Electronic Service Delivery: Are the Poor being Served?

India's ICT Policy seeks to ensure universalisation of electronic service delivery in a time-bound manner. Legislation is currently under consideration of the Indian Parliament to ensure this. Meanwhile, several states in India have independently taken steps to provide delivery of a large number of services electronically by enacting their own legislations making the delivery of services a matter of right. Mandated services include issue of a variety of certificates, social security payments, revenue court proceedings, issue of ration cards and services under the Right to Information Act. Although the implementation of the state laws guaranteeing delivery of services has commenced only some months ago, analysis of data reported from the two Indian states of Madhya Pradesh and Bihar indicate a certain degree of underperformance relating to services focused on the poor like social security pensions and entitlement to subsidized distribution of essential food items. This paper examines the possible reasons for this trend and attempts to flag some of the issues like the shift in emphasis by field agencies from meeting targets to meeting deadlines, the reduced involvement of local level governance bodies under the new procedure, inadequate coverage of electronic services through the Common Service Centres and lack of attention to systematic re-engineering of government processes. Some possible corrective action is also discussed.