (WTO) and growth of non-governmental movements and institutions outside the purview of the nation-state. In the sub¿eld of comparative politics, which largely engages in the systematic comparison of the political system, during the 1980s state institutions and their effects became a common theme. This was different from its previous preoccupation with political culture, parties, electoral behaviour and so forth. While bringing back state institutions into focus comparative politics, in recent times, became seriously engaged with the state–society interactions. Governance, in this sense, is about managing the political rules of the game both at the formal and informal level (Kjaer 2004). Needless to say that, despite its different usage in different approaches, governance as a concept frequently transcends these analytical boundaries. Therefore, ‘governance can be conceptualized in terms of how authority, resources and power are distributed among the public, private and people sectors and various levels of government (from a supranational to community level)’ (Fritzen 2009, p. 1). This de¿nition of governance implicates all the three approaches discussed above at the same time. Governance can also be referred to as the ‘development of governing “styles” in which boundaries between and within public and private sectors become blurred. The focus in this case is on governing mechanisms that do not rest on recourse to authority and sanctions, but draw their legitimacy from popular consent’ (Mitra 2006). This public policy meets comparative politics de¿nition of governance de¿nitely hints at the democratizations process which is more pertinent in the context of changing societies. Moreover, since public policy is affected by both domestic and international politics and affairs, international relations notions of governance also stands relevant. Here, governance also becomes a relevant topic for other disciplines such as development economics, development studies, organizational studies and political sociology and so on. Besides having overlapping zones of understanding, all the approaches conceive of governance as something broader than government which is concerned about the rules of the game. Their preoccupation with rule-making also grows out of their common orientation towards institutions and institutional change. There are many versions of institutionalisms which are albeit based on two basic assumptions about human behaviour. The ¿rst is rational-choice approach where preferences are exogenous to individuals and an individual chooses from a list of alternative actions to maximize utility. The second is sociological where preferences are endogenous and the individual behaviour is determined by certain values and norms he or she is socialized into. Both these assumptions are crucial to explain two basic questions that institutionalism set out to address: (i) how institutions affect political behaviour; and (ii) how institutions emerge and change.
8
Introduction
Stare (thin)
Governance
Society (thick)
Figure 1.1 State, society and governance in a modern state Source: Mitra 2006, p. 21
This latter concern of institutionalism has caught much fancy of the governance theorists (Kjaer 2004). Institutionalism conceives governance as setting, application and enforcement of rules which not only determines the framework in which citizens, government and politics interact but also shapes the spheres of civil society (Kjaer 2004). This way of de¿ning governance combines the structure of rules with agency of change. Therefore, governance as a process lies in the interplay of structure and agency in which the state interacts with society. In precise terms, ‘governance, conceptualized as the overlap of the thin norms of the state and the thick perceptions of social groups is the interface of societies and institutions’ (Mitra 2006, p. 21). This is further elaborated in Figure 1.1. Until now it becomes clear that recent developments in governance theory has opened up alternative ways of looking at political institutions, domesticglobal linkages, transnational cooperation and different forms of public–private exchange (Pierre 2000). However, one fundamental point which needs to be addressed here is the contradiction inbuilt into the very concept of governance. Governance is always perceived differently by those who govern and those who are governed as they belong to the opposite ends of social distribution of power. The immediate question that one tends to ask is how orderly rule is achieved in spite of this inevitable hiatus between perceptions. The answer lies in conceptualizing power as productive, technical and positive. Power needs to be visualized as a productive network which runs through the entire social body surpassing its mere negative function of repression (Foucault 1980). In Foucault’s own words, [F]rom the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries onwards, there was a veritable technological take-off in the productivity of power. Not only did the monarchies of the Classical period develop great state apparatuses (the army, the police and ¿scal administration), but above all there was established at this period what one might call a new ‘economy’ of power, that is to say procedures which allowed the effects of power to circulate in a manner at once continuous, uninterrupted, adapted and ‘individualized’ throughout the entire social body. These new techniques are both much more ef¿cient and much less wasteful (less costly economically, less risky in their results, less open to loopholes and resistances) than the techniques previously
Introduction 9 employed which were based on a mixture of more or less forced tolerances (from recognized privileges to endemic criminality) and costly ostentation (spectacular and discontinuous interventions of power, the most violent form of which was the ‘exemplary’, because exceptional, punishment). (Foucault 1980, p. 119) Foucault maintains this same notion of ‘economy of power’ within the context of the modern state. While acknowledging the signi¿cance of the state and its apparatus (army, police, judiciary and so on) he reiterated the fact that one must look much beyond the juridical-legal aspect of the state and focuses more on the relations of power already existent in the society. He cites two reasons for this: ¿rstly, the state cannot entirely occupy the ¿eld of actual power relations despite its omnipotence and secondly, the state being a superstructure operates only on the basis of an already existing network of power relations. Therefore, the ‘metapower’ of the state which draws on a number of prohibitions and sanctions, ‘can only take hold and secure its footing where it is rooted in a whole series of multiple and inde¿nite power relations that supply the necessary basis for the great negative forms of power’ (Foucault 1980, p. 122). This Foucauldian notion of power both in terms of ‘economy of power’ and ‘networks of power relations’ beyond repressive state apparatus serves two purpose for our understanding of governance in the modern state. Firstly, for a system of governance to accomplish orderly rule, it is important for the state institutions to take root into the existing system of social relations which are characterized by different power positions and a distinct hiatus between the governed and those who govern. Secondly, this hiatus needs to be bridged not only by repressive state apparatus but also by manoeuvring the network of power relations. It is this effective manoeuvring of the hiatus between two different power positions that elicit interest in the concept of legitimacy of rule, particularly within a democratic set-up. Legitimacy can be derived through democratic procedures as a common agreement or acceptance of the governing authority or it could also be derived through effective policy implementation geared towards common good. It is the latter aspect of the term that renders institutional and strategic reform an integral part of the political elites’ strategy to enhance the legitimacy of the rule. However, it is also important to keep in mind that the concept of legitimacy becomes rather complicated while analysed in connection with two other related concepts: ef¿ciency and accountability. On one hand, legitimacy is contingent upon ef¿ciency on the part of the governing elites involving both the public and private realm of governance. On the other hand, too much emphasis on ef¿ciency within the context of democratic governance might lead to lesser accountability. The issue of accountability gets further complicated when private sector and civil society actors get involved in decision-making and public service delivery processes, as has happened in recent times through the emergence of multiple-stakeholders’ policy networks. This study places itself in the intersection of different conceptualizations of governance. That is to say, it explains how governance reforms of a techno-managerial
