Dr.-Ramesh-Narasimhan-Case-study-on-ICT-Adoption - NMIMS

Teaching case
Project Nemmadi: the bytes and bites of
ICT adoption and implementation in India
Madhuchhanda Das Aundhe 1 , <strong>Ramesh</strong> <strong>Narasimhan</strong> 2
1 Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, India
2 SVKM’s Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies (NMIMS), Bangalore, India
Correspondence:
M Das Aundhe, Faculty Block B, Ground Floor, Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore 560076, India.
Tel: +91 8026 582 450;
E-mail: madhu.das@gmail.com
Abstract
This case documents the challenges involved in the adoption of information and
communication technology (ICT) by the government in a democratic system, especially in
the context of a developing country. Nemmadi was an e-governance project initiated in
2004 by the government of the state of Karnataka located in the southern part of India.
Since the beginning of the new millennium, the policy and the political environment in
Karnataka had turned quite favourable for such ICT initiatives. Aimed at improving the
transparency, accountability and efficiency of the government administration at the village
level, Nemmadi was an ambitious project conceived to offer digital services to rural citizens
across 800 hoblis (cluster of villages) in the state. The services included issue of certificates
of several kinds, which entitled the citizens belonging to economically and socially backward
sections of the society to avail of benefits and concessions under various government
schemes conceived as part of affirmative action by the state. Project Nemmadi was
conceived as a ‘sequel’ to a celebrated e-governance initiative called Bhoomi, which
involved digitization of seven million agricultural land records, and was a landmark in
e-governance in India. Bhoomi was championed and closely led by Shekhar Puri, the then
Principal Secretary of e-governance who also led the Nemmadi project during its roll-out
phase. The roll-out of Project Nemmadi faced many challenges. The village functionaries
and their interface with Nemmadi impacted project implementation, and hence adoption. It
had received its share of bouquets and brickbats and had won several awards. Naveen Iyer
took charge as the Principal Secretary of this department. Naveen’s recommendations to
the political leadership and the decisions that follow could transform the project to a truly
village-level Citizen Service Center, thus paving the way for an e-governance revolution
directly touching the lives of the people in the villages, where 70% of India lives. This could
restore Karnataka to its original position on e-governance leadership and serve as a key
accomplishment for Naveen in his new role.
Journal of Information Technology Teaching <strong>Case</strong>s (2012) 2, 29–45. doi:10.1057/jittc.2012.4;
published online 19 June 2012
Keywords: e-governance; technology adoption; G2C; PPP (Public–Private Partnership); SLA; telecentre
<strong>Case</strong>
‘No Nemmadi at these centers’, was how a popular
Bangalore newspaper described Karnataka government’s
high-profile e-governance initiative called ‘Nemmadi’. 1
Nemmadi means ‘peace of mind’ in Kannada, the language
spoken by the majority of people in the state of Karnataka.
Naveen Iyer, Karnataka’s newly appointed Principal
Secretary, e-Governance Department, browsed the report,
Journal of Information Technology Teaching <strong>Case</strong>s (2012) 2, 29–45
& 2012 JITTC Palgrave Macmillan All rights reserved 2043-8869/12
palgrave-journals.com/jittc/
folded the newspaper and kept it aside. There were reports,
in the past, of the private partners not meeting their
obligations laid down in the public–private partnership
(PPP) contract. A few days ago, there was a report in the
press that the state of Karnataka was slipping in the ranking
on e-governance in India. Naveen Iyer had been summoned
to the office of the Chief Minister (CM) for a post-lunch
emergency meeting, to be attended by the senior officials
of the concerned departments – e-governance, IT and
Revenue. Naveen Iyer knew that he would be expected

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Nemmadi: bytes and bites of ICT implementation M Das Aundhe and R <strong>Narasimhan</strong>
to offer a clear-cut and concrete solution. A high-profile
public project like Nemmadi was bound to face many
hurdles, and being citizen-centric the stakes were very high
in a democratic system. Naveen Iyer quickly weighed the
issues in his mind. Nemmadi had to continue since it was
addressing a real need of the rural citizens of the state and
for the same reason also enjoyed strong political backing.
He reasoned that a higher degree and depth of adoption by
the user departments in the government would improve the
situation. But his department did not have direct control
over them. The hold of the village accountants and revenue
inspectors over the village records and their role in the
process had to be curtailed further. How could it be
done? The menace of informal intermediaries exploiting the
illiterate villagers had to be curbed. But who else could step
in to help them with the documentation procedure? He also
wondered whether everything was right with the PPP
model, which was being attempted for the first time on such
a large scale. Naveen Iyer knew it was quite complicated to
change the rules of the game midway, but he felt that the
situation might stabilize over time as the various actors
involved in the process adapted and adjusted to the new ways
of doing things. He was aware of the challenges in harnessing
Information Technology (IT) for improving the transparency,
accountability and efficiency of the governance process,
especially in the village-level administration in a democratic
set-up. Naveen Iyer had, after all, served in the Department
of IT, when the concept of e-governance was in its infancy.
He knew that a lot of ground had been covered since then,
but also that the road ahead for e-governance was long and
hard. Nemmadi was an important milestone. He picked up
the paper again and read the report in detail. Naveen Iyer
decided to meet with his team to discuss the issues and
prepare for the crucial meeting with the CM.
IT climate in Karnataka – Silicon Valley of India
Bangalore, the capital city of the state of Karnataka, is
known as the Silicon Valley of India and is the pioneer of
e-governance in India. The e-governance strategy for
Karnataka was unveiled in the year 2000, much before
the National e-governance Plan was in place, as part of the
IT Millennium Policy. 2 The goal of the Karnataka
e-governance strategy was enhanced use of information
and communication technology in the functioning of the
government, in order to make the required information
available to all citizens and to provide online all the
identified IT services efficiently. 3 In the S.M. Krishna-led
government in Karnataka (as CM from 1999 to 2004)
the government enjoyed a close relationship with the IT
industry, to the extent that the industry was able to
influence the development agenda of the state towards
active ‘public–private partnership’ projects in which
industry worked with the government to improve the
state’s infrastructure and civic amenities. 4
Village – Administration and society
India is a land of villages. Of the total Indian population, 70%
live in villages. Historically, the society in villages was divided
into several levels and culture based on the caste system. The
different castes are communities of hereditary groups. The
caste system in India is a system of social stratification, that
is, groups based on shared socio-economic conditions. 5
Within the caste system, there are backward castes that have
historically suffered social restriction and suppression, with
limited access to education and employment, and therefore
have emerged as a basis for affirmative action. Affirmative
action to improve the well-being of these communities was
implemented through the policy of ‘reservation’. The reservation
policy mandated a certain percentage of total available
seats in educational institutes and government jobs to be set
aside for people from backward castes. 6 It existed to provide
opportunities for the members of the backward castes in the
labour force, schools, colleges and elections to government
bodies. In order to avail of these privileges, citizens needed to
furnish various kinds of certificates of caste, income, etc.
issued by the government.
The governance structure in Indian villages consisted of
the Principal Secretary of the Revenue Department at the
top of the hierarchy and the village accountants at the
lowest level. The village accountants traditionally maintained
land records for a group of villages. Between the
village accountant and the Principal Secretary, there were
officials operating at the hobli (large group of villages),
taluk (sub-division of a district), district, division and state
levels (Appendix A). In Karnataka, 9000 village accountants,
each serving three or four villages, maintained land
records and other records related to the villagers, for
example, the family tree and income details. 7 These records
maintained by the village accountants were not subjected to
public scrutiny. Villagers had to seek out a village accountant
to get a copy of any certificate based on their records.
The certificate (based on its type) was a document required
for many common tasks, such as admission to schools or
colleges, application for government jobs, obtaining bank
loans, and applying for benefits under various government
schemes such as subsidy for seeds. The villagers could
access their personal records maintained by the village
accountant only through these certificates. The government
system did not provide for any other means of access to and
verification of citizen data.
The process for obtaining certificates consisted of villagers
applying for the same with the village accountant. The village
accountant, then, based on his records, sent the application
with his recommendation to the revenue inspector at the
hobli. The latter, in turn, sent it to the tahsildar (a government
functionary in charge of the taluk) at the taluk office,
who issued the certificate. This was sent back to the village
accountant to be handed over to the citizen. Thus, the
village accountant was the only government functionary who
the citizen was in touch with. As a member of the NGO
dealing with Rural Empowerment put it:
For the citizen, more so the illiterate and the poor, he personified
government and almost God. People forever tried
to keep him in good humour. He usually was invited to all
celebrations in households and given special treatment. In
fact sometimes, the village accountants would discriminate
between people by honouring a select few by their visits to
the family functions based on their caste, income etc.
Often, the really poor citizens could not muster up their
guts to extend him an invitation. A visit by the village
accountant sure meant a whole lot to the rural citizen.

