BHIM-UPI: Transforming Digital Payments in India

• BHIM-UPI: BHIM-UPI is a digital payment system launched by the Government of India to promote digital transactions and financial inclusion. The BHIM-UPI initiative has played a significant role in the country’s e-governance initiatives by enabling citizens to make seamless digital payments. With BHIM-UPI, citizens can make payments for government services such as taxes, utility bills, and fees for various licenses and permits. The initiative has eliminated the need for physical visits to government offices and long queues, making the process of paying for government services more convenient and efficient. In addition to facilitating payments to government services, BHIM-UPI has also been integrated with various government schemes to provide direct benefits to citizens. For instance, the government’s flagship scheme for direct benefit transfer (DBT) to farmers, Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN), uses BHIM-UPI as one of the modes of payment. This has enabled farmers to receive their subsidy payments directly into their bank accounts without any intermediaries, leading to greater transparency and efficiency in the delivery of government benefits. BHIM-UPI has also been integrated with the National Health Stack, a framework for building digital health infrastructure in India. The integration has enabled citizens to pay for health services using BHIM-UPI and access their health records through a digital platform. This has improved access to healthcare services for citizens, especially in remote areas.

e-Courts: Transforming India’s Judiciary with Technology

• e-Courts: e-Courts project has been planned by the e-Committee, Supreme Court of India under the National Policy and Action Plan for Implementation of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in the Indian Judiciary, 2005. The project lays great emphasis on service delivery to litigants, lawyers and other stakeholders. The development of enhanced ICT infrastructure within Courts, video conferencing capabilities, etc., aims to ensure maximum automation of both judicial and administrative workflows. The project has set up a consolidated nationwide judicial data warehouse with real time updates and availability, which is being used to provide citizen-centric services and inputs for policy making and decision support to the management.

• Interoperable Criminal Justice System (ICJS): ICJS is collectively conceptualized by the Ministry of Information Technology and Ministry of Home Affairs along with the Department of Justice under the guidance of the e-Committee of the Supreme Court of India in 2013. It was mainly intended to make the Justice delivery system speedy and transparent. This is intended with the following objectives: 
  • Pan-India Search capabilities in all the Criminal Justice System stakeholders, namely Investigating Agencies (state Police, CBI, NIA, NCB, RPF etc.), Court, Prisons, Forensic and Prosecution. 
  • Workflow based data exchange among the stakeholders based on the Data Sharing Matrix approved by the e-Committee of the Supreme Court of India. 
  • Access to other government big databases like Vahan/Sarathi, Passport & Arm Licenses. 
  • Analytics over the big data repository of the criminal justice system. 
  • To make the Justice delivery system speedy and transparent. 
  • To provide comprehensive tools to the investigating agencies for effective policing. 
  • To empower the stakeholders by using advanced ICT tools.

e-Shram Portal: Empowering India’s Unorganized Workforce

• National Database of Unorganized Workers (e-Shram Portal): NIC has developed an e-Shram portal for creating Aadhaar authenticated comprehensive National Database of Unorganized Workers (NDUW). The portal has details of the Unorganized workers such as Name, Mobile Number, Occupation, Address, Aadhaar seeded Bank name, Educational Qualification, Skill types etc. It is the first-ever national database of Unorganized workers. It is estimated that more than 40 Crore Unorganized workers will get registered. Each registrant is allocated a Universal Account Number (UAN) and can download a UAN card instantly. 

Good Governance

• PRAYAS – Pursuing Excellence in Governance: PRAYAS- ‘Pursuing Excellence in Governance’ is a dashboard of dashboards which provides an integrated & consistent view of the performance of Government Programs & Schemes, facilitates actionable insights thereby encouraging a culture of data-driven Governance. Ultimately, this will enable key policymakers and implementers to take appropriate actions to enhance the progress of the scheme in relation to the expected outcomes. The citizen centric scheme’s KPI (Key Performance Indicator) is getting displayed using appropriate visualization technology. It provides a secure channel with MIS of respective schemes to get real time data through Application Programming Interface (API). 119 schemes with more than 690 KPIs are enabled on PRAYAS. 
• DARPAN: DARPAN is a versatile, customizable, and multilingual dashboard solution designed for Governors, Chief Ministers, Chief Secretaries, Divisional Commissioners, and District Magistrates/District Collectors across various States and districts. It provides a real-time data presentation on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) of selected schemes to senior officials in the State Government as well as District Administration, which can be utilized for planning, evaluating, and monitoring purposes. By consolidating various data sources into a single, easily accessible platform, it enhances analysis through data collection. The dashboard enables users to identify data trends to gain better insights into the projects and allows them to customize their view to prioritize the information they need. 

From the above e-governance initiatives, it can be seen that the ICT has helped in providing not only the simplicity to various government initiatives but it has also brought in simplicity in the implementation of schemes. Centralised dashboards to monitor the implementation of schemes and programmes has helped in effective evaluation of targeted outcomes. Such initiatives have strengthened the Good Governance agenda in India. e-Governance initiatives have also contributed to increasing citizen involvement in governance processes. Such a participation has not only empowered the citizens but is increasingly becoming an effective tool of ensuring citizen-centricity and transparency in the governance in India.