E-governance initiatives in India: A case for democratizing decentralization

The quality of democracies is known by the way these handle information. Inaccurate and distorted information leads to malfunctions in the system. The notion of E-governance is though attracting such democracies, but linking such information for better governance in the absence or lack of basic infrastructure and human skills makes the task difficult. India - being one of, the biggest democracies needs to do much more in terms of E-governance. Central as well as several State governments are targeting their citizens with more access to information technology, however the user groups makes the dead end on the information highway. Their participation is somehow conservative in all such initiatives. The present paper tries to illustrate various such initiatives taken and the problems encountered by India at the micro level. A review based approach followed by multidimensional analysis is resorted to present the facts, figures, comparisons and suggestions that could help decision makers and other interest groups in evolving better E-governance mechanisms.