Nemmadi: bytes and bites of ICT implementation M Das Aundhe and R <strong>Narasimhan</strong>
Village accountants played multiple roles. In addition to
their official role of issuing the government certificates,
they also helped the villagers, especially the illiterate, in
completing procedural formalities/paperwork for applying
for college seats for their children, seeking crop loans,
mutation of land records, procuring seeds, etc. Many of
these activities went beyond their call of duty, but they did
this as a gesture to the villagers, thus making themselves
indispensable in their lives. More often, however, the village
accountants wielded their power to exploit the villagers.
They blatantly demanded money for rendering the government
services that were a part of their duty. If the citizen
wanted some service expedited, their charges went up.
The charges demanded also varied from citizen to citizen
based on caste, income, etc. Several instances of a village
accountant providing out-of-turn services to people of his
own caste and sub-caste were also cited. The media also
reported cases of illiterate villagers ending up with bogus
certificates after paying the village accountant. 8
Project Nemmadi
Nemmadi was the first and the largest G2C (referring to
information, interactions, transactions, etc., between the
Government and Citizens) e-governance project, and offered
rural citizens a range of 38 services known as rural
digital services. ‘Rural digital services’ was a generic term
used for any electronic service delivered to citizens in the
rural areas. These services were delivered through 800
telecentres located at hoblis (cluster of villages) across the
state. The services can be grouped into three categories 9
(details in Appendix B):
(i) Services issuing status certificates, which deal with the
status of existence of the citizen. For example, some of
these certificates were Residence certificate, Living
certificate, Caste certificates for different categories,
Widow certificate, and Birth certificate and Death
certificate etc. These certificates were required by several
public and private organizations for delivering products
and services to citizens, for example, banks, schools and
colleges, and hospitals, besides the purpose of realizing
benefits declared by the government.
(ii) Services issuing income certificates, which deal with level
of income of households. These consisted of Income
certificate, Unemployment certificate, Bonafide certificate,
Solvency certificate, Widow pension, Physically handicapped
pension, etc. These certificates were required
to be furnished for obtaining subsidies and grants
from the government and other private organizations.
(iii) Services issuing land-related certificates, which deal
with the ownership and cultivation of land. These consisted
of No tenancy certificate, Landless certificate,
Land holding certificate, Rights Tenancy & Crops certificate
(RTC), Mutations, etc. These certificates were
required to be furnished in transactions dealing
with buying and selling of land, and also for obtaining
grants from the government and other private
organizations for seeds, fertilizers and agri-inputs.
Telecentres were facilities/kiosks that offered government
services (from the application for a service to its final
31
delivery) to citizens using internet technology. In addition
to the G2C services, Nemmadi telecentres also offered some
business services to citizens (B2C) such as basic computer
course, employability training, sales training, railway
reservations and mobile phone currency recharge facility.
The B2C services offered varied from telecentre to telecentre.
These telecentres were operated by a private IT
company with whom the government had partnered for
this purpose. The operators were therefore employees of
this private company, and were responsible for entry of
citizen data at the time of application for services. The data
were processed at the back-end taluk office. The citizens
could collect the digital certificates at the telecentres after
the stipulated number of days.
Bhoomi – Motivation for Project Nemmadi
The key motivation of Project Nemmadi was provided
by its precursor – Bhoomi (meaning land in Kannada).
Bhoomi digitized 20 million records of land ownership of
6.7 million farmers in the state of Karnataka. The farmers
could obtain online printed copies of the RTC through
Bhoomi outlets in 177 taluk offices. The RTC certificate
represented legal ownership of land. This document was
required for many common tasks such as obtaining bank
loans and applying for benefits under various government
schemes such as subsidy for seeds.
Bhoomi’s objective was to improve efficiency, transparency
and accountability at the G2C interface. It was
believed that the computerized land records would weaken
the village accountants and revenue inspectors, and limit
exploitation of the poor and illiterate villagers. 10
Land record digitization in Karnataka had gone through
two aborted attempts. This time, in 1999, the CM had
entrusted Shekhar Puri, the then Principal Secretary of the
e-Governance Department of the Karnataka State Government
with the entire responsibility of the Bhoomi project.
As Jeevan Madan, a Senior Officer, National Informatics
Centre, put it:
Shekhar Puri was the main force behind Bhoomi. The
mandate had been provided by the Chief Minister of
Karnataka, and had been taken up by Shekhar Puri very
seriously. He was involved in it right from the inception,
to the details of execution. Bhoomi had become synonymous
with the man.
Shekhar Puri planned for the scale and scope of the project,
digitized all the records, trained the Bhoomi outlet
operators in day-to-day transactions, and created a mechanism
for updating records on a continuous basis mainly
through private data entry agencies. Strict deadlines for
execution were set, backed by the CM, and the entire
administrative machinery was geared towards meeting
them. The system was designed and implemented by
state-level officials of the Revenue Department. The district,
taluk and village officials were completely excluded.
Bhoomi was quite actively resisted by many in the taluks
and required the CM’s personal intervention to help
implement the system. Government officials at the district
and taluk levels resisted the system as it upset their existing
ways of working. In addition, it was a new technology