10
Introduction
variety (as propagate by international donor agencies) can improve the level of governance which hinges upon the state–society dynamics. In illustrating this broader argument, the study draws on the case of India and the e-Governance as a speci¿c ¿eld of strategic reform2 in the Indian context. The basic research question that drives this study is: Does strategic reform matter in improving the quality of governance? This broader question is followed by two corollaries: (i) Why are some strategic reforms successful in enhancing governance while others fail?; and (ii) Does the gap between policies and practices of reform necessarily denote a legitimacy de¿cit in governance? In probing these questions, the study deploys a novel interdisciplinary methodology by combining a neo-institutional model of analysing governance (political science) with a social constructivist approach of analysing the relationship between technology and governance (sociology) and the conceptual tool of hybridity to critically comprehend the emerging patterns of governance in India (Postcolonial/transcultural studies). While the neo-institutional model of governance explains the role of strategic reform in determining the level governance, social constructivism demonstrates how social and cultural factors embedded in the local contexts inÀuence the effectiveness of reform initiatives. This implies a probable hiatus between the intentions and outcomes of reform which could be symptomatic of a legitimacy de¿cit. Here, Postcolonial/transcultural perspective enabled with a conceptual tool of hybridity leverages the analysis of governance by mending the hiatus between policies and practices of reform. In short, state-centric as well society-centric approaches are coalesced to understand the dynamism of the concept of governance and this dynamism is further explicated within an interdisciplinary methodological framework.
From government to governance: tracing the North–South trajectory of governance discourse The context in which governance came to the fore in much of academic and development discourse has already been touched upon in the previous section. It is nonetheless imperative to invest a little more attention on this aspect as this context is particularly instrumental for the shift that has taken place in the lexicon of governance. Moreover, mapping the different trajectory of the governance discourse in developed and developing parts of the world is also crucial for comprehending the politics of governance. The most fundamental paradigm shift in this regard has been the moving focus from government to governance. This does not mean that the conceptual difference between government and governance is a new theoretical development. What it actually means is that this difference has been highlighted in recent times and the focus is now more on the governance than on the government. Moving from a purely abstract level of analysis, one feels compelled to ask what this shift actually implies in real terms. In discussing the government, the focus remains primarily on the sphere of state and its institutions and a structural-functional approach is mostly deployed in analysing the realm of state. This structure-based understanding of the state was
Introduction 11 slowly replaced by a process-based conceptualization of governance where two other spheres got considerable importance, namely the market and the civil society. The growth of market and civil society has sometimes coincided with the shrinkage of state or at least ineffectuality of state. Thus, governance forms a complex whole (see Figure 1.2) of interconnected spheres of public (which includes the state), private (which includes market) and citizens (which includes the civil society) in which the relationship between these spheres vary according to the distribution of power, resources and authority among them (Fritzen 2009). It can be conferred that until the power, authority and resources were monopolized by the public sector, government was the focus of all analysis either in the welfare state model of most democracies or the centralized planning model of erstwhile communist states and its followers. However, since the 1980s even the public sector started changing considerably with the introduction of differentiated levels of governance ranging from village (local) to supranational (global) governing bodies. This development coincided with the popularity of the neoliberal philosophy which propelled the free rein of market and shrinkage of the state. This of course, changed the way different spheres of governance were related and also their respective roles in the system. Since the early 1990s, with the collapse of the Soviet bloc, centralized planning and its close followers who relied on a mixed economic model in a democratic set-up opened up more to the liberal economic policy. This created different repercussions in different set-ups which were in turn shaped by the speci¿c historical and contextual trajectories of those regions. The common development that was experienced across region was the emergence of identity politics and social movements involving civil society and peoples’ participation (Jayal and Pai
Public
Authority
Power
Resources Private
Figure 1.2 The complex of governance: the emerging paradigm Source: Author (adapted from Fritzen 2009)
Citizen
12
Introduction
2001). Furthermore, by this time, the free market policy was slowly being replaced by ‘retreat back to state’ approach which again changed the balance of relationship between public, private and citizen. Hence the discourse shifted its focus from government to governance dealing more with the changing patterns of relationships between multiple spheres of governance. After scrutinizing the generalized context in which this broader and heterogeneous concept of governance has emerged, it is time to map the North–South divide in the entire trajectory. This is important in order to understand the factor of path dependency of certain events and concepts which would later help building right perspectives to merge area studies in general theorization. In most Western democracies, privatizations, deregulations and cut down on public expenditure were direct effects of ¿scal crisis which pushed most of the governments in these countries to search for new public management systems. They wanted to employ new strategies of management to reform public administration which in turn meant reorganizing the state along the line of the private sector. These developments were not so much about reducing the role of the state but including private actors (in delivering public services) who were supervized and monitored by state bureaucracies according to the ¿nancial and performance criteria. Another major development in reorganization of a state’s role was the creation of European Union and other even wider institutions which tried to introduce a global regime in trade and environmental regulations. These national and transnational events questioned the role of state as regulator of economic and other policies, as a sole provider of basic services, but not so much as a broker of social consensus (Jayal and Pai 2001). This de¿nitely points towards the importance of state–society relations in governance analysis. In most of the non-Western nations (some of which were actually very new), on the other hand, the governance discourse did not grow out of an existential reality of those nation-states. Like many other conceptual realties it Àew from the Western debate on governance in a manner which closely resemble modernization theory of development. Focusing strictly on the last two decades of the twentieth century, it becomes fairly evident that most of the shifts in governance debate and practices in the developing world have been prescriptive in nature, as imposed by the aid conditionality of donor agencies, mainly the World Bank. A World Bank document in 1989, on sub-Saharan Africa, suggested that most of the bank’s programmes and policies are failing due to the crisis of governance in that region. Hence heavy governance reform packages were recommended as a development management mechanism, which later became popular under the umbrella term of ‘good governance’ (Jayal and Pai 2001). Following the East Asian crisis in the latter half of the 1990s, the excessive dependence on market-oriented development was questioned and the role of the state again came under much discussion, and the relationship between state and plurality of actors outside the state became more signi¿cant for broadening the governance paradigm. Newer notions of the processes of governance started addressing the core of the governance. The thrust was not only on including multiple actors but also to attend to the qualitative aspect of governance.
