Governments enter into the daily lives of the citizens in many ways.  There is a fair degree of discontent amongst the citizens about the delivery of these services.  The craving for better services couldn’t have been stronger.  Everybody wants an outlet to report their individual or communal grievance and would be very happy if the same is attended to with alacrity and promptness.  The project allows citizens to file their grievance in these centres.  Every grievance is acknowledged and transferred online for bringing in field level action.

Grievances have been territorially and functionally categorised allowing ease of registration.  Every Grievance is given a unique Number (year – mandal code- serial Number) for easy retrieval to monitor and to know the status.

 As the grievance is uniquely numbered and recorded in real time in the central database, there is no way it can miss the attention of the concerned.  Registered grievances can be easily monitored by concerned departments by logging with their user id and passwords specifically assigned to them.

 Every grievance becomes monitorable at the highest level leading to prompt and effective redressal. The real time summary statistics and performance summary statement of the individual departments can be seen and verified. The citizens can verify and track the status of its disposal online. 

 The project works on the principle that the citizen need not go himself to the authorities if someone can carry his grievance and in this case if a telephone wire can do that, where is the need for them to act otherwise?  The Citizens now need not wait if there is a drinking water problem or a non functioning Fair Price Shop or a government functionary not doing his duty.  All this is only one click away now.

 Over 5000 different grievances relating to various departments have been received from the citizens, over 4000 of them pertaining to various problems have been redressed.  The details can be seen at Annexure ‘A’

There are host of areas where the citizens approach various tiers and areas of governments for getting benefit out of various government programmes.  These areas range from getting a loan under self employment schemes to applying for an old age pension or asking for subsidized agricultural inputs.  Instead of moving from offices to offices and getting harsh responses, the citizens just need to come to the kiosk and apply online.  They get their acknowledgement number and the rest is taken care of.  The module provides for online forwarding, transmission, handling and disposal of such requests and would therefore minimize the disposal time and the concomitant citizen effort to get their cases redressed.

 The interconnectivity and linkage with the citizen database also helps in weeding out bogus and repeat cases.  The old age pensions being given in this project were computerized and put on the project website along with the photographs and the citizen identification number helping the administration weed out over 7000 bogus names saving over Rs. 7 million yearly for the state.

The plan document of the Seventh Five Year Plan rightly opined, "Land records form the base for all land reforms and therefore regular periodic updating of land records is essential in all states".

The information relating to land plays a very important role. These may include primary information about land presented in terms of its geological information like the shape, size, land forms, soils; economic information related to land use, irrigation and crops; and the information pertaining to the legal rights, registration and taxation.

The manual system of land records maintenance was highly opaque wherein the land records were maintained by the village accountants and therefore there was a situation of virtual monopoly of village accountants over these records.  Records were not open to public scrutiny and were updated many a times only on various considerations.  Many a times farmers faced harassment and extortion for not only provision of land records to them by the village officials but also for processing requests for change in land title.

On many occasions such delay was unintentional. Even if a village accountant was willing to give such records in time, he was not available when farmers wanted him most as he was manning more than 4-5 villages. Therefore, there was no certainty about timely availability of such records when a farmer required them.

Land Records contain various useful data like soil type, Irrigation details, trees, crops grown, crop yield etc. All such data is very valuable for various administrative purposes. As data was previously manually maintained, it was not possible to collate and analyze such data resulting into mine of such useful data not being used in any meaningful way. However keeping this in view the land records in the state have been computerized and all the mandal revenue offices now maintain these records. 

But despite the availability of computerized database, no public outreach to this database was put into place. Further validation of data was also not properly done leading to errors in database. The printed records were distributed to the farmers without proper validation and the updation or any use of the database was mostly forgotten.

The process of mutation (change in land title) was also very cumbersome. Applications were being given to Mandal office/ village officials who virtually enjoyed discretion of either processing them or not. As records were maintained in decentralised manner, there was no reporting mechanism available at the district level about the pendency of such applications. Lack of any monitoring mechanism in the manual system makes farmers amenable to all pressures from the hierarchy of the Department

The project has casted this data into the public domain to support development of a citizen centric land records system.  The result is evolution of a transparent and effective land record delivery system which fully addresses the insecurities and concerns of the farmers.

The farmers now approach the kiosks and can ask for the Land Records abstract for the Fasali for which Jamabandi has been done (Viz. 1410) and get that instantly. In these Kiosks farmers can see their land related information without any intervention or help  They can also apply for the latest extracts and their request is transmitted online to the Mandal Revenue Office which sends the prepared extract to the centre within the time frame stipulated under the citizen charter.  The monitoring of such requests and their disposal at the higher levels ensure timely compliance and greatly benefits the citizens.

Besides this, they can also lodge request for mutation to their land records (change in land title) at the computerised kiosks, get acknowledgement for the same and can monitor the progress at the Kendrams. They then get their updated land record in a fixed time frame without the need of approaching any authority. As against earlier time of 70-200 days, mutation now require less than 30 days, that too without going to any government office. It is also envisaged to have a fully online system to carry out mutations on land records data and the manual changes without moving through the database are proposed to be banned.

Farmers can also get the official status report of their request for mutation which would let them know the stage at which their request is pending. This status report  helps them in enforcing their right of getting the record mutated in the prescribed time.

It is also proposed to network the sub registrar offices with the mandal revenue offices so that the changes in title taking place there is also incorporated in the village accounts within the stipulated time without fail.