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Nemmadi: bytes and bites of ICT implementation M Das Aundhe and R <strong>Narasimhan</strong>
that they were not familiar with. Village accountants
resisted the system as it reduced their authority by
taking out of their control a document that had value to
farmers. They went on strike for being sidelined from the
implementation process.
The system was opened for public use in late 2001 after
legislative amendments made the use of computerized
RTCs compulsory. The Bhoomi project won the United
Nations award, 11 and Shekhar Puri was awarded the Prime
Minister’s prize for 2005–2006.
Project Bhoomi centralized land records at the taluk level.
Hitherto, the villagers paid the village accountant and got
the RTCs issued in the village. Post Bhoomi, villagers had
to travel to the nearest taluk headquarters, which could
take them a couple of hours. This resulted in additional
expenses for them in addition to loss of the day’s wages.
There had been complaints about other logistics problems
too, for example, public transport and overnight stay.
Citizens wanted the delivery points to be at a closer proximity.
This would also meet with the government vision of
getting ‘closer to the citizens’. To improve their reach, the
state government put in place a rural telecentres project,
with the plan of locating the telecentres at the hobli
level. The offering of Bhoomi services alone in the rural
telecentres was not viable. Therefore, Shekhar Puri thought
that other rural digital services, for which the citizens had
been travelling to the taluk office, could also be offered
through these telecentres. These digital services would
make the telecentres viable and at the same time serve as
a single window for all the services. Shekhar Puri argued
that rural digital services would also serve to further reduce
the exploitation of rural citizens at the hands of village
accountants. This arrangement would ensure Nemmadi
(peace of mind) for the rural citizens. Buoyed by the success
of Bhoomi, Shekhar Puri took it upon himself to champion
Nemmadi too, and make Bhoomi viable. Thus, the
Nemmadi project was born. The stated vision, mission
and objectives of Nemmadi are furnished in Appendix G.
Decision making in Project Nemmadi
In May 2003, Shekhar Puri engaged the National Informatics
Centre 12 to conduct a preliminary <strong>study</strong> to identify
the services that could be offered digitally to the citizens
in rural Karnataka. This <strong>study</strong> revealed that approximately
40 services were being availed by the citizens at the government
offices. There had been increasing demand for
these services with the increase in government schemes
for affirmative action. Bhoomi catered to this increase in
demand for RTCs; Nemmadi was expected to meet the
demand for other services. The scope of Nemmadi was
broader than that of Bhoomi with respect to scale and
scope. Nemmadi offered 38 services, in contrast to the
couple of services being offered by Bhoomi. Bhoomi’s
services were database-centric; Nemmadi’s were workflow
based. Nemmadi had 800 telecentres against 177 outlets
of Bhoomi, and this rendered the former far more complex.
Shekar Puri believed an approach to address this complexity
was to involve a private sector partner in the project.
According to him, private sector partners with energy
and enthusiasm were needed to take up this task, as they
would infuse it with the requisite speed and vitality. He
persuaded his political leadership regarding the PPP model.
He highlighted the idea of an easily accessible rural centre,
which would function independently and without much
government investment or involvement. He pointed out
that it would provide employment to rural citizens too.
Eventually, the minister came around to accepting the
involvement of a private partner in Project Nemmadi.
With Bhoomi, Shekhar Puri had learnt how to make
things happen. He gave Nemmadi all his energy, and the
benefit of his experience. He decided that the private entrepreneurs
at the hoblis would set up the telecentres and
charge the users a fee of Rs 10 (equivalent to US$0.2) per
certificate. Shekhar Puri planned the way forward – a
prototype and a pilot project would help decide on the
state-wide launch.
The pilot project
The e-Governance Department began the telecentre initiative
in 2004 with a pilot project in Maddur, a town in
Mandya district of Karnataka. Mandya happened to be the
political constituency of the CM. The National Informatics
Centre executed the pilot project, using the existing technical
infrastructure of Bhoomi. First, a prototype of two
services was built and demonstrated to a small committee
comprising divisional commissioners, tahsildars, caseworkers
and a few representatives from the industry for their comments
on the prototype. However, the village accountants and
revenue inspectors were not a part of the decision-making
process. After demonstration of the prototype, the two
services were improved and piloted in March 2004.
Karnataka had some existing telecentres set up by an
organization called N-Logue, as proof-of-concept of telecentre
technology. Shekhar Puri decided to utilize the ten
telecentres of N-Logue that were being run by local entrepreneurs
to offer telecom and telemedicine services for the
Nemmadi pilot project.
Shekhar Puri, as the project champion, began to push
things forward – he got funds sanctioned for additional
client machines, got the district collectors to procure them
on a war-footing, and talked directly to the tahsildars and
compelled them to process applications. In the rural
government machinery, sometimes the government functionaries
of the Revenue Department did not listen to him
as they did not directly report to him. During such times,
he roped in the right forces such as the Chief Secretary
and/or the minister to remove the hurdles. He adopted
a carrot-and-stick approach and continuously supervised
and followed up until the tasks were accomplished. This
micro-management by Shekhar Puri, according to the
Nemmadi Project Leader at the National Informatics
Centre, contributed to the success of the pilot project, but
displeased many functionaries along the way. This success
proved that the technology was viable, thus paving the way
for the roll-out of more telecentres. In 2005, another 14
services were added to the two services piloted in Maddur.
In subsequent stages of the pilot, N-Logue was given the
mandate of ramping up the number of telecentres. However,
it could not mobilize an adequate number of village
entrepreneurs for running the telecentres. Therefore,
Shekhar Puri decided to float an open tender for private
partners for Nemmadi roll-out.