Introduction 13 Therefore, it was not enough to have civil service reform, new public administration management strategies and privatization of services, but it was now impending to take account of factor such as participation, decentralization, responsiveness and more broadly social justice and equality (Jayal and Pai 2001). It seems clear here that new parameters of measuring governance in changing societies have emerged. However, these parameters are also not completely divorced of prescriptive Àows of reform agenda closely associated with democracy and sustainable economic development. The above trajectories indicate that for developing countries recent shifts in the governance discourse comes in a package of ‘good governance’, however problematic that may appear. In order to deepen one’s understanding of governance especially in the context of changing societies, it is important to debunk the notion of ‘good governance’ and unravel the politics of its language and outcome. Before doing so, a brief overview of the concept is imminent.
‘Good governance’: the global agenda of governance reform and changing societies Following the aftermath of the Cold War, the last decade of the twentieth century witnessed renewed interest in democracy, participation, transparency and ef¿ciency (Woods 1999). This wider context of political transition coincided with the massive failure of Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) in most of the developing countries. Henceforth, the international development community especially the World Bank woke up to a new realization that governance reform is the key to all developmental problems in underdeveloped and developing nations. Unlike SAPs which emphasized the role of market as opposed to the state, this new approach towards reform brought the role and capacity of the state and institutions under serious consideration (Joseph 2001). Interestingly enough the governance reform agenda became quietly complementary with two related themes of democracy and economic development. Together they formed a triad of a magical solution to all the anguish and distress associated with underdevelopment. This triad focused together on political system, institutional structures and governance processes within a framework of public–private partnership (Santiso 2001). All these new developments became popular under the umbrella term of ‘good governance’. In the last two decades ‘good governance’ has become the buzzword in the international development community. The term is packaged in such codes of morality that it seems to be devoid of any politics at all. However, quite contrarily in marrying the free market with a strong civil society, ‘good governance’ promises to provide new standards of rule which protect the citizens from the political societies and undemocratic governments (Corbridge et al. 2005). As has already been mentioned, ‘good governance’ emerged alongside (or as a result of) a set of other agendas which challenged the prevailing ideas on the state size, locus of authority relationships and the way government authority is organized. Privatization, decentralization, global governance, participatory democracy
14
Introduction
(democratization), deregulation, public administration reform – all these agendas play out simultaneously in the current debate on governance and culminates into the popular approach of ‘good governance’. There is as such no de¿nition of ‘good governance’. It is rather an ideal-typical construct (somewhat in a Weberian sense3) which delineates the parameters of governance through certain indicators. The quali¿er ‘good’ clearly denotes the better standards of such a formulation and hence the imperative to achieve them. The World Bank has identi¿ed three discrete aspects of governance which needs to be emphasized for reform: i) the form of political regime; ii) the process by which authority is exercised in the management of a country’s economic and social resources for development; and iii) the capacity of government to design, formulate and implement policies and discharge functions. (Bandyopadhaya 1996) Four key dimensions of this reform are as follows: (i) public sector management (capacity and ef¿ciency) which involves civil service reform and privatization initiatives; (ii) accountability which would enable institutions to hold the government accountable, for example an ombudsman; (iii) the legal framework for development which implies making and enforcing rules to control the market, for example enforcing private property rights; and (iv) information and transparency which hints towards free media, publicizing public expenditure, for example the right to information (Jayal and Pai 2001; Kjaer 2004). This implies signi¿cant changes in the ways power, authority and resources would be allocated and aligned with close links between democracy, economic development and ‘good governance’. As far as the criteria of ‘good governance’ are concerned, the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Paci¿c (UNESCAP) sets out eight major characteristics. It is participatory, consensus oriented, accountable, transparent, responsive, effective and ef¿cient, equitable and inclusive and follows the rule of law. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) elaborates on ¿ve basic principles of ‘good governance’. They are as follows: (i) Legitimacy and Voice as characterized by participation based on freedom of association and speech, capacities and consensus-oriented policies and procedures; (ii) Strategic vision and direction by leaders based on a sense of common good rooted in history, culture and social complexities; (iii) Performance based on responsiveness, ef¿ciency and effectiveness to serve all stakeholders; (iv) Accountability of public, private as well as civil society sector based transparency of processes and free Àow of information; (v) Fairness based on equity and rule of law (Graham et al. 2003). Now the question arises as to how can we understand these broad and general norms in speci¿c political and cultural contexts? Or how to transform such a normative concept into an operational concept of governance? This new agenda of ‘good governance’, though based on the premise of early liberal theories puts emphasis on a market concept of equality which strives for empowerment of citizens by making them economically self-sustaining and enabling them to enter into
Introduction 15 market transactions. The cooperation of private agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are crucial for this purpose. Under this new-found concept of equality and active participation of different actors citizens are often viewed as end users or customers whereas the government acts as the service providers. Improving the quality of these services and reaching out to a wider base of customers with the help of the private and non-governmental stakeholders are the central objectives of the governance reform projects and calls for complete overhaul of public administration (Joseph 2001).Therefore, as an issue of public policy ‘good governance’ has moved not only into the agenda of the World Bank but has also become a common parlance of national governments and local political actors. In short, ‘good governance’ provides a universal recipe with a gradually growing mix of deregulation, privatization, civil service reform and decentralization (the associated agendas of reform) which are deemed to produce better governability across societies (Corbridge et al. 2005). However, the international development community soon realized that supporting institutional reform was more dif¿cult than implementation of a particular project. The domestic politics in developing countries started becoming