Chhattisgarh – The Rice Bowl of India From M. K. Mishra & Y. V. Shreenivas Rao, NIC - Chhattisgarh The state of Chhattisgarh, popularly known as the ‘Rice Bowl’ of India, came into being on the 1st November 2000. The states which form its boundaries are Uttar Pradesh to the North, Jharkhand to the North East, Orissa to the east, Andhra Pradesh to the south-east and south, Maharashtra to the south-west, Madhya Pradesh to the west and north-west. Amongst the larger states in India, Chhattisgarh has the highest percentage of population of Tribes. The state has sixteen districts in all. The State has made significant advancement in the field of IT ever since its formation. NIC Chhattisgarh - A significant maiden year To meet the e-governance needs of the pro-IT Chhattisgarh state, the NIC‘s State Unit (NIC CGSU) was established in the premises of Mantralaya, on 01.11.2001. Keeping pace with the ever growing demands of the State Government and accomplishing numerous time-bound as well as near- impossible assignments in a period of just one year, the NIC Chhattisgarh state unit has proved that time is no constraint, may what the number and complexity of the targets be. Starting from personnel training to Videoconferencing it has provided all sorts of solutions for the benefit of the administration and public. Soon after its establishment, all the NIC District centres of the state were ensured to be functioning. All these centers have been equipped with at least one server and two clients and IP Advantage VSATs to cater to the e-governance needs of the district administration. NIC Chhattisgarh at a glance : · Total NIC manpower in the state – 34 · 16 District centres · NIC Central Excise cell · NIC Highcourt cell at Bilaspur NIC Chhattisgarh State Unit: · Located in the Mantralaya. · SCPC DAMA V-SAT for VC and dedicated SCPC V-SAT for Internet/E-mail. · DIALUP connectivity. · 3 Servers, 25 clients. NIC District Centres : · 16 District centres functioning. · SCPC DAMA VSATS one each at Bastar and Bilaspur centres. · Rest of the centres connected to NICNET through IPA VSATs. Mantralaya LAN As part of Local Area Network, the NIC State Unit has three high power Servers and twenty five clients with necessary peripherals for its internal use. The three servers are configured to serve as WEB server, MAIL server, FTP server and DATABASE server supporting the entire 300-node LAN of the Mantralaya. A high-speed SCPC PAMA VSAT has been setup to provide internet/E-mail services to various Government departments. Highcourt -Bilaspur The Highcourt of Chhattisgarh was established on the 1st November, 2000. To meet the office automation and electronic communication needs, the NIC Highcourt Cell was set up on 10th, August 2001. The State High Court has been equipped with 1 server and 21 clients connected in LAN. The terminals have been provided to the Hon. Chief Justice and judges and at various sections. The Internet and e-mail facility have also been extended to all the nodes of the LAN. The RF-Link facility is also expected to be provided shortly. The LOBIS software is being implemented through which, the proposed cases to be listed on a particular date for each court can be generated for all sections. The staus of each case (including judgment) is regularly updated and stored in the server. The information is provided to the litigant or advocate directly at the Enquiry Counter over the phone whenever requested for. Other activities being carried out in various sections of the High court include, Pay bill generation, processing of personnel information, Budget preparation, processing of daily Order and Final Order / Judgment etc. Video Conferencing - Public Grievances redressal As a part of the Video-Conferencing services being provided by NIC to the State, SCPC DAMA VSATs have been set up at Raipur, Bilaspur and Bastar, ISDN based VC setup has been installed at a remote rural location – Pendra and an ISDN based VC setup has been installed at CM office, Raipur Congress president Mrs Sonia Gandhi inaugurating ISDN based VC of Marwahi costituency on the 1st Nov 2001 Hon’ble Chief Minister Sh. Ajit Jogi at the inauguration of VC facility between Raipur, Bilaspur and Bastar The General Administration Department (GAD) of the state Govt. conducts Videoconferencing with Bilaspur, Bastar and Pendra on daily basis. The general public can freely approach these centers and lodge their complaints and explain their difficulties to the administration. The CM office also monitors the progress of the case on the time limit date of the case. This arrangement is gaining popularity day by day as people are now able to contact the senior most officers of the state with their grievances face to face on VC. Web Services Since its establishment, NIC Chhattisgarh State Unit has developed a number of important websites for the State Government. Some of the prominent ones include : * Official web site of the Chhattisgarh govt. - http://www.chhattisgarh.nic.in. The website is rich in content about the State Government and is frequently updated with the latest information. All the policies of the state government and general information to be provided to the public is available on the web site. The site has been highly appreciated and has received rave reviews from research scholars from U.S & U.K. Among other things, the site has links to e-mail directory, tenders, gazette, history, statistics, schemes and tribes in the state. Other important websites include
- Land records computerization
- Public grievances
- High court
- Finance department
- Chhattisgarh Jail
- Tourism department
- Health department
- General administrative department
- Public Works Department
