The Department of
Information Technology, Ministry of Communications and Information
Technology has undertaken a scheme for setting up Community Information
Centres (CICs) at 487 block headquarters in the seven North-East
States and Sikkim for promoting application of Information Technology
for accelerating socio-economic development of the region. The
scheme is being implemented in the States of Arunachal Pradesh,
Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Tripura and Sikkim.
475 CICs have been set up till date. Giving this information in
a written reply to a question raised by Prof. M.M. Agarwal in
the Rajya Sabha today, the Minister of State for Communications
and Information Technology, Dr. Sanjay Paswan stated that a Pilot
implementation of Rural IT Centres (Samadhan Kendras) has been
completed in Ramanathapuram District of Tamil Nadu and 3 more
Samadhan Kendra Projects are ongoing in Ujjain (MP), West Godavari
District (AP) and Chitrakoot (MP). These provide connectivity
to internet as well as e-mail and computer facilities to the villagers
through localised centres. Besides this, a whole range of other
information facilities required in rural areas are fulfilled through
Samadhan Kendras.
He said that the
Ministry of Rural Development has also taken various measures
in this direction. The Ministry is implementing a Centrally Sponsored
Scheme on Computerisation of Land Records (CLR) in the country
since 1988-89 which includes rural and tribal areas also. This
Scheme is being implemented jointly by Ministry of Rural Development
and National Informatics Centre (NIC). Funds are being provided
by Ministry of Rural Development to States/UTs for installation
of Computers at District and Tehsils/Taluk centres and so far
582 districts and 2959 tehsils/taluks/blocks of the country have
been brought under the programme.
The Minister stated
that the Rajiv Gandhi National Drinking Water Mission, under the
Ministry of Rural Development provides assistance at the rate
of 100 percent to the States and UTs for procurement of hardware,
office automation packages, training of manpower and development
of application software for computerisation up to the division
level offices of the line departments. The total Central funds
released to States/UTs under the Rajiv Gandhi National Drinking
Water Mission is Rs.8923.73 lakhs (as on 26.7.2002).
He further informed
the Members that the Ministry undertook a pilot project for providing
VSAT connectivity to 15 District Rural Development Agencies (DRDAs)
for providing internet facilities and a web based software for
poverty alleviation and rural development programmes. The pilot
project has been taken up in 15 districts in 11 States, namely,
Anantpur and Nalgonda in Andhra Pradesh, Thanjavur and Perambalur
in Tamil Nadu, Etawah in Uttar Pradesh, Hosangabad, Narisinghpur
and Jaisen in Madhya Pradesh, Solan in Himachal Pradesh, Hazaribagh
in Jharkhand, Midnapur in West Bengal, Shillong in Meghalaya,
Chandrapur in Maharashtra, Sikar in Rajasthan and Almora in Uttaranchal.
The project endeavours to establish a system for flow of information
in respect of Swarnjayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojana (SGSY), Jawahar
Gram Samridhi Yojana (JGSY), Employment Assurance Scheme (EAS),
Indra Awaas Yojana (IAY) and Watershed programmes. The total capital
cost of the project is Rs.99.00 lakhs. The implementing Agency
for the project is National Informatics Centre (NIC) and no funds
have been allocated/released to the States.
