Net lesson ahead of India’s 2014 poll

By Subhash Chopra....... Last Sunday’s ( 7 March) voter registration drive by the Election Commission took officials and public by surprise—with an overwhelming response. It was a last-ditch exercise on both sides. Over 74.5 lakh (7.4 m) potential voters turned out countrywide, including 1.7 lakh in Delhi, more than five times more than the commission’s expectation of just 30,000 in the national capital. I was one of the lucky ones to file his papers (Form 6), having failed several times earlier. Why did I fail in my previous half dozen attempts to get my voting right restored after a mere change of address? I had only shifted from one flat to another in the same apartment block in the same old locality of New Delhi. Was it just an occasional glitch hitting the net and the telephone services? No. Going by the experience at offices like that of the Delhi Development Authority and others, one may not be far wrong to say that our brand of e-governance is suffering from an epidemic of glitches. And it is not the fault of technology, nor is it the fault of our stars. The fault , dear Brutus, lies in our selves. Nor is it particular to India alone. Other countries too have faced similar glitches at the start of their experiments with net technology and over-dependence on answer-phone machines. I am reminded of the British experiment which I happened to share not too long ago. They have overcome the problem by putting a human face or voice at the end of the line, in case the customer fails after three or four dialling or clicking options. We can do it too and make a success of over e-governance. Back to my own encounter with our net-phone services. On clicking the Election Commission’s site I was advised to fill 8A form which I did as per the instructions. After correctly providing my constituency and locality, I was stumped when asked to provide the Constituency Part Number. Those not able to do so were asked to ring 4848, the number which mostly sounded either engaged or too busy or dead. Then I thought of actually going to the nearest local Election Commission office whose address I found on the internet. On reaching the address (c22/23, Qutab Instititutional Area, Udyog Sadan ) I was stumped again to find that no such office existed there. The commission, like so many other public authorities, had not updated its computerised information. Since advice is free in India, somebody who claimed to know asked me to go to Pushp Vihar area office. Instead I took another auto to the Mehrauli area office which did not cover my particular area, but an officer there gave me the telephone number (1950) of Delhi’s chief electoral officer for pucca/ correct information. For two consecutive days I rang that number only to be met with a recorded message or a ringing tone but without anybody ever picking up the phone to answer with a human voice. Lo and behold, the next day’s newspapers contained Election Commission’s announcement to open 11,700 centres in Delhi (9.3 lakh centres across the nation) on Sunday with actual men and women block officers on duty to help applicants get on the voting rolls. I finally made it and am hoping to receive my polling card, thanks to actual human beings answering the queries instead of the ever ringing but seldom answering gadgets in our internet and phones services. I congratulate the Election Commission for putting men and women on duty instead of solely depending on internet and telephone networks, in the run-up to the world’s largest election covering 814 million voters, more than the combined population of European Union and the USA. But God help thousands of offices across the country – internet, telephone, municipal, hospital and other government offices supposed to be serving millions of hapless citizens , the real end-users! Let all public offices take a leaf out of the Election Commission’s book and put men and women behind the machines and not give the modern internet and telephone technology a bad name. .............................................................................................................................................................. Subhash Chopra is a freelance journalist and author of ‘India and Britannia-- An Abiding Affair’ and other writings.