Original English text
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E-gram: The World Village
(Timba Village, Umrala Taluka, Bhavnagar District.
January 18, 2004)
O
nce the American President Bill Clinton visited a village
near Jaipur during his trip to India. He was amazed seeing
veiled women using computers to manage their dairies. He was
surprised with the level of development.
Though I roam across Gujarat and visit numerous villages,
I was as surprised as Clinton was, when I saw a signboard for a
beauty parlour in a village called Timbi. It was an example of
modern lifestyle. The State Government is also trying to spread
modernism to every village, albeit not of the powder-lipstickhair
dye variety, but the modernism of scientific advancements. We
want villagers to live their lives in the same way that the rest of
world does.
The word ‘e-governance,’ is not new to Kathiyawad. In
western Gujarat, e is a pronoun used instead of him, her or it.
We say that e had come, e had gone, e was eating and e was
sitting. At every step we use this ‘e’. Now, there is a new
connotation to this ‘e’. What was previously an endearing
pronoun is now being used by science. E-gram has come from
e-governance. Our slogan is: ‘E-gram Vishwa-gram’. We want
to create facilities wherein you can talk to your son in Mumbai
from the panchayat office computer. Any facility which is
available in the world should be available in Timbi village, and
gradually to every village in Gujarat. The computer is not a toy;
it has the potential to become your life-partner in the coming
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