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.