Humans are still core to Digital India - Intermediaries
iasparliament
December 22, 2020
What is the issue?
Even in ‘Digital India’, humans are significant in brokering trust between governments and citizens, and this was especially evident during the pandemic.
It is time to accommodate intermediaries, who deliver last mile governance, into the design of e-governance programmes.
Who are the intermediaries?
Intermediaries are crucial offline architectures that enable the state to do its work better.
Offline intermediaries can be both political and apolitical, individuals and collectives, with varying motivations to do this work.
Apolitical social workers and community leaders do their work as service.
Partisan political individuals see their work as constituency service to secure vote bases.
Community-based organisations and NGOs see their work as allied to their core work.
What role do intermediaries play?
Intermediaries help citizens overcome barriers to awareness (of availability of digital services and rights from the state) and ability.
This includes the ability to navigate these solutions with trust.
The barriers are worse for citizens who are marginalised, with the poor, women, the elderly, and caste and gender minorities being additionally disadvantaged.
Intermediaries support individuals by placing complaints, directing them to the right authorities, and following up.
From people's perspective, intermediaries help them see the government.
Are they being best utilised?
During the pandemic, public came to rely on various individuals to address daily needs, even as more and more services went online.
During this time, eGovernments Foundation (eGov) and Aapti Institute came together to explore how digitally excluded communities engage with governance.
It was learnt that even in ‘Digital India’, humans are significant in brokering trust between governments and citizens.
These intermediaries often worked without any formal backing and role.
But the above reality was not considered in the design of most e-governance programmes.
For instance, intermediaries struggled with indicating that they were placing a complaint for someone else, and with communicating the impact (for example, the number of houses affected by the problem).
Only a few States have built a cadre of individuals for last mile governance.
Andhra Pradesh, for instance, rolled out a ward secretariat programme with over 16,000 ward secretaries and volunteers.
They worked for delivering government services at citizens’ doorstep.
What could the policy approach be?
Leaning on intermediaries can unlock the capacity of the state to serve citizens.
Indeed, they are a reality of everyday life for the average Indian, and incorporating this reality in design can be impactful.
Various types and forms of intermediation emerge based on regional, social, cultural and economic contexts.
A ‘one size fits all’ approach will not work.
It is thus crucial to think about leveraging the strengths of intermediaries.
Intermediaries are to be seen as crucial to the realisation of governance outcomes and as a natural extension of the governance model.
At a broader level, increasing digitisation of governance across domains including healthcare, financial inclusion, justice and social services is inevitable.
Meanwhile, during this transition, work has to be on with intermediaries to raise citizens’ awareness, build intermediaries’ skills and capabilities, and establish governance frameworks with suitable feedback loops.
All these go in to supporting the process of responsible, responsive and data-driven governance across domains.
