At your service: Part of KDMC's e-gov initiative, the Citizen Facilitation Centres redefined the local municipal corporation

Ever tried asking for the systems manager at the main gate of a bustling suburban municipal corporation? Ha! Well, we did, expecting the usual response, "Systems who?" from the gatekeepers at the Kalyan Dombivli Municipal Corporation (for those wondering where on earth that is, the twin towns of Kalyan and Dombivli are about 50 kms from South Mumbai). What we got in response instead was a crisp, "First floor, turn right, first cabin", leaving us wondering if we had asked for the Commissioner's office instead. KDMC's Systems Manager Subhash Patil has certainly made an impact, although our opening remarks about him being famous enough to be known by the gatekeepers provokes an embarrassed response. "Our Citizen Facilitation Centres (CFC) have drawn a lot of attention, that's all."

The CFCs lie at the core of KDMCs comprehensive it and Business Process Reengineering initiative. Ergo, it isn't altogether surprising that they are top of mind for Patil.

The Corporation started planning its citizen service initiative way back in 1999 and the IT system finally went live in May 2002. However, payoffs in terms of efficiency of service have largely been realised over the past year. Ask Shaheen Khan, a burkha-clad mother of two who is standing at one of the CFC counters, to obtain a birth certificate for her second born. "I have just filled out an application and should be getting the certificate in five minutes" she says confidently. She has reason to be. To ensure that the process actually goes through, KDMC has posted a Deputy Registrar at the CFC permanently to stamp the certificates.

Jayant Nagda, a grocer from Shahad, a village in KDMC's jurisdiction stands at the neighbouring counter. "There has been some error in my water bill and I've made a couple of trips here," he says. "The good thing is I have a complaint number; I have to visit just one counter where I learn of the status and am given a date when I should expect a decision on the complaint; earlier I would go about from floor to floor trying to locate the person handling my complaint."

Payment of water or property taxes or applications for either, licences to open shops, birth and death registration and certificates, building approvals, KDMC's CFCs render some 93 services in all to its 12 lakh citizens spread across 52 sq kms. KDMC currently boasts two CFCs and will open another four in the next few weeks. A typical CFC has a clutch of about 10 counters/help desks. Purely in terms of appearance, it could be mistaken for the customer service center of a private bank as KDMC employees briskly deal with the queues.

"We have decided not to have chairs in any of the CFCs so that people who come in are serviced without delay," says KDMC Commissioner Dhanraj Khamatkar as he walks about the CFC checking with citizens whether their needs are being met.

While the CFC is the most visible part of the overhaul at KDMC, a fairly complex process preceded the rollout of the new processes. The first was the computerisation of the corporation and its 11 divisions; then came an effort to transplant its 93 services online (all CFC services are available on the web); and another to streamline the corporation. This last rendered 50 per cent of KDMC's workforce of 4,500 redundant. Still, being a government enterprise, KDMC has not been able to knock anyone off its rolls although it has dispensed with the services of about 80-odd contract workers. The rest have been "redeployed in various functions at KDMC", according to Khamatkar.

As for the gains in terms of efficiency, consider the case of the KDMC Water Department. In the pre-CFC era, new applicants would approach 'licensed plumbers' who stocked the application forms and functioned as agents who would 'move the file' across no less than eight desks, needless to say greasing palms all along the way, before the water connection was granted.

Now the applicant fills in the application and hands in all the relevant documents at a CFC counter and is given a date by when the decision will be made. The entire process takes 15 working days. "The main benefit we wanted through this system was transparency, accountability and time-bound services; everything else is just incidental," says Subhash Patil.

The computerisation itself has helped the cause of transparency. The system automatically red flags a KDMC official holding up a file or decision. This has most execs on their toes. "I had better clear my pending decisions today," says Pramod Kulkarni, Executive Engineer, Water Supply, KDMC, eyeing the expanding red highlight on his terminal, "I was in the field yesterday and so there is an accumulation," he adds.

If Kulkarni doesn't clear the backlog, the pending decisions will be automatically 'escalated' to his boss, a move that ensures transparency and time-bound services. Ask Kulkarni about specific indicators of rising efficiency and the answer is revealing. "Well, before the system went live, we granted a maximum of 2,000 water connections in a year; this year, after the system was in place we granted 5,000."

The reason for the jump: elimination of the middlemen, a single counter for service, and overall process transparency that doesn't allow decisions to be held up.

