Even in today's world of e-governance, a lot of work related to district administration proceeds at a snail’s pace. In a bid to speed up the administrative process, Bidar district administration has come out with a novel concept called Spandana for the speedy redressal of grievances.

Spandana is the brain child of Deputy Commissioner Manish Moudgal. Since its implementation, Spandana has been very successful and, till date, about 682 out of 700 applications have been addressed within the stipulated time period, as informed by Lingaraj Tirlapur of the District Information Office and National Informatics Centre, Bidar branch.

So far, 20 services are identified by the district administration to be addressed through the Spandana desk. A few such services are gun license, caste certificate verification, domicile certificate, border area certificate, and so on.

The concept is so well designed and connected with the other departments of the district that once an application reaches Spandana to be heard, it is registered and forwarded to the department concerned. A date is also set for the completion of the work and the applicant is clearly told as to when he should visit the office again and collect the respective document.

Once the application is moved to the department concerned, it is the responsibility of that department to act on it immediately, failing which the person concerned will have to face action for dereliction of duty, added Mr Lingaraj.

With such stringent rules in place, the authorities concerned are all too eager to address people’s problems. This speedy redressal of problems has spared the effort of the common man too as he no longer has to run from pillar to post to get his work done, greasing as many palms as possible in the event.

The success rate of the initiative and the positive response it has received from people has encouraged the district administration to include as many services under the Spandana umbrella as possible.

Plans are also afoot to make the entire process transparent, so that applicants can trace the progress of their work through the internet.

The project has received a lot of acclaim from other districts as well. In fact, enquiries have been pouring in to get the know-how of the implementation of the project. If only such a project was implemented in all the districts of the State...