explicitly dependent on external inÀuences of the international development agencies. For example, the World Bank’s demand for economic austerity could trigger off social protest which would then bring changes in the regime structure. On a more subtle note, some donor-supported programmes could strengthen one ministry over the other thereby inÀuencing the internal institutional structure of the government. In this way, ‘good governance’ programme and its implementation across societies raised serious debate about the role of external actors in processes of state-building (Kjaer 2004). ‘Good governance’ agenda touched upon the sensitive aspects such as distribution of power and resources in developing societies which were anyway fraught with internal issues of growing ungovernability. This agenda was much more political in nature than earlier interventionist approaches of the international development community and hence created much more resistance in the local community and institutional set-up. As a result, they changed their agenda in certain ways. The movement was from demanding ‘good governance’ ex ante, i.e. governance reform being a conditionality of aid, towards ex post selectivity, i.e. taking ‘good governance’ as a quali¿er to receive assistance. The usage of ‘good governance’ has changed from being something to be promoted in developing countries to rather being a requirement before which loans could be disbursed. In short, these practices of international institutions as far as governance is concerned raised two very important issues in the debates within comparative politics: (i) how external forces inÀuence domestic politics; and (ii) whether it is at all possible to transfer the models of ‘good governance’ built on Western ideas to non-Western setting (ibid.). These are pertinent questions which turn our focus to developing societies where model ‘good governance’ has made its foray into public policies and developmental initiatives of the state. In most of the postcolonial and post-communist countries the ‘good governance’ or governance reform agenda has signi¿cantly impacted not only the state policies but also the overall governance structure and
16
Introduction
practices which manifest in changing contours of state–society relationships. In order to understand how a transnational agenda of governance reform inÀuence the national rhetoric of governance, we bring a context-speci¿c understanding of governance into the forefront of analysis. Here, India serves as a case of those changing societies where transnational governance reform strategies have shifted the national discourse on governance. The motivation behind choosing India is neither to establish an Indian exceptionalism in governance analysis, nor to ignore cultural idiosyncrasies embedded in the Indian context. In fact the aim is to reemphasize the context-speci¿c understanding of governance. Keeping the basic research questions in mind, the Indian case elucidates how far reform initiatives inspired by transnational paradigm can take root in the local contexts of governance. Taking a critical stand against the ‘good governance’ paradigm, this research nonetheless seeks to trace the impact of reform strategies promoted by the same paradigm.
The politics of governance reform: changing patterns of governance in India The fall of the Soviet Union in 1989, put a serious question mark on the feasibility of centralized planning which was coincided with a cynicism against the mixed economy as India continued to struggle with problems of poverty, unemployment, lower rates of growth. This led the Indian state to adopt International Monetary Fund (IMF) driven SAPs, which inaugurated economic liberalization in India in 1991. These transformations of India’s political economy manifest not only in liberal economic reforms but also in the political realm such as the increasing inÀuence of Hindu cultural nationalism and mobilization of identical politics through empowerment of historically subordinate sections of the populations, decentralization of governance through constitutional amendments (73rd and 74th) and strengthening of Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs) (Ruparelia et al. 2011; Farrington et al. 2009; Jayal and Pai 2001). The impact of such wideranging economic and political reform is still unfolding and is fraught with much ambivalence. However, all these trends have serious implications for the issues of governance. Identity politics and subsequent political mobilization do claim recognition of the state while challenging the particular regime and its legitimacy. Though they do not question the role of the state as such, nevertheless they do call for some reform of the state institutions. The processes of economic reform on the other hand, challenge the role of the state especially in the productive and redistributive aspects of the social order and stress the sphere of market. At the same time, a series of social movements and institutional experiments have taken up some of the responsibilities traditionally bore by the state, such as sustainable development, alleviating poverty and other such social causes. This de¿nitely shifts the balance between state, market and civil society and also their sphere of inÀuence in the society (Jayal and Pai 2001). While pointing out the need to look beyond the mere economic aspect of the reform, Jean Dreze and Amartya Sen, aptly argue:
Introduction 17 While much energy has been spent on sorting out these issues, too little attention has been paid to what is lacking in the current orientation of economic policy in India. The removal of counter-productive regulations on domestic production and international trade can form a helpful part of a programme of participation and widely-shared growth, but it may achieve relatively little in the absence of more active public policy aimed at reducing the other social handicaps that shackle the Indian economy and reduce the well-being of the population. (Dreze and Sen 1996, pp. 187–8) One obvious change of all these interconnected events was weakening of the omnipresent status of the state and rise of extra-state spheres. The impetus for change, although, were both exogenous and endogenous. The exogenous factor was de¿nitely the intervention of the international development community and the consequent adoption of economic liberalization policy that primarily bene¿ted the market in general and transnational corporations in particular, evidently at the expense of the national bourgeoisie. Endogenous factors of change were manifold. Firstly, it was the weakening of the central power followed by the rise of regional political parties, regionalization of the political system, increasing demands for separatism and political mobilization along caste/ethnicity axis. Secondly, with the state’s inability to tackle issues of poverty and development, there was a boom of civil society organization taking up the social and developmental causes. Thirdly, the tendency towards deinstitutionalization has increased through unparalleled cases of corruption and failure in law enforcement (Jayal and Pai 2001). However, the decline in state authority and rise of private and people sectors should not be seen as state versus extra-state spheres. In fact, changing parameters of governance have led to more cooperation between all these sectors, even though neither the process of partnership nor the outcomes of such partnership have been smooth and devoid of controversy. Jayal (2001) captured these diverse changes in six models of governance that emerged in the political discourses of India post-economic liberalization in 1991. She described these models of governance as being alternative to the ‘pre-existing centralized (albeit formally federal) structure of governance, and its twin, the command economy with centralized planning’ (ibid., p. 133). The ¿rst model of governance is described as rolling back the state which was part of the economic reform agenda. This model manifested in a mixed form in India. There has been a signi¿cant cut-down on the public expenditure in the social sector, albeit without much downsizing or disinvestment of the state. However, exogenous factors of globalization posed serious challenge to state capacity to intervene within society and beyond. The second model is purported by practices of social movements challenging the state discourse on development. Often debated as the ‘new social movements’ of India these movements, on one hand delegitimize the modernizing elitist tendencies of the developmental state and on the other hand, promote the idea of a citizen-centric participatory democratic polity. The third model of governance is characterized by capturing of the state power by dalit parties such
