“E-Choupal” And “E-Bhoomi”: The Biggest E-Governance Initiatives

E-Choupal is an initiative of ITC Limited, to interface specifically with provincial ranchers by means of the Internet for acquisition of rural and aquaculture items like soybeans, wheat, espresso, and prawns. Through the e-Choupal activity, ITC has made more than 6, 500 e-Choupal PC stations in provincial territories that serve a normal of six hundred agriculturists each. Utilizing this innovation, ranchers may arrange supplies, find out about best horticultural practices, get climate reports and read about evaluating for yields all through the district.

Farmers can use this information to prices their own produce because of which they can have higher profit margins as there will now be no middleman. ITC Limited also benefits from the initiative, by simplifying its supply chains and increasing its profits.

'E-Choupal' likewise unshackles the capability of an Indian agriculturist who has been caught in an endless loop of low speculation > low profitability > delicate market introduction > low-esteem expansion > low edge > okay risk-taking capacity. This made him an Indian agribusiness area all-inclusive uncompetitive, regardless of rich and plenteous regular assets. Such a market-led business model can enhance the competitiveness of Indian agriculture and trigger a virtuous cycle of higher productivity, higher incomes, enlarged capacity for farmer risk management, larger investments and higher quality and productivity. Further, a growth in rural incomes will also unleash the latent demand for industrial goods so necessary for the continued growth of the Indian economy. This will create another virtuous cycle propelling the economy into a higher growth trajectory.

'E-Choupal' ensures world-class quality in delivering all these goods & services through several product/service specific partnerships with the leaders in the respective fields, in addition to ITC's own expertise. • While the farmers benefit through enhanced farm productivity and higher farm gate prices, ITC benefits from the lower net cost of procurement (despite offering better prices to the farmer) having eliminated costs in the supply chain that do not add value.

E-Bhoomi

Bhoomi is a project jointly funded by the Government of India and the Government of Karnataka to digitize the paper land records and create a software mechanism to control changes to the land registry in Karnataka. • The project was designed to eliminate the long-standing problem of inefficiency and corruption in the maintenance of land records at dispersed and poorly supervised and audited block-level offices known as "taluka" offices in South India and "tehsildar" offices in North India.

The program for computerization of rural land records of Karnataka or the Bhoomi program led to the digitization of 20 million land records and the abolition of manually maintained land records. The entire system of management of land records has been computerized and thus the changes to the land records called Mutations are electronically managed through a transparent first in first out (FIFO) mechanism.

Karnataka was the first state in the country to have initiated delivery of computerized land records and in the many years that the program has been in existence, the program has exceeded the expectation of both the farmers and the government officials. The Bhoomi program has been recognized both nationally and internationally by agencies like UN and World Bank and is lauded as a land mark e-Governance program. The many reasons for the successful implementation of Bhoomi namely proper design of the program, the abolition of manual alternatives, stakeholder management, capacity building among government servants etc. are written in this article.

Under the Bhoomi program, the manual system of record keeping of land records was abolished and a single computerized system for both issuing of land records as well as making changes in land records was established. Now a farmer in Karnataka could come to the computer centre in the sub – district office and obtain his land record without fear or favour.

Transcribing a land record manually is a laborious job for a village accountant. Currently, about 1. 5 Crore land records are delivered every year from the computer centres in the Sub-district office and it would have been impossible to handle such a large volume in a manual fashion. Computerization has enabled the revenue department to easily track the mutation (change) transactions and monitor the pendency of transactions.