Beyond Digitalization
Undoubtedly, E-governance can revolutionize the reform process towards better and more participatory and inclusive governance; but this requires political will, and qualitative changes in the governance process. For this the question of access to ICTs is an important issue, as is the design of E-governance projects. Unfortunately, to date such ventures have been mostly unimaginative ones, carried out by technocrats and bureaucrats with little or no consideration for insights provided by the social sciences regarding prevalent social structures, power equations, and economic systems

         Among implementing agencies of E-governance projects, there is often a confusion regarding areas where it can be applied. In the context of privatization of services earlier provided by the government, and in view of the purportedly more inclusive concept of governance that has come to replace government, it no longer makes sense to restrict E-governance only to public sector agencies. However several activists and scholars working in the field refrain from extending E-governance to the private sector even where it has taken over provision of basic services to citizens from the government.

          But more importantly, anywhere in the country, E-governance has rarely led to public participation in decision making. Projects have mostly tried to make efficient delivery of repetitive and routine government tasks such as the issue of forms, permits, registrations, licenses etc. While this marks an important change towards efficiency of government functioning, in the context of persistent poverty and inequality, and the continuing significance of the role of government in economic development, E-governance can have an impact only if it goes beyond routine services and focuses on participatory development, increased public role in policy and decision making, and holding governments and private actors to greater accountability. This requires that greater freedom and autonomy is given to civil society organizations, citizens groups, activists, social movements and individuals to shape the design of E-governance projects.

          Much of ICT for governance projects are marked by a tendency to regard ordinary citizens as ignorant people, not technologically savvy, and who need experts to design programmes for them. This betrays an insensitivity which often leads to improper design and wastage of public money. Successful E-governance requires a greater trust in the ability of people to transform their lives and should aim to provide them with the opportunities, resources and technologies to do so, rather than impose ill-conceived and inappropriate programmes upon the users. In other words E-governance should evolve from below rather than be designed by bureaucrats and IT firms who are not necessarily best placed to design suitable solutions.

Widening the reach
There is a real danger that E-governance may end up as being beneficial only to the urban middle classes and the corporate sector, while largely bypassing the interests and needs of the vast number of urban and rural poor and other marginalized groups. From our analysis of various E-governance projects it is evident that there is a lot of overblown propaganda about these undertakings, with little of the intended impacts in evidence. This is because most such projects have little understanding of the lack of access to rights, resources, information, technologies and markets that most poor people suffer from.

          Technologically formatted information by itself is of little use in the absence of other kinds of changes in society and economy. Projects such as Gyandoot in Madhya Pradesh, Bhoomi in Karnataka, E-Seva in Maharashtra, and Akshaya in Kerala are an important step in improving the government/citizen interface. However these projects have not had real impacts on the most-needy of the rural and urban poor, and their initial success has not translated into wider benefits for society at large. Perhaps the high publicity surrounding such projects has masked their essential limitations. On the other hand, projects such as the Warana Wired Village, though started with initial support from the government, is now an independent, co-operative and people – driven project. It has had greater success in the use of ICT for bringing about social transformation in terms of increased incomes, reduced corruption, and greater transparency and accountability of economic agents. Similar to other technology driven projects, it is high time that E-governance projects relied on scientifically carried out ex-ante social impact assessment studies in improving project design and implementation.