18
Introduction
as Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) which views economic inequalities as functions of political inequalities. Hence, the state as the main agent of redistributive system needs to be controlled by the disadvantageous dalits. The fourth model of governance is built on the notion of franchising the state where increasing number of national or international NGOs take over the developmental functions of the state either as a substitute of the state or as a franchise or as a public service contractor. The ¿fth model is based on the growing incidence of partnership between the state and the Community-Based Organizations (CBOs). These partnerships can be both top-down state initiatives and bottom-up approach where the state follows up on the path charted by the CBOs. Both the fourth and the ¿fth model hint at the emergence of a signi¿cant sphere of civil society and their changing relationship with the state. The sixth and the last model is that of a state-driven decentralized model based on 73rd and 74th constitutional amendments in 1992. This major reform policy in the governance and administrative sector is one of the crucial yet usually sidelined in the general discussion on reform (Mooij 2005). The 73rd and 74th amendments made way for a two-three tier panchayat system in every state with provision for direct elections in village, block and district levels thereby strengthening institutions of local self-government. The principal features of such a decentralizing measure were: representatives to all the three levels were to be elected for a ¿ve-year term; one-third of the seats were reserved for women; mandatory reservations for scheduled castes (SCs) and scheduled tribes (STs) proportional to their population were introduced; the gram sabha or the voting public attained the constitutional status as the formal deliberative body at the village level; provisions were made for individual states to enact further reservations for other backward groups (Farrington et al. 2009). Another important aspect of the village panchayats is that they act as local mechanisms to increase transparency and accountability in government functioning. For example, distribution of governmental schemes is often fraught with stories of corruption, nepotism and misallocation. Through the decentralized model, village panchayat are expected to play a positive role to salvage such misappropriation as they enjoy considerable authority in identifying bene¿ciaries for most governmental schemes (ibid.). However, in an interesting observation Jayal pointed out: [T]hough these Amendments were intended to bring about both the democratization and the decentralization of governance, democratization – through the provisions for reservations for women as well as for members of the scheduled castes and tribes – clearly appears to have outpaced decentralization. (Jayal 2001, p. 149) The above-mentioned models of governance quite painstakingly summarize the changing patterns of the state–society relationships that emerged in the political landscape of India following the economic liberalization in early 1990s. Another important aspect of the reform process that some of these models suggest that there has been a conscious effort on the part of the state to initiate signi¿cant strategic reforms, be it in speci¿c sector or in reforming governance networks (e.g. by
Introduction 19 including extra-state spheres) or in changing orientation of state institutions (e.g. by adopting citizen-centric delivery models). In short, governance reform has occupied a signi¿cant place in state planning and programmes. It is in this planning mode that there has been considerable attention on ICTs for revamping the operations and functioning of the entire system of governance by contriving the technical as well as developmental role of the state. This strategic reform orientation of the Indian state towards electronic governance can be captured under the label of ‘e-Governance for good governance’ or ‘e-Governance for development’ (Sreekumar 2008; Madon 2009). The following section illustrates the general state and importance of e-Governance reform in India as a broader part of the governance reform agenda.
Politics, technology and culture: an analytical puzzle of e-Governance Governance as a social and political concept traverses state and society, those who govern and the governed. Hence, governance can be manipulated by both the ruler and the ruled depending on the context of the rule. This implies a continuous interaction between the structure and agency, between the state-institutions and the stakeholders4 which transform the system of governance and thereby renders it a dynamic concept. The basic question that this research sets out to investigate is how strategic reform affects the level of governance, or in other words, how can the state–society interface be inÀuenced by strategic reform policies and practices. Policy-making and its implementation by the state institutions lie on one hand of this spectrum. The other side involves the reception and adaptation of such policies among the stakeholders. Both sides of reform, that is policies and practices involves a set of actors who are embedded in a particular cultural context. As this research focus on reforms initiated in the sphere of ICTs, understanding the impact of technology also adds to the broader research question. In order to analyse the impact of e-Governance reform on the level of governance it is important to establish the link between politics, culture and technology. Thus, the analytical puzzle of e-Governance in this research links politics, culture and technology in a complex and overlapping relationship. In resolving this puzzle three theoretical and methodological perspectives have provided the signi¿cant heuristic devices. They are neo-institutionalism, social constructivism and transcultural perspectives. Although these academic dispositions are discussed in much detail in the chapter on theories and methodology, it is absolutely necessary to pronounce the relevance of these scholastic principles for the current research endeavour. Neo-institutionalism engages with both formal rule-bound state institutions and the informal matrix of values and norms embedded in society in order to understand the impact of institutions on political behaviour and also institutional change. Therefore, it provides a theoretical model to investigate on one hand how rules are made and applied, and on the other hand how rules are simultaneously manipulated by different actors (Kjaer 2004). In other words, it explains how the structure of rules originates and gradually shifts through the agency of the actors.
