The Hindu : Karnataka News : `Nemmadi' at last for landowners

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Saturday, Mar 10, 2007
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Karnataka

Karnataka

`Nemmadi' at last for landowners

R. Chandrakanth

E-GOVERNANCE: `Nemmadi' project kiosk at Kasaba in Ramanagaram taluk. — Photo: K. Gopinathan

Bangalore: "Pahani" or the Record of Rights, Crops and Tenancy (RTC) is the most prized possession of a villager with fragmented land holdings. To get this document, the landowner has to trudge miles to the taluka office, spending considerable amount of time and money. This is going to be a thing of the past soon, thanks to Nemmadi (rural business centre), which the Government, in a public-private partnership, has put in place in 690 hoblis as of date.

Yes, it is not yet a thing of the past. The RTC, though digitised, has to be signed by the Village Accountant (VA) and there lies the hitch. The VA, most of the times, is not available at the hobli level and endorsing the RTC is delayed.

This correspondent visited a couple of Nemmadi centres in Ramanagaram taluk and found that the project is in its "teething stages". In Kasaba of Ramanagaram taluk, a handful of villagers who have made a request for the RTC, sit under a tree, hoping that the VA would come by and sign the document. They hope that the VA would come to the kiosk before the last bus leaves the village.

Shanbhoganahalli, about eight km from Ramanagaram, presents a contrasting picture. Those seeking RTC get it immediately as Satish, the 21-year-old youth in-charge of Nemmadi kiosk here, has taken signatures of the VA on blank RTCs in advance. The villagers are happy but prefer a permanent solution. And this is likely to happen within a year's time when the Government gets digital signatures of over 10,000 Village Accountants across the State. Confirming this, the Director of Electronic Delivery of Citizen Services, Vipin Singh, said the smart card for the VAs was under process with the National Informatics Centre. The digital authentication needs legal sanction for which the Karnataka IT Rule is being amended.

As of now, about 38 services under the RDS (rural digital services - income certificate/caste certificate/ widow pension etc) have been digitised as these are endorsed by tahsildars who number around 200 across the State. The RDS facility is available in 25 taluks now and would be scaled to 53 by April, the peak season for villagers accessing various documents.

The primary concern for the Government and the private partner — Comat Technologies — has been to roll out kiosks in all the hoblis.

For Mr. Raghavan, the setting up of kiosks had been a challenging task and a satisfying one as it provided jobs to rural youth. Comat employs one for each kiosk and four in the taluk back-office, and they are on the payrolls of Comat. "It is a substantial investment we have made in Nemmadi and hope as it gains momentum we will be able to break even within 18 months."

Under the public-private partnership, he said the Government got Rs. 11 and Comat Rs. 4 of the Rs. 15 collected as fee from the villager to get the RTC document.

Comat intends to launch soon B2C (business to consumers) services such as payment of electricity bills; water bills; telephone bills; bus and railway ticketing and so on.

"It is not digital divide we are talking about, we are talking about bridging the information divide," says Shashi Patil, Chief Operating Officer of Comat.

Enthused by the success of the project here, Comat is now pitching for setting up rural business centres in other States, starting with Haryana.

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