are generated every day.

Revolutionizing the Indian Judiciary Sector

NIC is the single organization that consults and interacts with government at different tiers throughout India, from central government to state government to district administration. It is also the only organization that works across the three organs of state, namely the executive, judiciary, and legislative branches. The eCourts4 ICT system is helping transform the Indian judiciary by enabling courts to enhance judicial productivity and provide citizen-centric services. The system, as illustrated in Figure 3, ensures service delivery and promotes transparency to all stakeholders, including litigants, advocates, judicial officials, and police officers. The eCourts project is implemented in more than

3,091 court complexes—the last mile courts scattered across the country. With over 627 districts online, data of a staggering 116. 3 million cases and 91. 5 million judgments and orders are available online.

The National Judicial
ciaries. Various programs
of the government that
provide financial benefits or
distribute subsidies to citi-
zens have been integrated
with PFMS. These programs
cover social pensions, schol-
arships, employment guar-
antees, building of houses
and toilets, and healthcare
to name a few. In the past,
funds traveled across vari-
ous institutions or levels of
government before reaching
the beneficiary. With DBT,
funds are now directly trans-
ferred into the beneficiary’s
bank account.

Electronic transfers have made a huge social impact as they ensure the timely transfer of benefits to citizens, bringing efficiency, effectiveness, transparency, and accountability to the system. Further, the government is able to ensure accurate targeting of beneficiaries and most importantly overcome other nuances of multi-layer transfer of funds, thereby eliminating pilfering and curbing leakage and duplication. DBT is further strengthened by the introduction of Aadhaar-based payments. Aadhaar is a 12-digit random number issued to residents of India by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI). 8

The Aadhaar-enabled Public
Distribution System has
helped ensure the availabili-
ty of food to over 330 million
poor people at affordable
prices, thus enhancing their
food security (see the article
by Raghavan et al. on p. 76).

PFMS together with DBT has brought about phenomenal change in terms of social impact. State governments recognized this and are also leveraging the system to transfer benefits under their programs. An estimated 100 billionINR (US$1.43 billion) is the annual gain to NIC from the PFMS platform. Integration with treasuries and the linkage of Aadhaar and DBT has helped government save close to 830 billionINR (US$11.5 billion).

The Goods and Services
Tax (GST) is an indirect
tax levied on the supply of
goods and services. It is a
multistage, destination-
based tax that is levied, for
example, at every step as a
product moves from materi-
als through production then
distribution and sale. When
GST was introduced in July
2017, the e-Way Bill3 was
also introduced to allow a
common permit for move-
ment of goods throughout
the country. e-Way Bill is an
electronic document that
includes details regarding
the movement of goods; it
must be carried by trans-
porters for any consignment
over a certain threshold.
The e-Way Bill mechanism
ensures goods are trans-
ported in accordance with
GST laws and that taxes are
paid for the supply of goods
(see Figure 2).
Through the e-Way Bill,
taxpayers, transporters, and
tax officers all rely on a uni-
fied system. The implemen-
tation of the e-Way Bill has
helped boost GST revenue
collections, abolished
post-dated checks, and
increased tax compliance.
There has been significant
improvement in the ease of
doing business due to the
self-declaration and report-
ing enabled by e-Way Bills,
which also save time in the
transport of goods. Approxi-
mately 700,000 e-Way Bills
Electronic transfers have made
a huge social impact as they ensure
the timely transfer of benefits
to citizens, bringing efficiency,
effectiveness, transparency, and
accountability to the system.

Figure 2. e-WAY Bill.