20
Introduction
These actors include not only the elites who can directly inÀuence the institutional set-up but also average citizens who usually reside on the receiving end of the institutional rules. Applying these basic principles in our speci¿c research problem neo-institutionalism explains how reform policies are initiated and implemented through elite strategies and how they are perceived and received by the stakeholders. While exploring e-Governance reforms, neo-institutionalism also probes why and how it became a part of the elite strategy in the post-economic liberalization years in India. Neo-institutionalism becomes even more relevant in the context of postcolonial states like India where elite strategies serves as signi¿cant tools to leverage the gap between imported categories of colonial institutional structure and embedded inheritance of cultural norms (Mitra 2006). In short, neoinstitutional paradigm explains the politics of strategic reform in e-Governance and how the dynamic interplay of structure-agency within a speci¿c cultural context shift the contours of governance. By now it has been reiterated that cultural norms and values embedded in a societal context inÀuence the behaviour of the actors engaged in the system of governance irrespective of their power position. When technology is added to this complex relationship between politics and culture, it is not enough to understand the politics of strategic reform. In this case, the explanatory rigor comes from analysing how use of technology ¿gures into these reform strategies and how the impact of technology is in turn determined by the interactions between institutional structures and societal contexts. For this purpose, e-Governance reforms lie at the intersection of politics, technology and culture and hence needs to be analysed through the critical lens of social constructivism. Social constructivism serves a two-level analytical purpose. At the ¿rst level, it explicates how both institutions and actors being socially constructed are entangled within the historically produced and culturally bound web of meaning, rules and preferences (Barnett 2005). At the second level social constructivism, as opposed to technological determinism expounds how actors and contexts determine the impact of technology. Social constructivism therefore shows how ICTs policies are formulated and received in India depending on the different subject positions of the actors and their respective contexts (Sreekumar 2008). While measuring e-Governance, the ‘e’ part which denotes the technological contribution to the ‘governance’ needs to be disaggregated. This implies taking up a social constructivist orientation towards technology instead of relying on technological determinism. In simple terms, the basic assumption in this analytical frame is that technology does not automatically improve public service delivery or enhance governance. Needless to say, both neo-institutionalism and social constructivism aid in the context-speci¿c understanding of e-Governance albeit from a different theoretical lens. However, both theories, having their roots in Western/ European history and context bear the risk of misrepresenting a non-Western, postcolonial system of governance. Such Eurocentric grand theories often explain India either as an ever catching up de¿cient state or as a society of exotic aberrations. Instead of absolutely rejecting these theoretical models, this research strives to minimize this risk
Introduction 21 by introducing a postcolonial and/or transcultural perspective5 which strive to counter the hegemonic claims of Eurocentric knowledge system. A transcultural perspective as a transdisciplinary methodology analyses social, political, cultural and historical phenomena as a product of a multidirectional transcultural Àow of concepts and categories which acquire different meaning in different local contexts through active agency of the actors (Mitra 2012). In comprehending such entangled trajectories, transcultural perspective presents an analytical and methodological toolbox comprised of concepts such as ‘Àows’, ‘asymmetry’, ‘hybridity’ and so on (ibid.). While analysing e-Governance in the postcolonial context of the Indian state and society, hybridity plays the most instrumental part as it brings out the role of agency of multiple actors irrespective of their power position in the most prominent way. Hybridity, though originating in biological sciences, has taken up an important position in cultural studies, humanities and social sciences. Postcolonial studies, particularly the writings of Homi Bhabha have made hybridity a popular concept by perceiving it as a political strategy in the hands of the governed (Bhabha 1994) or simply the ‘weapon of the weak’.6 It is this notion of hybridity which is directly linked to the notion of political agency that strikes a chord with context-speci¿c analysis of governance and also links it to the basic framework of neo-institutional and social constructivist approaches. However, hybridity in this study is meant to serve a broader purpose. Firstly as a political strategy, it shows how in a postcolonial context, the gap between imported institutional set-up and inherited categories of social norms are mended through a continuous yet non-linear process of hybridization and how they culminate into different hybrid institutions and practices in order to achieve a state of equilibrium within the system of governance. Secondly as an analytical category, it explains how the state–society relationships being entangled in multidirectional transcultural Àows are manoeuvred by different actors in different contexts. In terms of understanding the impact of e-Governance reform on the level of India’s governance, hybridity helps explaining the gaps that we often encounter between the policies at the macro level and their (diverse) implementation at the micro level. In doing so, it effectively points out how both e-Governance policies and practices in India go through the process of hybridization and create hybrid institutions which in turn help the reform initiatives (often promoted by a transnational/transcultural agenda of governance reform) to take root in the Indian context. Hence hybridity aids the analysis of both processes and outcomes of e-Governance reforms in India. These three analytical perspectives combined together create a compact base for addressing three basic research questions which are closely related to each other: (a) does strategic reform help improving the level of governance; (b) why some reforms initiatives are more effective while others fail; and (c) how the gap between state and society, between policies and practices can be understood not merely in terms of legitimacy de¿cit but as contributing to the resilience of governance. In order to resolve these questions, e-Governance policies and practices and their impact on India’s governance is analysed here. Importantly, it is crucial to mention here that though e-Governance policies form a substantial category in the analysis; this
22
Introduction