Nemmadi: bytes and bites of ICT implementation M Das Aundhe and R <strong>Narasimhan</strong>
Process and technology
Each Nemmadi telecentre consisted of a desktop computer
system, peripherals and a human telecentre operator (see
figure in Appendix C). The private partner provided the
infrastructure set-up. In addition to the telecentres,
Nemmadi also consisted of 176 taluk back-offices, where
the citizens’ requests for services were processed. Each telecentre
at the hobli level was connected to the nearest taluk
back-office. All taluk back-offices and telecentres were
also connected to a central database at the State Data Centre
(SDC) in Bangalore. The exchange of data between the two
took place through the SDC for reasons of security. The
architecture of Nemmadi is shown in Appendix D.
Atalukback-officecouldservicemorethanonetelecentre,
and was headed by a tahsildar, a government
functionary in charge of the taluk. He was assisted by
a group of functionaries, including: (i) village accountants
and revenue inspectors at the field level, (ii) caseworkers
at the taluk office level and (iii) a taluk back-office
operator. When a citizen visited the telecentre with a
request for a certificate, the telecentre operator entered
the oral request of the citizen into the system, in the
required format. If the certificate had been issued
previously, the operator connected to the SDC, gave a
search based on the key field and recovered the existing
valid document from the SDC database. He issued a print
of the same to the applicant.
In the case of a new application, the application along
with the necessary documents was scanned and saved. The
telecentre operator uploaded to the SDC the soft copy of the
application. The operator at the back-office in the taluk
downloaded the soft copy of the application from the SDC.
The back-office operator also received the hard copies of
the applications, which were delivered to him from the
telecentres. He matched the hard copy and the soft copy of
the application, checked the attached documents, and
sorted out the applications by moving them to the respective
revenue inspector’s login. ‘Moving to a particular login’
was a phrase used to imply authorizing the concerned
person for further processing in the system. The revenue
inspector referred the cases to village accountants, if necessary,
and provided field verification reports to the backoffice
operator. These reports were manually signed by
the village accountant and revenue inspector (except in
those hoblis where a digital signature of the revenue
inspector was available). The back-office operator accepted
the field verification reports and moved the corresponding
applications to the caseworker login.
The caseworker entered the field verification reports into
the system, generated the ‘office note’ and gave his comments
and recommendations. The back-office operator
then moved the application along with the office note to
tahsildar login. The tahsildar digitally signed the certificate,
and it was printed (the entire process flow is depicted
in Appendix E). Once digitally signed, these certificates
were uploaded to the SDC and printed at the telecentre.
The certificate, thus generated, contained a bar code,
which represented the digital signature of the tahsildar
(Appendix F). The government provided the stationery for
the certificates, since it had to be on government letterhead.
Nemmadi also intended to incrementally build a citizen
database. As part of servicing a request, the details of all the
33
family members of an applicant, such as caste, occupation
and income, were collected and stored at the SDC.
While this was the prescribed process, the case authors
observed a variant in some telecentres. An assistant from
the revenue inspector’s office in the hobli collected the
application forms, after the telecentre operator keyed in the
details. The latter sorted out the applications and sent them
to the village accountant for verification. This ‘adjustment’
enabled the village functionaries to control the queue of the
applications.
Telecentres – The roll-out and the challenges
Shekhar Puri decided on a big bang approach – 800
telecentres in hoblis across Karnataka, within a period of 4
months. He wanted to launch Nemmadi before his term
ended. He realized that identifying 800 entrepreneurs (after
N-Logue’s inability to scale up at the pilot stage) at the
village level in such a short time was impossible. Moreover,
each one would offer his own bag of services. Uniformity of
services would not be ensured and scaling up would be a
major problem. Therefore, he floated a request for
proposals from private sector organizations that could set
up all the telecentres across the state. Several companies,
including large software companies (e.g., Tata Consultancy
Services, Sify Technologies) responded with their proposals.
The deal was bagged, on the basis of lowest price
quoted in an open tender (in both north and south zones of
the state), by a consortium of three organizations – 3i
Infotech, Comat Technologies and N-Logue Communications
– set up in 2006.
3i Infotech was a global Information Technology
company that provided technology solutions to over 1500
customers in more than 50 countries across five continents,
spanning a range of verticals – banking, insurance, capital
market, mutual funds and government. It was promoted by
the NYSE-listed ICICI Bank, India’s largest private sector
bank.
Comat Technologies, a private equity-funded organization,
was an IT software services organization at its
inception in 1996. It had not only carried out many
software projects for several public sector organizations,
but had also offered medical transcription services and
litigation coding support for US-based companies. These
services largely required skills in software-based scanning,
digitization and indexing work. Comat Technologies’
foray into e-governance started with providing services
for election photo identity cards for the Government of
Karnataka in 1999–2000. The first major breakthrough that
catapulted Comat Technologies into the big league of
e-governance was the scanning and digitization of land
records for creating the database for the Bhoomi project.
For this, it built upon its skills developed in servicing
US-based clients on medical transcription and litigation
support.
N-Logue Communications was set up by a professor and
his team from IIT Chennai (a premier engineering college
in India), and specialized in Wireless in Local Loop technology.
This technology was expected to be cost-effective
and, hence, appropriate for application in rural India.
N-Logue was involved in prototyping the telecentre technology
during the pilot stage of Nemmadi.

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Nemmadi: bytes and bites of ICT implementation M Das Aundhe and R <strong>Narasimhan</strong>
The initial investment of Rs 300 million ($6 million) had
come from the consortium and the state government,
with 3i Infotech bearing almost 90% of the cost. This
amount was intended to cover the costs of all equipment,
connectivity, VSAT (Very Small Aperture Terminal) operations,
real estate leasing, power, UPS and peripherals. VSAT
was a two-way satellite ground station equipped with a dish
antenna and was used to provide internet connectivity.
Comat Technologies was responsible for all the operational
aspects of Nemmadi. It began the roll-out of telecentres
in November 2007. Hughes Communications
(a telecom equipment-providing company) was also
involved for providing VSAT connectivity. This was the
first time that the PPP model was being used in a project of
this kind. The two key entities operationalizing Nemmadi,
that is, the telecentres managed by Comat Technologies and
the taluk administration constituting the ‘last-mile’ of the
governance system, therefore had to face many challenges.
The following were some of the key challenges:
Ramping up telecentres within a very short time frame
The big bang approach adopted for setting up telecentres
became a major challenge. It consisted of a number of
tasks – identification of facility, leasing the facility and
identification of telecentre operators.
‘Setting up a center was not simple’, Sanjay Chauhan, VP
Comat Technologies, recounted.
We had targets like – 100 telecentres in the first month,
250 in the second and so on. We formed a Planning &
Implementation Team to shortlist 2 or 3 locations in each
hobli. The requirements for a telecentre facility as per the
Service Level Agreement (SLA) were – a room of area 150
sq.ft., with a pucca 13 roof, on the ground floor, near a bus
stand or a gram panchayat office. There were no pucca
buildings at all in many hoblis. If we did shortlist some
locations, by the time we went back to negotiate, the place
was not available. The moment the landlords came
to know it was a government project with some private
partner; they backed out. This delayed our monthly
targets of functional telecentres. We were in no way
responsible for the non-availability of a facility with the
required specifications; however, our penalty meter was
running 14 for not meeting the targets specified. Nobody
had anticipated these problems; no one had implemented
a project of this kind! Setting up 800 telecentres in four
months flat was a humongous exercise.
In leasing, too, Comat Technologies had to adhere to
a standard format of agreement with the landlords. Getting
this accepted over so many locations was a challenge. There
was a political angle, as well: if the telecentre location
happened to be in the opposition party’s stronghold, Comat
Technologies faced added issues in leasing the facility.
In addition to identifying the property for the telecentre,
Comat Technologies also had to recruit and deploy 800
telecentre operators. Recruitment of operators who were
computer literate was a challenge in the hoblis. Hurdles
were faced in training them on Nemmadi application software
too. Nemmadi was meant to serve the rural citizen –
often illiterate or semi-literate. In order to interface with
them, the telecentre operator required patience and understanding.
The citizen-applicant often could not fill in an
application form on his own. The telecentre operator would
need to explain to them the necessary details and elicit
the data from them. It was quite challenging to manage
such transactions and enter data simultaneously. Moreover,
there were deficiencies in data entry skills in many of the
telecentre operators. This resulted in numerous data entry
errors, which cascaded down the process resulting in
acrimonious exchanges between the telecentre operators
and taluk administration.
Meeting telecentre facility specifications
In addition to identification of telecentre premises, Comat
Technologies also had to adhere to the standards laid down
by the e-Governance Department for telecentre facility.
It had to ensure that all the centres looked the same – brick
and mortar structure with a counter. For internet connectivity
at the telecentres, Comat Technologies had to work
with the VSAT vendor – Hughes Communication Ltd.
VSAT connectivity could not be provided without proper
earthing. Providing earthing in the hobli areas was a major
challenge; there were no skilled people to do it. People
had to be called from the taluk/district headquarters to
do the job. If an engineer from Hughes Communication
(VSAT required a special engineer to install) visiting a location
found that the earthing was not done, he proceeded
further, as per his schedule, and visited again only in the
next cycle. This delayed the setting up of the telecentres.
Identification of telecentre locations, by itself, was very
difficult, and then Comat Technologies had to synchronize
several activities – registration, earthing, VSAT connection,
etc. – and each performed by a different agency. As per
Sanjay Chauhan, VP Comat Technologies,
In fact, in 250 locations in the first roll out, we had the
telecentre operators recruited and ready, but for the first
month they had to sit idle because VSAT was not in place.
Managing service-level agreements
Nemmadi was governed by comprehensive SLAs signed
between Comat Technologies and the e-Governance Department
of Karnataka. The SLAs can be categorized into
the following types:
Roll-out of telecentres: The e-Governance Department had
specified SLAs regarding the number of telecentres to be set
up in a month, the number of taluk back-offices to be set up
in a month and staffing of the telecentres. There were also
stipulations for number of women and handicapped
operators to be hired. Comat Technologies had to pay
penalties, based on prefixed rates, per day of delay in the
targets of roll-out – Rs 5000 (equivalent to $100) per day for
taluk back-offices and Rs 1000 ($20) per day for telecentres.
Penalties levied were up to Rs 50,000 ($1000) per person for
not fulfilling staffing norms. In all these cases, after an
allowance period, the penalty charges were doubled. As
described earlier, there were major challenges in adhering
to these service levels at a hobli level, resulting in large
penalties that Comat Technologies had to pay