So, what has all this done to the big C, corruption? KDMC Mayor Harishchandra Patil laughs sheepishly when posed the question. "How can we comment on that? Old habits die hard but I can tell you that it has gone down to a large extent."

KDMC has decided to capitalise on all the accolades that have come its way, the Skoch Challenger Award (2003-04) and a Government of India certificate for exemplary e-governance. Leveraging these, the corporation has sold the intellectual property rights for its system to Government of Maharashtra, which is looking at implementing it across 245 state-level councils and corporations. KDMC is also looking at peddling its system outside of Maharashtra possibly in partnership a company. "This will help us recover our own costs," says Subhash Patil (the corporation has spent around Rs 4 crore thus far). While on the subject of numbers, KDMC has seen a 20 per cent increase in revenue this year and expects to close the year with revenues of Rs 180 crore.

There is, however, one obvious question that can't escape unanswered: how did the staff at KDMC react to the new system knowing full well that it could ring the death knell for corruption?

"There was a lot of resistance since the system reduces the influence of officials but we simply had to overcome it by continuously communicating only one thing-what we are doing is for the betterment of services to the citizen," states Commissioner Khamatkar. It's that simple.

Foil-wrapped Success
How a defence lab's packaging research revolutionised the processed foods industry.

Dinner can be served in 180 seconds flat. All thanks to Kargil, the place that became a word after India and Pakistan went to war in 1999 over it. But before we get to the metaphorical connection between, well, guns and butter, let's focus on the food. For much of the 1980s and 1990s, when Indians spoke of instant food that could be made at home (in two minutes!), chances were, they were refering to noodles. Things have changed since then, and, as suitably captured by the photograph on this page, how! From Pau Bhaji to Madurai Kesari Halwa to Pongal (a rice and lentils mix that is a popular breakfast dish in Tamil Nadu) to Bisi Bele Hulianna (a tamarind-flavoured heavy rice-dish with more spices than anyone could care to remember that is a trademark of Karnataka) to Rajma to Palak Paneer to even the Masala Dosa, most vegetarian staples of note have been foil-pouched; the list of non-vegetarian ones isn't as impressive but that is changing. Behind this boom are companies such as MTR Foods which traces its origin to the hallowed Bangalore eatery of the same name, Tasty Bite Eatables, ITC, and Satnam Overseas, a basmati exporter which has made a logical diversification into the space. And behind the technology that made it possible to foil-pouch anything that is eaten is the Defence Food Research Laboratory (DFRL), part of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO). The lab developed the technology for soldiers serving in Kargil. Today, everyone from MTR to ITC to Satnam uses the same technology, complementing it with value-adds from Korea or Denmark or expertise developed in-house.

It isn't a particularly expensive technology. "If you are starting from scratch, you will probably need to spend Rs 60 lakh," explains Dr S.N. Sabapathy, Scientist and Project Co-ordinator, Food Engineering Department, DFRL. Of this, Rs 1.1 lakh is the technology transfer fee. DFRL can help companies with decisions related to the kind of foods that have longer shelf lives; the heating and cooling processes (typically, the food needs to be heated to a very high temperature and then cooled); and the packaging itself.

The technology was in place but there weren't too many takers. Then, Kargil happened. DFRL lacked the capacity to meet the sudden demand for ready-to-eat foods; it issued tenders asking for suppliers, the only condition being that the companies would have to use DFRL technology and meet certain specifications. The steady demand from the Army helped companies reach critical mass, and with unit costs going down (in the absence of volumes packaging costs could have been thrice as high as product cost, rendering the business unviable), the market boomed.

The companies have added tech-frills to the basic technology they sourced from DFRL. MTR, for instance, paid Rs 35,000 to DFRL as tech-transfer fee in 1997. Since then it has invested around Rs 1 crore. Some of this, explains the company's Chairman P. Sadananda Maiya, was to double the product's life from the existing one year to two years, and some of it was to launch newer products. The company now uses testing equipment from Denmark and process technology from Korea. And Pune-based Tasty Bite Eatables uses equipment from Japan. The core technology in both cases, however, is DFRL's. "The laboratory has developed indigenous technology at a cost that is a fraction of what it would cost elsewhere," says Rajesh Shah, General Manager, Commercial, Tasty Bite.

DFRL may not have made a financial killing from the technology, but it has improved the culinary lifestyle of India's armed forces. And it has engendered a processed foods boom.
-Sudarshana Banerjee