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E- Governance Transforming the Rural India: An Analysis of major Projects and Initiatives
Get PDFE-Governance is the use of information and communication technologies to support good governance. A number of countries across the world have adopted E-governance schemes to transform the life pattern of their denizens. Information and communication technologies have a valuable potential to help meet good governance goals in India. The government of India and several state governments have been continuously endeavoring to provide citizen services in a better manner in all areas of Public administration such as Public Services, Rural Services, Social Services, Agricultural and Revenue Services,etc. The benchmark step taken by the Indian Government is the enactment of Information Technology Act (2000) .It has provisions to facilitate electronic commerce and electronic transactions, electronic contracts, prevention of computer crimes, electronic filing and digital signature, etc. The Union Government had approved the National E-Governance Action Plan for implementation during the year 2003-2007. The plan is an attempt to lay the foundation and provide impetus for long-term growth of e-governance within the country. E- Governance has helped in timely and accurate issuance of Records of Rights (ROR) to land owners. Agmarknet, Kisan Call Centres. E- Panchayats, E- Chaupal, E-learning in education, business and railways are other areas where E- governance is proving the effectiveness. India has a large network of Public Distribution System (PDS) and fair price shops (FPS) to provide essential commodities to the rural folk and E- governance will minimize the corruption and mismanagement of PDS. One goal of e-government will be greater citizen participation. Through the internet, people from all over the country can interact with politicians or public servants and make their voices heard. India has enforced the Right to Information Act (2005) and IT based services would lead to greater transparency in providing information under this Act. India is a country of villages and several types of disputes arise there. The pending court cases have brought the legal system to a halt. The application of ICT in Supreme Court and High Courts has enabled the parties to get information about their cases from remote areas. Further it will not only save the money and time of citizens but will also reduce the backlog of cases. The Postal department has already started effective services like delivery of Money Orders through Extended Satellite Money Order (ESMO) centres in certain stations. These services are being provided with the help of satellite based Very Small Aperture Terminals (VSATs). There have been several successful initiatives and noteworthy projects undertaken in various states of India. Some of the successful initiatives are: Bhoomi (Karnataka), Gyandoot (M.P.), E-seva(Andhra Pradesh),ASHA (Assam),Lokmitra (HP), Gramdoot (Rajasthan),Lokvani (U.P.),Sari ( Tamilnadu), Akshaya (Kerala), SETU( Maharashtra) and SUDA( Gujarat), etc. This paper specifically focuses on the E-Governance initiatives that have changed the life style of rural citizens and in which the citizens derive benefit through direct transactions with the services provided by the union and the provincial governments. The paper also highlights the variety of constraints in implementing the E-governance projects in rural areas.
Article DOI : 10.5958/2347-6869.2017.00009.
Pythagorean Self-Awareness serves effectively for Stress Management on Freshmen: A quasi-experimental study
Get PDFAdjustment to conditions surrounding the first year of studies in tertiary education can be highly stressful. Because of the pertinent challenges, University freshmen evidently run risks for developing mental and physical ailments probably undermining their entire wellbeing. Aims: This study evaluates effects of two preventive or/and corrective intervention methods dealing with their difficulties. Sample: Freshmen (N=60). Methods: In a parallel quasi-experimental design the above freshmen were randomly sub-grouped for attending to 8 consecutive weekly sessions of either Pythagorean Self-Awareness Intervention (PSAI) or Stress Management Techniques Intervention (SMTI). Several self-report measures were administered at pre- and post-intervention phases. Assessment included various factors: (a) psychological: stress, anxiety, depression, anger, emotionality, (b) physiological: Body-Mass-Index (BMI) via engaging in healthy habits, lifestyle, sleep, (c) basic cognitive: visuospatial memory, verbal learning and (d) complex mental: fatigue-vs-coherence, speed processing, self-efficacy. Results: Significant post-intervention improvements were noted for most dimensions, irrespective of group allocation. SMTI was superior to PSAI for reducing BMI and improving basic cognitive features, whereas PSAI was superior for improving psychological and complex mental processes. Conclusions: Results are encouraging to suggest these interventions be introduced in academic settings as effective meta-cognitive multifaceted procedures for stress management, to help students become more successful in their personal as well as academic lives.
Article DOI : 10.5958/2347-6869.2017.00012.
E-Government development strategies in the Eastern Partnership countries
Get PDFThe article aims to outline the role of e-democracy within the setting of the Eastern Partnership program. The article provides the comparative review of E-Government progress in six EaP countries in 2009 – 2016. The E-Government sensitive data of international ratings is analyzed with the special focus on participative aspects. The existing differences of E-Government strategies between the Eastern Partnerships countries are analyzed with the special focus on e-participate. The e-participate differences in the development of the countries are pointed out in terms of e-democracy development. The cognitive model of integrating e-democracy components into the socio-technical system of e-government is proposed.
Article DOI : 10.5958/2347-6869.2017.00007.
City-Governance: conceptualizing digital maturity model
Get PDFThe article aims to outline the role of ICT in urban management. The digital segment is presented as significant for making cities sustainable, and for expanding access to basic services for large numbers of people. The matrix of ICT-tools in relation to sustainable cities development targets is developed. The comparative review of Digital City, Intelligent City, and Smart City is provided. The municipal e-government data of international ratings are analyzed with the special focus on aspects of online services management. The existing digital gaps between cities are pointed out in terms of e-governance maturity. It is proposed the maturity model of the municipal digital office, which it consists eight levels of the functional responsibility for urban online services development.
Article DOI : 10.5958/2347-6869.2017.00016.