research does not intend to focus exclusively on policy outcomes of e-Governance in India. Instead it strives to analyse e-Governance as a strategic reform sector in its entirety, that is, why and how e-Governance reform came into the policy discourse, how these reform initiatives gradually changed the policy networks, how introduction of e-Governance impacted the governing styles and how practices of e-Governance are slowly taking root into the contextual realities of India. Therefore, this study does not merely evaluate the impact of a particular e-Governance policy, but rather e-Governance serves here as case in point to reÀect how certain strategic reform agenda (propagated by transnational and national institutions) take shape in the material and cultural contexts of a society and impacts its overall governance mechanism. For this overarching understanding of e-Governance reform and its impact on governance, it was only importunate to move beyond the policy-outcome approach and to devise a rather complex analytical frame combining different theoretical and methodological perspectives. In order to evaluate if the strategic e-Governance reform can enhance the level of governance four main theoretically informed conjectures7 are formulated within the context of ICT policy and e-Governance initiatives in India. They are as follows: C1: E-Governance reforms that make public service more easily and regularly accessible for citizens will improve the quality of governance According to this conjecture, accessibility of public services is crucial for improving the system of governance as it makes the system more inclusive and effective. In a densely populated country like India, where accessibility of public services poses serious administrative and infrastructural challenge, ICTs bear the potential of taking these services to the doorsteps of the citizens even in the remotest corner. Availing of public services by more and more citizens renders state institutions and machinery more ef¿cient; it makes the distributive function of the state more adept and thereby ensures enhanced legitimacy of state institutions. All these factors hint towards improved interaction between state and society and hence improved level of governance. To denote that e-Governance reform leads to better accessibility of public services and hence to improved level of governance three indicators are deployed: increased citizen participation, predictability of services and transparency of processes. C2: E-Governance reform initiatives that aid in improving the coordination between all the stakeholders in turn improve the quality of governance As described earlier governance as a concept is consisted of both ruler and the ruled which represents different power positions. Being at the core of differential power distribution, it often embodies conÀicting interest groups. Given the inherent inequality of the concept, lack of transparency and absence of clear
Introduction 23 accountability structure might lead to miscommunication and resulting animosity among different stakeholders involved in the complex of governance. As e-Governance reform has the potential to make service delivery process more transparent, the interaction between state, market, civil society and citizens can resultantly become more transparent. Similarly transparency of processes also helps create a clearer structure of accountability among stakeholders through introduction of ICT tools, change-management and BPR. Thus, better transparency and accountability serve as the indicators of improved coordinators among stakeholders which in turn will have a positive impact on the overall system of governance by making it more ef¿cient, effective and inclusive. C3: E-Governance initiatives that take social and cultural factors embedded in the speci¿c contexts into consideration improve the level of governance As governance lies at the intersection of state and society, it is not enough to render the public service delivery accessible and ef¿cient through intervention of ICT tools. At the same time it is important for e-Governance reform to take root into societal structure. In other words, such reform initiatives need to take local social and cultural factors into consideration in order to be effective. Without such considerations, even reform initiatives with the best of intentions can fail at the grass roots levels of implementation. Hence, it can be inferred that e-Governance reform that are better adaptable to the local context will ensure greater participation by all stakeholders. These will increase the acceptability and legitimacy of such reform initiatives and consequently the level of governance. C4: E-Governance reforms that improve the delivery mechanism of public service will improve the level of governance The ¿rst conjecture reÀects on how citizens can access public services in a better way. However, public service also requires improvement in delivery model which implies internal improvement within the state machinery. E-Governance reform holds the capacity to revamp the delivery mechanism of the public services through the use of ICT tools and related public administration reform tools such as change-management, BPR, training modules and so on. The impact of such reform on the state machinery that delivers public services can be indicated through higher predictability of services and better accountability within the delivery chain. It is pertinent to mention that most of the indicators described here are also present in the ‘good governance’ paradigm as espoused by the World Bank and the United Nations organizations. Nonetheless the difference remains in the approach while collecting and analysing the relevant data. ‘Good governance’ is a top-down approach that outlines a prescriptive list of indicators as universal normative standards of governance without much regard for context-speci¿cities (except in the rhetoric). Given this universal normative approach to governance, it
24
Introduction
often labels governing systems of developing nations as inadequate whenever there is a gap between policy prescription and actual practices. This book on the contrary, counters such ideological bias by constructively analysing the contextspeci¿c implications of these gaps rather than simply labelling them as legitimacy de¿cits. Furthermore, the introduction of adaptability as an indicator strengthens the claim of context-speci¿c inquiry of e-Governance. Consequently, unlike the ‘good governance’ approach, this governance analysis focuses on the legitimacy of the rule by converging the rulers’ category with the perceptions of the ruled. These four main conjectures that drive this research infer that introducing ICTs would lead to better predictability of service delivery, higher transparency in the rules and processes of public administration, greater accountability of the service provider and enhanced reach of public services or inclusion of wider mass into service delivery mechanism. However, they also stress the importance of adapting to embedded social conditions and cultural values in fully realizing the potential of these technologies and the counter-productive forces of technologies. The vital challenge here is to incorporate these social and cultural factors into a comprehensive frame of analysis in a systematic manner. E-Governance initiatives in India are comprised of both policies and practices. Hence, besides exploring the major policies, a case study of one of the major e-Governance projects in India called the Common Services Centres (CSCs) Scheme was incorporated into the framework of analysis to demonstrate how politics, technology and culture get entangled in the implementation of e-Governance initiatives. An extensive four-state ¿eldwork was conducted based on qualitative interviews involving all the stakeholders, both at the state level and at the national level. As the CSCs Scheme is formulated as a structured project, the stakeholders were prede¿ned. In addition, a group of experts specializing in e-Governance in different capacities have been interviewed.