Nemmadi: bytes and bites of ICT implementation M Das Aundhe and R <strong>Narasimhan</strong>
Operations of telecentres: The SLAs with respect to operations
consisted of those relating to (i) front-end at the
telecentre, for example, uptime of telecentre devices,
operator attendance and payment of user fees; and
(ii) back-end at the taluk back-office, for example, cycle
time of the back-office operator for generating office
note, and exchange of data between telecentre and SDC.
The main hurdles in adhering to the front-end SLAs were
power failure and internet connectivity, which affected
the uptime of devices. A penalty was charged for uptime
falling short of 95%.
Attrition amongst telecentre operators and availability of
good data entry skills were major issues that Comat
Technologies faced on a regular basis. Motivating people
to return to work every morning took a lot of the Comat
Technologies team’s energy. This affected the SLA on
operator attendance (required to be 95%) and cycle time for
data entry by taluk back-office operator. The penalty
imposed for the former was Rs 200 per man-day shortage
in attendance and Rs 10 per document that took more than
2 days for data entry.
Remittance of user fees collected at the telecentres also
posed a challenge. The cash collected by telecentre operators
had to be deposited in the bank within 2.5 days. More
than 60% of the telecentres did not have banks within
15 kms, and it took the telecentre operator half a day to do
this job. The operator, while depositing the cash collected,
missed the mandatory hourly ‘ping’ (one of the SLAs on
operator attendance) and had to pay penalty for the same.
The other fee-related issue faced by Comat Technologies
was that cash deposited in a branch that was not an official
bank of the Government of Karnataka attracted additional
deposit charges of Rs 10/Rs 15 (0.2/0.3 USD) per transaction.
This meant that Comat Technologies lost the transaction
amount.
The SLAs regarding number of times the computers
at the telecentre and SDC were synchronized were affected
by power and connectivity failures at the telecentre.
Operator’s training and efficiency at work also affected
these SLAs. There were challenges faced in connecting the
telecentre with the server at the SDC due to problems in
interface software, and some software modules had to be
developed by Comat Technologies, despite the National
Informatics Centre’s interface software.
Telecentre maintenance: There were SLAs pertaining to
deployment of an extra computer in a telecentre in case of
number of transactions increasing beyond the limit. Such
deployment was required to take place within 1 month, or
else there would be a penalty of Rs 5000 per month of delay.
Comat Technologies was also required to provide for
enhancement of bank guarantee within 7 working days of
notice, failing which penal interest was @18% per annum.
The e-Governance Department very strictly enforced
penalties. The penalty charges were further enhanced after
an allowance period. Sanjay Chauhan said,
Despite our bringing the matter to their notice, the
e-governance department continued to hold on to the
SLAs in the request for proposal. We should have been
given some leeway in SLA formulation. It should have
been a consultative and flexible process rather than a
35
rigid one like it was. Looking at this mammoth project
and its nature, the government should have relooked at
the SLAs from time to time. We were jammed. Penalty
meter was running, and the government was not accessible
at all for any discussion. An additional issue was that
our access to the government was through 3i Infotech,
our consortium partner.
Thus, when asked about his experience in the Nemmadi
project, and whether it made business sense for Comat
Technologies to continue the engagement, Sanjay Chauhan
observed:
It was a learning experience for all concerned. Like, I
said, the process of SLA formulation and negotiation
should have been a little friendlier for the private partner.
Also, the period of contract should have been longer. We
spent more than 3 years just discovering the nature of the
engagement. By the time we figured out the nuances, our
contract period was almost over, and if we are not chosen
in the next phase, the entire engagement would not make
any business sense for us. Over the long run, it may make
business sense, but for that the contract period should be
longer than 5 years.
Motivating government functionaries
The attitude of the village functionaries was a challenge to
Nemmadi implementation. The village accountants, revenue
inspectors and taluk-level officials such as the tahsildar
were lukewarm in their approach to Nemmadi. Even at the
pilot stage, the tahsildar needed to be reprimanded by
Shekhar Puri to approve requests for certificates, or else the
applications lay in his drawer unattended. After Nemmadi
implementation, too, these functionaries did not follow the
queue system, that is, the first-in-first-out mode, for serving
the rural digital services applications. Speeding up the
service and out-of-turn delivery of the service served as an
additional source of income for them. There were reports of
instances of the telecentre operators demanding extra
payment from the applicants in collusion with the revenue
inspectors. Comat Technologies had to expend time, effort
and money to act quickly against such operators and ensure
that the so-called ‘government’ culture did not seep into
the organization. The tahsildar, Natesh Swami, had the
following to say about the other functionaries at the taluk
office:
Class-room training of my personnel on Nemmadi
project did not prove very effective. My caseworkers
have had an experience of at least 20–22 years in the old
system. It is difficult to train them for the new one. Some
of them have been appointed on sympathetic grounds –
on the demise of a serving functionary his or her family
member is offered employment by the government. These
recruits do not have the aptitude or attitude to use the
computerized system. Only those who have the right
attitude learn. There are very few like that. I forced them
to use the computer system. If I depend on them for a
report, then I get only some stories! I should know the
status of the application – with whom it is pending and

