Hybridising (e)-governance in India : the interplay of politics, technology and culture

This research, based on a neo-institutional model explores how a techno-managerial variety of e-governance reform as espoused by a transnational governance reform agenda affects the level of governance that hinges upon a dynamic relationship between state and society. Since such a research endeavour focuses on the relationship between technology and governance, a social constructivism approach is deployed to explicate how this relationship is mediated through an array of political, social and cultural factors which further calls for a context-specific analysis of e-governance. Consequently, a detailed analysis of e-governance policies and practices in India along with a case study of the Common Services Centres (CSCs) Scheme under the National e-Governance Plan of the Government of India has been undertaken. Such analyses often denotes substantial gap between the macro-policies of reform and their actual impact which is further explained through the analytical category of hybridity. Hybridity shows how both policies and practices go through a process of hybridisation in negotiating the hiatus between ‘imported’ institutional set up and the ‘inherited’ social set up in the post-colonial context of India. Thus, the implication of e-governance in India goes much beyond in explaining (e) governance as a complex interplay between politics, technology and culture. Hence, this research transcends the specific context of India firstly in explicating the relationship between technology and governance and secondly, by devising a unique yet holistic methodological approach to address the entanglement of politics, technology and culture in the complex whole of governance

The Informatics policy in India

The Government of India has recognized that the impressive growth the country has achieved since the mid-1980s in Information Technology (IT) is still a small proportion of the potential to achieve. Accordingly, it has resolved to make India a Global IT Superpower and a front-runner in the age of the Information Revolution. It considers IT as an agent of transformation of every facet of human life, which will bring about knowledge based society in the twenty-first century. This paper focuses on policies and procedures for removing bottlenecks and achieving a pre-eminent status for India in the area of IT