“Aurea mediocritas” The concepts of measure, measurement and moderation in Presocratic philosophy
Get PDFAn important moral tradition was formed in ancient Greece, starting from the early 6th century BC and extending approximately to the first half of the 5th century BC. This social morality which values virtue above pleasure (?????) and ordains the observance of measure (??????), namely the morality of prudence (?????????), was shaped thanks to the orders of the Oracle of Delphi and the Seven Sages for self-restraint and avoidance of excess, but also thanks to the moral teaching of Presocratic philosophers and the legislation of wise and enlightened legislators, as it seems that the requirement for measure ensures the existence of polis (city) and makes it operating orderly and in a harmonic manner.
The purpose of this article is to show how the requirement for the measure was reflected in the theoretical thinking of Presocratic philosophers. The paper deals with the period, when the concepts of measure, measurement and moderation penetrated into the fields of ethics and political philosophy, fields that still have not acquired a more systematic form as it happens in the era of Plato, Aristotle and their descendants
Hussain Quli Mastan as a short story writer
Get PDFHussain Quli Mastan had various personalities. He was a journalist, translator, lyricist, poet, playwright, novelist, as well as columnist footer, and without a doubt he was the first Iranian photo-journalist.In this paper, hidden corners and unfamiliar life and priceless works of Hussain Quli Mastan has been introduced. Hopefully this article establishes Hussain Quli Mastan in Persian literature and his valuable work
Good Governance and Development
Get PDFThe concept of good governance plays a very important role in the modern government system. Today people are conscious and they always aware of the day to day functioning of the government. So the government also tries to satisfy the general people. Where good governance creates an environment which fosters strong and equitable development and it is an essential to complement to sound economic policies. With the advent of the new economic order, manifested in the form of globalisation, liberalisation, and Privatisation has brought in a new governance paradigm prescriptively being referred to as good governance. Since the 1990s the concept of good governance has become one of the most widely used in debates in development, public policy and international relations. The first part of this paper is related to be an overview of Governance, Good Governance in India and second part of this paper is related to Good governance and development with different sectors.
Article DOI : 10.5958/2347-6869.2017.00008.
Open Government Data (OGD) usage in India: A conceptual framework using TOE & UTAUT frameworks
Get PDFOpen Government Data (OGD) is considered as an important constituent of e-government where the notions of transparency, collaboration and participation are being envisaged. This paper is a step in this direction where the OGD platform (https://data.gov.in/) is being probed using a qualitative and quantitative lens. Research hypotheses are being derived following the popular TOE and UTAUT models and multiple regression informs the quantitative analysis to ascertain OGD usage by end-users. The study shows that OGD usage is popular among the end-users in terms of the number of views and downloads of the datasets. Future research might undertake the empirical investigation of the research hypotheses advanced in the paper
The ontological revolution: On the phenomenology of the internet
Get PDFCogitation described as calculation, the living being described as a machine, cognitive functions considered as algorithmic sequences and the ‘mechanization’ of the subjective were the theoretical elements that late heideggerian anti–humanism, especially in France was able to utilize1, even more so, after the second cybernetics or post-cybernetics movement of the late ‘60s introduced the concepts of the autopoietic and the allopoietic automata2. Recently, neurologists pose claims on the traditional epistemological field of philosophy, proceeding from this ontological decision, the equation of human cognition to cybernetic systems. The emergence of the world-wide-web in the 1990s and the global expansion of the internet during the first decades of the 21st century indicate the fallacies of the cybernetics programme to mechanize the mind. We stand witnesses to a semantic colonization of the cybernetic system, a social imaginary creation and expansion within the digital ensemblistic – identitarian organization that cannot be described by mechanical or cybernetic terms. Paradoxically, cyberspace, as a new being, a form of alterity, seems to both exacerbate and capsize the polarization between the operational and the symbolic. The creation of the internet might be more than an epistemological revolution, to use the terminology of Thomas Kuhn. It might be an ontological revolution. I will try to demonstrate that the emergence of the Internet refutes any such claims, since its context and utility can only be described by means of a social epistemology based on the understanding of social significances as continuous creations of an anonymous social imaginary proposed by Cornelius Castoriadis (1922-1997). I will try to explore some social-semantic aspects of the cyberspace as a nexus of social representations of the individual identity that forms a new sphere of being, where the subjective and the objective merge in a virtual subjective objectivity with unique epistemological attributes and possibilities
A Mathematical Model Designing to Achieve Cost Management in Value Chain with Combinational Approach of AHP & GP: (Case Study: Home Appliance Industries)
Get PDFThe purpose of this study is to develop a model for designing and explaining Cost Management Strategies in the home appliance industry in Iran. It has also implemented organizational resource–based view to limit the research domain and focus on organizational actions; then it has used porter value chain (1985) to analyze the cost structure of the company which supports strategic decision making and inter–organizational verifications. Since the life of most industries is dependent on its ability at increasing the accuracy of cost management, the authors try to present a mathematical porter\u27s value chain framework to get a correct understanding of firm\u27s cost behavior and strategic activities. Surveys show that if one considers the supply chain activities and product and development of product activities in value chain model, he will have more optimistic sight of organization activities and more comprehensive tool for analyzing cost structure leading to stable competitive advantages. To test the proposed model, first, a mathematical programming model based on multi objective decision-making model was developed. Then, an active home appliance data is used to assess the validity of the mathematics model and, finally, model results show that the proposed solution improves the use of resources, marketing, and advertising cost, ware-housing cost, optimal budget allocation, raw material and transportation costs