Beside the above, websites of many districts in the State have been developed and hosted by NIC. These include : Bastar, Bilaspur , Durg, Dantewada , Koriya , Kanker , Raigarh, Rajnandgaon , Raipur and Surguja E-mail Service The facility of Email and Internet Connectivity have been provided to all the Ministries, senior officers, district centres and departments in the State. Besides, the Mantralaya staff has been adequately trained by NIC in computer usage. Web Enabled Solutions The web enabled software developed for various departments include Public grievances monitoring system : The software has been developed for monitoring of the public grievances received through video conferencing held daily from district headquarters of Bilaspur & Bastar. Grievances entry by general public through web, from any part of the state is also possible with the help of site. Letter monitoring system : The system has been developed for the CM secretariat for monitoring the letters received by the Chief minister from MPs/MLAs. The individual letters are marked to the concerned department. The assembly constituency / parliamentary constituency wise monitoring can be done. Departmental expenditure monitoring system – Developed to enable budget controlling officer [BCO] wise budget and expenditure monitoring of all departments. All the BCOs can update as and when required. Any type of query can be made by the finance department on the available data. Agmark monitoring system - Developed for monitoring the progress of Agricultural marketing network. The DIOs login and feed the status of site preparation, hardware received and installed, status of software installation and usage and hardware software problems being faced. Some other useful Information Systems developed and implemented by the NIC State Unit include :
- Rural industries inventory monitoring system
- Rain fall monitoring system
- Epidemic monitoring system
- Hardware monitoring system
- Pay details monitoring system
- Stock monitoring system
Software Developed/Customised Land Records Computerisation – “BHUIYA” The State Government has decided to implement the Land Records Computerisation (Named as ‘Bhuiya’) in all the Tehsils of the State. Under the Bhuiya project it is envisaged that apart from maintaining the Land Records data at Tehsil headquarters, the ROR would be readily made available to any aspiring citizens on remittance of nominal charge. It is further decided that LR details stored on Tehsil Server would be made available (for display) through Dialup facility at all the Indira Suchna Shakti centres (ISS) located in that tehsil. The project was formally inaugurated by the Hon’ble Chief Minister of Chhattisgarh on the 1st Nov’ 2002. • Inventory monitoring system of Rural Industries (Hastshilp , Handloom & Textiles) This Web enabled system has been designed for maintaining the stock of the products for the departments of Hastshilp & Handloom & Textiles. The data can be fed into the database using ASP technology from any of the four locations as and when the products are procured and purchased and the instant stock position can be maintained and viewed by the users. Further, it is planned to use the Ruralbazaar software of NIC HQ to present the web interface to the products for better marketing. • Markfed - Draw of Lots The Marketing Federation, Chhattisgarh has distributed coupons to about 1.5 lakh farmers who are the members of about 1500 marketing societies in the state. The draw of lots is to be conducted using the software for error free process for the coupons of farmers as well as of the societies to distribute fixed number of prizes in both the cases. The software has been designed to enter the data duly observing the validation checks and to select winners on random basis. • E- Governance Cell The e-Governance cell was initiated in June 2002 with an objective of show casing various e-Governance products developed at various units of NIC including Chhattisgarh for the user departments so that the identified products can be customized and implemented for the departments with minimum efforts saving considerable time. This cell coordinates collecting e-Governance products developed so far from various state units and installing important products. The brochures related to the e-Governance packages are made available in this cell for necessary reference by users. About 25 e-Governance packages have been collected so far. The packages viz. Treasury s/w of NIC-Punjab, Property Registration s/w of NIC-Haryana, e-Granthalaya of NIC-Karnataka, STAMINA for Dept. of Commercial Tax of NIC-Bihar, Financial Accounting for DRDA of NIC-AP have been demonstrated to the user departments. • Training About 250 employees of Mantralaya, Rajbhavan and Treasury departments have been trained so far on “Office Automation Tools”. The training is provided in two batches in a week. At the end all the participants are required to pass through an online test covering the course designed to evaluate the skills of the individual. • NICNET connectivity through RF Link NIC Chhattisgarh State Unit has taken the initiative for connecting various offices established at Raipur and Bilaspur by RF link to get the high speed NICNET and Internet connectivity. NIC State unit, Mantralaya and NIC district center, Bilaspur will be having HUB stations for connectivity. Important sites for providing connectivity include Raj Bhavan, CM House, Vidhan Sabha, Police Headquarters etc. • Moment of pride During the inauguration of The ‘BHUIYA’ project, the Hon’ble Chief Minister, Shri Ajit Jogi said that “this ambitious project could be implemented in record time due to the marvelous efforts of NIC, which worked restlessly in association with the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and Chhattisgarh Infotech Promotional Society (ChiPS).” He observed that “the unparalleled dedication and expertise of these organizations has made it possible to realize the goal within a short span of two months.”He reiterated that “unlike in the other states, the IT is used in his state to serve the people instead of as an aid to the administration and the BHUIYA project was one of the successful attempts made since the formation of the state.” The Revenue Minister , Govt. of Chhattisgarh, Shri Bupesh Baghel presentiing the Land Records data of 16 tehsils of Chhattisgarh to Honourable CM on the occasion of inauguration of ‘Bhuiya’ project. For further information, please contact NIC, Chhattishgarh State Unit , Room No. 23, 1st Floor, Mantralaya, Raipur Email : sio@cg.nic.in