36
Nemmadi: bytes and bites of ICT implementation M Das Aundhe and R <strong>Narasimhan</strong>
why it is pending. If they do not listen, I have to resort to
holding their salary or even issuing a suspension notice.
In the taluk office, it was often observed that the Comat
Technologies representative operated the computer on
behalf of the government functionary, be it the caseworker
to enter data provided by the village accountant or revenue
inspector in the field verification reports, or the tahsildar
for keying in the final approval. Thus, Comat Technologies
ended up substituting/handholding caseworkers, revenue
inspectors and even the tahsildar in the taluk office for
interfacing with computers. The operation of the computers
in the taluk office was carried out largely by representatives
of Comat Technologies, who moved the login from one
level (revenue inspector) to the next level (caseworker) of
the process, right up to the tahsildar. This was beyond the
call of their duty. Regarding this, Sanjay Chauhan, VP
Comat Technologies said:
This was just a gesture on our part to increase adoption
of technology, and therefore Nemmadi. However, this
was often not acknowledged and we ended up doing a
thankless job.
Further, a hard copy of all the documents continued to be
generated at the taluk office. In fact, the tahsildar was
required to approve by signing off on a hard copy of the
caseworker’s note before the Comat Technologies representative
moved the application to the tahsildar’s login. The
latter then digitally signed the certificate, which was printed
at the telecentre and handed over to the applicant.
Managing process inefficiencies
During the roll-out of telecentres, the intermediaries at the
taluk level also created hurdles. They were up in arms.
Earlier, at Bhoomi centres, these middlemen filled in the
application form, had the whole thing processed and
charged a payment for the same. They were greatly upset
when Nemmadi proposed to have telecentre operators
assist citizens and capture all the citizen information over
the counter. As per the initial design, it was planned that
a citizen would come almost empty-handed; the application
form would be generated from the system once all the
details were keyed in. The photograph, too, would be
captured at the telecentre. The citizen would only provide
the necessary enclosures, and the telecentre operator would
then send it to the taluk office. However, as the middlemen
refused to allow telecentres to begin operation, government
succumbed to their pressure, and the National Informatics
Centre tweaked the process flow. The middlemen were
allowed to submit the application on behalf of the citizen,
but they had to get a photograph of the citizen.
The urgency with which the Nemmadi system was
implemented resulted in automating the as-is government
processes without re-engineering them. Therefore, the process
inefficiencies continued and resulted in erroneous
certificates, delayed responses, etc. This manifested the
most during April–June, during which all admissions to
schools and colleges were scheduled. This period saw the
maximum number of applications. There was enormous
pressure on end dates due to limited availability of school/
college seats. During this period, citizens did not accept
errors or delays; some of them got middlemen and political
pressure to get their job done. The impact of any
error during this time was greatly magnified. This, in turn,
eroded the confidence of citizens in the e-governance
system.
Surmounting technology-related hurdles
The Nemmadi application was developed as a real-time
system. However, during the roll-out many power and
connectivity issues emerged, and the real-time system did
not serve the purpose. Comat Technologies developed the
Global Services Infrastructure that provided for both realtime
and off-line (by writing data into the local queue)
modes of operation. Once connected, the queue was synchronized
with the central database at the SDC. This
software development was unforeseen, and contributed to
the delay in the roll-out of telecentres.
Another major problem Comat Technologies faced was
breaks in connectivity between telecentre and SDC. Any
break in connectivity affected the RTC printout. Sanjay
Chauhan narrated that: We had to keep track of all the
stationery issued by the government. At the end of every
month, we had to give a report to the government listing out
the RTCs that had been issued, and even those that got
damaged due to communications failure had to be reported.
To counter the problem of breaks in prints causing
security or authenticity issues, measures like holograms that
identify the documents’ origin and authenticity were later
introduced.
Post-roll-out phase
Monitoring of telecentres
The Karnataka government set up the Nemmadi Monitoring
Cell, which received 3% of the share of all B2C and G2C
service charges of the telecentre activities. The Nemmadi
Monitoring Cell consisted of six members, all on contract
from reputed private organizations – a project manager, a
deputy and three or four testers; the team had no one from
the government. The contract employees worked full time
with the government and were given salaries in line with the
private sector. The Nemmadi Monitoring Cell reported to
the Directorate of Electronic Delivery of Citizen Services
(DEDCS), and the latter was responsible for the monitoring
of Nemmadi, amongst other e-governance projects of the
state. If the government or public had any issue with
Nemmadi, the matter was brought to the notice of DEDCS.
For complaints related to employment, training or infrastructure
at particular telecentres, DEDCS called upon the
private partner (in this case, Comat Technologies) to sort
the issue out. In addition to regular monitoring, if any
government department wanted to add a service, they
discussed it with DEDCS. For example, if the Department of
Agriculture wanted to make commodity prices available as
a service in the telecentre, they would have to route the
discussion through DEDCS. Based on the requirement, if
some software needed to be developed DEDCS got it
developed either by the National Informatics Centre or by
some other private IT organization.
Collections from Nemmadi were also handled by DEDCS.
As per the agreement, whatever proceeds the telecentre

operator collected had to be deposited within 2.5 days in a
special account created for this purpose. Ms. Latha, Asst.
Director, DEDCS, said,
We monitored every transaction and the total amount.
There was a slab rate for what the private partner could
retain – say 60% could be retained if the revenue is in
a particular slab. At the end of the month we reconciled
and there were so many SLAs. Penalty was levied on
the basis of attendance. The operator’s attendance was
recorded bio-metrically. If the money collected was not
deposited on time, interest was levied. There was software
to calculate the penalty per telecentre. Only 40% of
Nemmadi’s revenue came from G2C, the rest came from
the B2C services made available by the private party.
In addition to the above monitoring mechanism, DEDCS
instituted a third-party audit conducted by independent
organizations such as the National Informatics Centre,
Software Technology Parks of India (STPI) and Karnataka
State Electronics Development Corporation Limited (KEO-
NICS) 15
Nemmadi: bytes and bites of ICT implementation M Das Aundhe and R <strong>Narasimhan</strong>
to deal with continued complaints of Deputy
Commissioners, tahsildars and the public regarding delays
in the issue of certificates, operators not trained adequately,
deficiencies in the infrastructure and the overall success of
Nemmadi.
Enhancements and upgrades of applications in telecentres
The e-Governance Department had assigned the following
tasks to the National Informatics Centre: software enhancements,
upgrades, new releases, and the requirements
assessment, design and development of any new service
to be added to Nemmadi. Jeevan Madan, Senior Officer,
National Informatics Centre, Karnataka recounted the
National Informatics Centre’s role in Nemmadi:
Although our role was only technical, we also ended up
playing a role of co-ordination and balancing stakeholders,
especially where there were multiple drivers. For
example, Nemmadi had two steering wheels – the revenue
department whose services constituted the rural digital
services, and the e-governance department who was the
driver of the telecentres. We were the balancing people –
we understood our role – we absorbed and facilitated the
flow of information between government departments,
when they did not meet face-to-face to discuss out issues.
The result of the technical cum co-ordination role of the
National Informatics Centre was that it could never exit
from the project. Requirements were continuous – some
were enhancements; others were new functionalities. For
example, Nemmadi version 2.2 needed to be upgraded
to version 2.3 within 3–6 months. Additional functionalities
such as social security pension were being planned.
The existing bag of services also required maintenance.
Therefore, it was a continuous process. The National Informatics
Centre, during the requirement-gathering phase,
also ended up playing the role of business process
consultants. It pointed out the lacunae in processes to
government departments, and sought process changes, if
any. These changes were then incorporated in the software
being developed, often resulting in enhancements or new
functionalities.
37
The Nemmadi debate
Nemmadi seemed to have invited both bouquets and
brickbats. In less than a year after it was launched in
October 2006, the e-governance project had bagged three
prestigious awards 16 during 2007–2008. The citizens, being
the most important stakeholders of this project, had mixed
opinions. 17 Some praised the system as very convenient.
Students did not have to miss school for days in order to
procure the certificates (caste, income, etc.) during admissions;
they just had to give an application in the telecentres.
The telecentres were one-stop shops for caste certificates,
train ticket bookings and mobile phone currency recharge,
and thus made life easy. There were others who complained
about the longer cycle time. Earlier the village accountants
could help to get the certificates in 3–4 days. Now it took
approximately 2 weeks. There were complaints about the
whole process having become more cumbersome for users.
In the words of a villager, ‘Furnishing school leaving
certificate or transfer certificates has become compulsory.
This makes it difficult for many of the citizens who are
illiterate. They need to provide special affidavits’. Citizens
also complained about facilities at the telecentre. There was
no enquiry counter, and people again had to depend
on middlemen who provided information at a price, for
example list of enclosures for different applications. Information
dissemination regarding the status of one’s application
was also poor. No one had an idea when their
certificates would be ready. There were times when the
villagers had to make several visits to the telecentre just to
know the status of their application. The telecentres were
still fraught with infrastructure issues such as power problems
and internet connectivity problems , the brunt of
which was borne by the villagers. In the words of a villager,
who was a retired government employee,
It is a very good system of delivering services to people.
But the government has to make it more effective. People
need to be informed as to when exactly they will get
their certificate. Also facilities at the centre should be
improved. People will not mind paying a bit more for
a better service.
The government had its own take on the Nemmadi
project. The e-Governance Department saw some major
benefits of Nemmadi, such as:
Establishment of 800 telecentres had provided a good
start. The concept had been established, and demonstrated.
The roles of the village accountant and revenue inspector
were reduced to some extent.
Awareness, literacy and empowerment of villagers were,
all by themselves, great ancillary benefits.
First-time creation of data and its validation was a major
challenge, but repeatability of data was assured.
A <strong>study</strong> done by research scholars showed growth in
the number of transactions at Nemmadi telecentres in the
last 3 years (Appendix H), which indicated that the
citizens were adopting the innovation.

