Background
Janadhar is the e-Governance initiative of the government of Uttarakhand. Started in March 2005, the initiative was taken up with funding from the UNDP and technical guidance by the Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee (IIT). The main objective of the project was to deliver information of public interest and services related to various government department at the doorsteps of the citizen of Uttarakhand by setting up e-Governance in the state using ICTs as the vehicle.
Janadhar is being implemented through Community Multimedia Centres. These Centres are known as Soochna Kutirs that are run on the entrepreneurship model. The Soochna Kutir provides needed information to the citizens through a portal- UTTARA(www.uttara.in) specifically developed by IIT. The portal contains a wide variety of information of the state in a centralised databank in Hindi language. ‘Soochna kutirs’ are set up at different places in Nainital district, specialy at remote and sparsely populated locations. They are owned and operated by the local computer literate youth who are called soochna kutir sanchalaks.
The pro-poor IT initiatives in Uttaran-chal have completed one year with liberal technical support from the Department of Electrical Engineering of Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee. The UNDP-funded the project with INR 46.1 million.