Conclusion: structure and scope of the book There are two major areas of e-Governance which this book studies in order to evaluate the four main conjectures, namely policies and practices of e-Governance in India. The following chapter (Chapter 2) outlines some of the major conceptual categories and methodological design with a note on the methods adopted for this study. One important section of this chapter spells out the methodological challenges associated with the context-speci¿c analysis of governance and also present some of the probable resorts attempted in this study. The next chapter (Chapter 3) engages in describing the state of e-Governance in India through policies and practices. In the ¿rst step, the policy documents related to such strategic reform are analysed which include the Information Technology (IT) Act 2000; Amendment to the IT Act 2008; NeGP (2006); 11th Report of the 2nd Administrative Reform Commission (ARC) 2008; selected chapters of the Tenth and Eleventh Five Year Plan (2002–2007 and 2007–2012). A qualitative research method has been adopted to derive at an in-depth understanding of the policy directions and guidelines and their potential impact on the framework of governance stretching across almost a
Introduction 25 decade. These policy documents are analysed mainly within the theoretical framework of neo-institutional model of governance and help to discern the policy framework for e-Governance reforms in India. The next segment of the chapter elaborates on the practice of e-Governance in India with a particular focus on the NeGP. Chapter 4 puts the experiences of e-Governance within the Indian context by presenting the case study of the CSCs Scheme. The ¿eld narratives of the case study are elaborated here as regional experiences of the four sample states which are generated out of the same pan-national initiative. At the end, these narratives are compared and interwoven into a cohesive account of India’s experiences of e-Governance reform. The objective of this chapter is to demonstrate how regional contexts play a catalytic role in coping with e-Governance reforms which in turn facilitate a context-speci¿c understanding of e-Governance. Following the lead from the regional comparisons, Chapter 5 evaluates the ways in which e-Governance reforms inÀuence the existing system of governance, i.e., to what extent the initial conjectures about the relationship between e-Governance reform and overall governance can be supported by the policies and practices elaborated in the previous chapters. As such, reform processes are often fraught with contradicting realities; the analytical narratives take up the conceptual tool of hybridity to explain the myriad levels of negotiations and subversions that undergo the entire trajectory of e-Governance reforms in India. The aim of this chapter is to establish how e-Governance reforms are deployed as a techno-managerial ¿x to manipulate the legitimacy de¿cit in a postcolonial system of governance and how they could gradually transform that very system of governance in a steady yet nonlinear fashion. The concluding chapter also explains how e-Governance research can enrich governance research and how the Indian context holds wider implications for overall understanding of governance issues, governance in terms of its interface with technology, with politics of reform or with culture. Governance being the interface of state and society can be analysed from different academic approaches and from different perspectives even within the same disciplinarian boundary. For example, social anthropology and political science would approach the problematic of governance quite differently. Similarly within the purview of political science, public policy and international relations theorists would focus on different aspects of governance. Though this study of governance often transcends these scholastic boundaries, nonetheless it strives to combine the public policy approach with comparative politics approach within the broader framework of political sociology. This implies that it examines how particular public policy reforms harness the state–society relationship in an effective manner. In doing so, we start at the level of policy formulations and then unravel how they take the form of concrete schemes and ¿nally the processes and outcomes of their implementation at the micro level. Such multi-faceted focus renders the analysis of governance both state-centric and society-centric as it not only explores how political elites initiate policies, but also how bureaucrats implement these policies (sometimes with the help of private actors) and how ¿nally these policies are received by the citizens. All these processes take place in a particular political, social and cultural context which shapes the behaviour of all
26
Introduction
the actors and ultimately their interactions with each other. The interlocking of these political, social and cultural factors makes the reform process a complex, yet crucial, node in the analytical puzzle of governance. Following the economic liberalization in India in 1991, there were several major policy reforms which went much beyond the economic sphere. One such reform was in the ¿eld of ICTs and its subsequent impact on the public service delivery model and the system of governance, in other words e-Governance reform. Given its signi¿cant impact on governance e-Governance reform has been critically scrutinized starting from e-Governance policy formulation, implementation and its reception by the stakeholders. Hence both governance and e-Governance are treated as conceptual variables where the latter’s impact on the former are considered to be of considerable signi¿cance. Having clearly set the scope of this study, it would be only imminent to draw the circumference of the enquiry as well. Governance as a conceptual variable lies at the crossroad of politics, culture, economy and society. Consequently, there are myriad categories that can contribute to the quality of the governance. In other words, indicators of ‘good’ or ‘bad governance’ can range from law and order management to the state of justice, from public service delivery mechanism to social discrimination, from developmental schemes to economic inequality and so on. This research by no means claims to present an exhaustive account of all the factors which either enhance or reduce the quality of governance. Instead it con¿nes its attention to one particular strategic reform which is considered to have a positive impact on the level of governance. Even while examining the effects of e-Governance, this study does not claim to explore all the dimensions of such reforms. For example, one of the most desirable and projected outcomes of using ICTs in public service delivery is reduced corruption. Though some evidences in the same direction could be drawn from the ¿eld experiences, this book does not involve in a deeper understanding of the same. The reason behind this exclusion is not to undermine corruption as a signi¿cant indicator of governance. The answer lies within the research design. Drawing any signi¿cant generalizations on the relationship between e-Governance reforms and corruption demands an impact assessment study over a longer period of time which could assess the status before and after reforms interventions. This is clearly beyond the scope of this research. The other limiting element of this research is its heavy reliance on qualitative data. Though treating governance as a conceptual variable, the analytical frame deployed here is based on purely qualitative data. Therefore, while evaluating the quality of governance in terms of the outreach and effectiveness of the strategic reform, an attempt has been made to look for gaps in the policy documents and its subsequent implementations. However, all the gaps are not interpreted automatically as a failure of the policies but weighed carefully to see how sometimes these gaps in fact help a policy to be absorbed in the local context. In other words, instead of ¿nding simple explanations for policy effectiveness or policy failure, the focus is more on the conÀicting zones of policy processes instigated by a certain reform agenda and the way apparent policy de¿cits can be actually turned into policy resolve. The ¿nal point of contestation is the India-centric analysis of governance. Rather than
Introduction 27 denying the speci¿cities of the Indian context the study attempts to counter this bias in three ways: ¿rstly, by adding the four federal states as additional layers of regional complexities which make the Indian case study more dynamic; secondly, by presenting India as only a case in point (not the case) to showcase a contextspeci¿c understanding of governance; and thirdly, India represents a case of many other postcolonial and post-communist societies, where the domestic as well as international impetus to governance reform played a crucial role in inÀuencing the context of governance. E-Governance and its impact on overall quality of governance is an emerging ¿eld of study within academia. Hence, despite its limited scope this study intends to make an important and original contribution to the existing body of research on e-Governance and governance in general. In addition, by connecting the Indian case study to the general theories of governance this piece of work attempts to demonstrate how area studies can contribute to the process of theory-building.
References 4 E-Governance in context: a case study explore how e-Governance in India fares in leveraging the state–society dynamics.
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