38
Nemmadi: bytes and bites of ICT implementation M Das Aundhe and R <strong>Narasimhan</strong>
It fit in neatly with the National e-governance Plan.
In fact, it had been a forerunner of Common Service
Centres under the National e-governance Plan.
The e-Governance Department’s view was that, gradually,
Nemmadi would cleanse the system of corruption. The
government, thus, claimed that while the role of the village
accountants could not be completely done away with, as
they had been a part of the system for more than 150 years,
their efforts would be used in the creation and validation
of the citizen database. The tahsildars of various taluks
also felt that Nemmadi was still in its infancy. Mahesh, the
tahsildar of Ramanagara taluk, said,
Nemmadi is in its infancy. It is an important project – a
system we evolved to reduce human interference. We were
successful in bringing in technology for delivery of government
services. There were a lot of hurdles here and
there. They were sorted out at various levels. Technology
level issues were attended to first. End delivery system
issues like infrastructure, skill development, people, understanding
of Nemmadi process etc. continued for a while.
The National Informatics Centre, as the technology provider,
had mixed feelings too. It appreciated the technological
challenge in a project of this size, and that eventually it
would help citizens. However, it was not very happy with the
government’s lack of attention to the in-built inefficiencies in
the processes, and the lack of decision making when the
matter was raised. Hence, the National Informatics Centre
had its own misgivings as to whether Nemmadi could ever be
successful if the process issues were not addressed.
The private partners of Nemmadi had mixed opinions
too. They felt that the government made undue demands,
and was rigid in its stand on the project. While in the long
run they felt they might benefit from the project, at that
point they were not very sure about any meaningful
business outcome for themselves. The lukewarm response
to the subsequent tender for Common Service Centres by
the government also reflected the misgivings of the private
sector in getting involved in PPP projects.
The activities at the village administration level did not
undergo much change despite Nemmadi. The village accountants
and revenue inspectors continued to play a key role.
They continued to be the primary record keepers of rural
citizens and their land data. Certificates were issued or
refused based on the village accountant’s recommendations;
hence, he played a very important role in the lives of people.
Bhoomi helped to organize the queue of applications and thus
the village accountant could not exploit the villagers for outof-turn
provision of service. Therefore, corruption with
respect to RTCs was reduced. In Nemmadi, village accountants
lost all control of power in the case of issue of additional
copies of the same certificate, as the data were stored at the
SDC and could be accessed from the telecentre. Instances
of bogus documents issued also decreased, as data were
maintained in the database. However, the queue of applications
in case of Nemmadi had not yet been organized, and
rent seeking due to this still took place. The illiterate among
the villagers continued to depend on the village accountants
for other favours/services, after obtaining the certificates.
Way forward
Naveen Iyer, when he took charge as the new Principal
Secretary for e-governance, was mandated to restore the
state back to its No. 1 position in e-governance. Nemmadi
was his debut project. He mentally went over some key
points before meeting his team. In Project Nemmadi, while
the infrastructure had come into place quickly, the process
of change within the village administration had not been as
quick. The citizens were gradually becoming familiar with
the system. Despite Project Nemmadi, the village accountants
remained powerful. They were still the primary record
keepers and the citizens could not obtain any certificate
without their approval. Once Nemmadi gradually populated
the citizen database at the SDC, the roles of village accountants
and revenue inspectors would be curtailed. The
technological hurdles of interface software had been overcome,
but the basic process had remained unchanged. The
relationship with the private partner was shaping up and
the monitoring mechanism was in place, but the SLA issues
definitely needed more attention. With these thoughts
running through his mind, Naveen Iyer entered the meeting
room, where his team had already assembledy.
Questions for discussion
(i) Analyse the Nemmadi adoption process across stages
such as motivation, decision making and implementation.
(ii) How did the context of the developing and democratic
country shape adoption across the various stages?
(iii) Comment on the use of the PPP model in the
Nemmadi project. Do you think it should continue?
With or without changes? What changes and why?
(iv) Discuss Project Nemmadi with regard to the alignment
between the People, Process and Technology.
(v) Evaluate the success of Project Nemmadi.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the Senior Editor, <strong>Dr</strong>. Julia Kotlarsky, and
an anonymous reviewer for their very helpful comments and
suggestions on drafts of this work. We would also like to thank
the concerned agencies of the Government of Karnataka, India
(e-Governance Department, National Informatics Centre, Centre
for E-governance) and the private partner organization for their
support on this case.
Notes
1 As reported in the daily newspaper Deccan Herald, Bangalore,
30 August 2009.
2 Details of the e-governance strategy for Karnataka can be
accessed at http://www.bangaloreit.com/, accessed 15 December
2009.
3 See note 2.
4 Public–Private Partnerships today – The draft infrastructure
policy of Karnataka for public–private partnership; http://
www.iitk.ac.in/3inetwork/html/reports/IIR-2004/Chap%205
%202003.pdf.
5 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caste_system_in_India.
6 Article 16(4) of the Constitution of India (website: lawmin
.nic.in/legislative/Art1-242%20(1-88).doc, accessed 4 April 2012.

