Situated in western Madhya Pradesh (M.P.) and at about 180 kms. from the capital city of Bhopal, Indore has won a definite recognition for itself as the Commercial Capital of M.P. also known as "Mini Bombay", it is the hub of all commercial activities of the state. Being the most important business center of the state, Indore is the largest revenue generating city of M.P. from the point of view of commercial taxes. The Head Office of the Commercial Taxes Department is based in Indore because of its prominence in commercial activities. The Department is responsible for collection of city commercial taxes, prevention of tax evasion and administration of taxation policies. The NIC Sub center at the office of the Commissioner, Commercial Taxes, started in 1989.
The Beginning Initially the use of computer was restricted to preparation of some formats, which only served the purpose of taking computer printout of otherwise typed reports. The NIC Centre faced the enormous task of spreading computer literacy and computer culture in a set of people, who were not very willing to accept changes. Ever since the starting of the NIC Sub Center in the office, the NIC personnel have been working tirelessly on this. The start was a tedious one, for there were old hardware as well as programs and databases in COBOL. The databases were all converted to Foxplus, and all the program had to be rewritten. These efforts of the NIC staff were successful, and work started gaining pace gradually.
Current Scenario The Commercial Tax Department has huge setup of 15 divisional Offices and 93 Circle Offices spread up all over the state. Since the circle offices are not computerized, all work of preparation and consolidation of circles' data is done in the Head Office only. The department administers the Madhya Pradesh Commercial Tax Act, Entry Tax Act, Central Sales Tax Act, Professional Tax and Hotel Tax. The nature of data provides ideal opportunity for computerization, which NIC Center has utilized to inculcate the usage of computers in daily working. The initial days of convincing the employees about the use of computer, have now transformed into busy days of catering to their requests to computerize every possible reports format. A small glimpse of the scenario can be obtained by taking a look at a few of the projects going on in the NIC Sub Centre of the Office of Commissioner, Commercial Taxes, M.P.: Dealers Database Computerization: It is a Database of all the registered dealers of M.P., and maintains their registration no, date of registration, name, address etc.
Progressive Collection Register Generation: This is the database of all revenue information deposited in the various banks, used for various monitoring purposes, and the preparation of Progressive Collection Registers for the Circles.
Raids Monitoring System: This is a monitoring system for the raids carried out by the Dept. on dealers. This System is used for monitoring the post-raid progress of such cases.
Revenue Monitoring System: This System is used to capture the dealer wise, commodity wise revenue figures of the dealers having more than Rs. 48,000/- turnover, of all the circles of M. P. This covers more than 80% of the revenue of the state. The reports based on this data are used to project the revenue status of the state, for the financial year. Also, it generates commodity wise reports, which are used to take important policy decisions, such as to estimate the amount of tax to be levied.
Exempted Industrial Units' Database: This is a database having data of all the Industrial Units claiming exemption under various provisions of the Acts.
Dealer Code Generation: This is a software for generating the Registration numbers to be allotted to new dealers at the time of registration.
Payroll: This has the master database of all the employees of the Commercial Tax Head Office. It captures details like designation, salary, provident fund, loans, advances, etc. and outputs playbills, schedules, pay slip annual income tax and GPF statements, etc.
A busy day in NIC Sub Centre at Indore The Future The greatest achievement of the efforts so far has been the breaking of the myth that computers are useful for only selected type of jobs. The staff who had been shying away from computers are now ready to learn it as they have overcome the fear of the unknown. The divisional offices are getting connected through e-mail, and each day finds a new addition to the list. NIC has facilitated the divisions which do not have computers, to use its own facilities at the District Centre for sending and receiving emails. More hectic activities are expected due to the proposed implementation of value add tax in the State, which require complete computerization of the department, right from the circle level offices. But now it is going to be a more welcome change, for every employee.
The emergence of the Office from one dependent on manually prepared reports and figures, to one utilizing every possible opportunity to computerize, and gradually computerizing all documents- with NIC's help, is a classic example of how two institutions can work together to achieve a common goal: Technology for Effective Management.