7 International Records Management Trust, India Karnataka
<strong>Case</strong> Study, June 2007 – Fostering Trust and Transparency in
Governance, Investigating and Addressing the Requirements
for Building Integrity in Public Sector Information Systems in
the ICT Environment.
8 Based on reports on the website of the daily newspaper The
Times of India, http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/
keyword/village-accountant, last accessed 23 March 2012.
9 Grouped by authors for ease of understanding.
10 Bhatnagar and Chawla (2007).
11 Winner of United Nations Public Service Award 2005–2006.
12 The National Informatics Centre was a Government of India
organization under the Ministry of IT, and was entrusted
with the task of supporting the government – both central and
state – with services related to consultancy, development and
deployment of ICT software and hardware. It was also involved
in Bhoomi.
13 Firm or permanent roofing, as against roofs of straw and leaves
found on huts in villages.
14 A colloquial expression for ‘penalty amounts were increasing’.
15 STPI was a society set up by the Ministry of Communication
and Information Technology, Government of India in 1991,
with the objective of encouraging, promoting and boosting the
Software Exports from India. KEONICS was in existence since
1976 with the main objective of promoting electronics
industries in Karnataka.
16 National Silver Award for e-governance, 2007–2008; Microsoft
Award for e-governance, 2007; Government Technology Award
for e-governance 2007; Microsoft e-governance Award-IT for
Rural Development, 2007.
17 See note 1.
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About the authors
39
Madhuchhanda Das Aundhe completed her Ph.D. from the
Indian Institute of Management Bangalore, India. Her area
of specialization is Information Systems. She worked in the
Indian Process and IT industries before taking up research
and teaching. Das Aundhe is a Fulbright Scholar. She
handles courses for postgraduate programmes and executive
management programmes. Her areas of academic
interest are e-governance, IT services, software engineering
and business process modelling.

40
<strong>Ramesh</strong> <strong>Narasimhan</strong> completed his graduation in Engineering
from BITS, Pilani, postgraduation in Business Management
from the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore,
and Ph.D. in Technology Management from Bangalore
University. He worked in a technology-based established
corporation and later in a start-up venture, before moving
into academia. Professor <strong>Narasimhan</strong> has since been teaching
Marketing and Technology Management. He has conducted
research in the area of technology management sponsored by
Appendix A
Nemmadi: bytes and bites of ICT implementation M Das Aundhe and R <strong>Narasimhan</strong>
Figure A1 Hierarchical structure and functionaries of revenue administration in India.
the Department of Scientific & Industrial Research and the
Department of Science & Technology – agencies of the
Government of India. Professor <strong>Narasimhan</strong> has also engaged
in research for the Indo-Korea Science & Technology Centre,
Bangalore. He has co-authored a teaching case published by
ISB-Ivey Publishing. Presently, Professor <strong>Narasimhan</strong> is
working as a professor at the School of Business at SVKM’s
Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies (a deemedto-be
university) in Bangalore.

Appendix B
Table B1 Services provided in Nemmadi telecentre
Certificates Benefits
Status certificates:
i. Residence certificate Opening a bank account, admission to school/college, etc.
ii. Living certificate Claiming old-age pension
iii. Re-marriage certificate
iv. Surviving family member certificate Claiming family pension
v. OBC (Other Backward Classes) certificate
vi. Caste certificate for Category-A Applying for Government of India jobs (v–viii)
vii. Caste certificate for other categories
viii. Caste certificate for SC/ST
ix. Widow certificate Claiming widow pension
x. Birth certificate
xi. Death certificate
Income certificates:
i. Income certificate Applying for admission in schools/colleges
ii. Income certificate for compassionate appointment Applying for Government of India jobs (ii–iv)
iii. Unemployment certificate
iv. No government job certificate for compassionate
appointments
v. Bonafide certificate
vi. Solvency certificate Applying for subsidies and grants from the government
vii. Old-age pension
and other private organizations (vi–ix)
viii. Widow pension
ix. Physically handicapped pension
Land-related certificates:
i. No tenancy certificate Applying for subsidies and grants from the government
ii. Agri Family member certificate
and other private organizations for seeds, fertilizers and
iii. Landless certificate
agri-inputs (i–viii)
iv. Agriculturist certificate
v. Small and Marginal farmer certificate
vi. Agri Labour certificate
vii. Land holding certificate
viii. RTC
ix. Mutations For transactions dealing with buying and selling of land
B2C services:
i. Sandhya Suraksha Yojane
ii. National Family Benefit scheme
iii. Karnataka Vocational Training and Skill
Development Corporation
iv. Employability training
v. Sales Training – (Telesales/Marketing)
vi. Domestic – BPO
vii. Basic Computer Course
Deccan Herald, Bangalore, 30 August 2009.
Nemmadi: bytes and bites of ICT implementation M Das Aundhe and R <strong>Narasimhan</strong>
41

42
Appendix C
Figure C1 A telecentre.
Appendix D
Figure D1 IT architecture of Nemmadi.
Nemmadi: bytes and bites of ICT implementation M Das Aundhe and R <strong>Narasimhan</strong>

Appendix E
Figure E1 Process flow of Nemmadi.
Nemmadi: bytes and bites of ICT implementation M Das Aundhe and R <strong>Narasimhan</strong>
Citizen Oral
Request
Print
application
Certificate
issued earlier?
N
Details in
citizen
database?
N
Handover
application to
Revenue
Inspector
Accept field
verification
report
Y
Y
Update
remarks of
Village
Accountant &
Revenue
Inspector
Generate
office note
Issue
certificate
Tahsildar
digitally signs
certificate
Telecentre
Certificate
Taluk Back-Office
43

44
Appendix F
Figure F1 Sample of a certificate with digital signature.
Nemmadi: bytes and bites of ICT implementation M Das Aundhe and R <strong>Narasimhan</strong>

Appendix G
The stated vision, mission and objectives of the Nemmadi project
Vision: The Government of Karnataka’s vision for the
Nemmadi (telecentre) project is that IT-enabled government
services should be accessible to the common citizen
in his village, through efficient, transparent, reliable and
affordable means.
Mission: The mission of the Nemmadi project is to deliver
efficient government services at the citizen’s doorstep.
Objectives of the project:
To create efficient and smart virtual offices of state
government in all the villages.
Initially, to provide copies of land records and 38 other
citizen-centric services of the Revenue Department in
Appendix H
Figure H1 Trend in transactions at Nemmadi telecentres.
Source: Naik et al. (2010).
Nemmadi: bytes and bites of ICT implementation M Das Aundhe and R <strong>Narasimhan</strong>
45
a convenient and efficient manner through 800 village
telecentres across rural Karnataka.
To scale up the operations to cover all other G2C services
of all the departments.
To enhance accountability, transparency and responsiveness
of the government to citizens’ needs.
To provide government departments and agencies with
efficient and cost-effective methods of service delivery
to citizens.
To manage the delivery of services through the PPP
model.
To enable government departments and agencies to focus
on their core functions and responsibilities by freeing
them from routine operations like issuing of certificates,
maintaining land records and collecting utility bills from
citizens, thereby enhancing the overall productivity of
the administrative machinery.