Two weeks since its launch, the Delhi government’s doorstep delivery of services scheme has received over 20,000 requests. From the 150 call centre employees collating information to the 300 mobile sahayaks making house visits, The Indian Express tracks the ambitious project.
Back in the summer of 2000, when Rohini resident Manish Kumar had to get a caste certificate made for his son, he headed to the nearest sub-divisional magistrate’s office. One visit led to another, and then some more. Eighteen years later, as the caste certificate of his granddaughter was getting made, Kumar enjoyed his siesta, occasionally tossing and turning. In the same room, his son Amit neatly laid out a sheaf of documents on a wooden table, covered with a floral-printed sheet.
Sitting across the table was a young man wearing a t-shirt, embossed with logos of the Delhi government and VFS Global. The man, Nikhil Kumar Ved (28), scrutinised the documents and photographed them on his tablet. By the time Kumar’s granddaughter barged in, shaking her nana out of his slumber, Nikhil had finished uploading the documents on the Delhi government’s e-district portal. Amit paid him Rs 50 and instantly received a confirmation message on his mobile. His daughter Tanya Kashyap’s certificate is expected to be delivered within a month.
Nikhil, one of the 300 all-male foot soldiers of the ambitious scheme under which people can dial 1076 and submit an application to get home delivery of 40 public services — including caste, income, marriage registration and mutation certificates, and driving licence — set off for his next assignment on his two-wheeler.
Idea and execution
“You must have seen that ad featuring Amitabh Bachchan, where he talks about the bank coming to our homes instead of the other way round?” Gopal Mohan, advisor to Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, asked. Mohan, considered the “brain” behind the scheme according to AAP, said doorstep delivery of services has the potential to radically alter the prevailing governance paradigm.
“Despite 35 of the 40 services being online, up to 25 lakh people used to visit government offices annually for the same. Each transaction took around four visits. Cyber cafes were also minting money as people flocked to them for filling forms and uploading documents. And it goes without saying that touts flourished. The CM wanted to shake up the system. I was his anti-corruption advisor then,” he said.
The day Mohan floated the idea of doorstep delivery, Kejriwal called a meeting within three hours to draw a road map for its execution. Subsequently, the Department of Administrative Reforms undertook a survey trying to ascertain the public demand for such an initiative. Mohan said that “95% of the responses were positive”.
The Delhi Cabinet cleared the scheme on November 16, 2017, and announced that it will be rolled out within two-three months.
Then came some resistance.
On December 26, 2017, Lt-Governor Anil Baijal’s office issued a statement: “The proposal has implications for safety and security of women and senior citizens, possibility of corruption, bad behaviour, breach of privacy, loss of documents, etc, and adds unnecessary expenditure for the government and the people… the unnecessary road trips taken by the service delivery persons would add to air pollution.”
A month later, though, Baijal approved the scheme. The government estimates that if around 25 lakh deliveries are made annually, it will cost Rs 12 crore, Mohan said.
Agencies involved
In July, the Delhi government’s administrative reforms department announced that private firm VFS Global Services — known so far for processing visa applications for 60 governments in around 139 countries — has been roped in for three years to execute the scheme after a bidding process.
Without any global parallel, implementing the concept in a city as large as Delhi was a challenge. That’s where VFS’s Identity Management & Citizen Services (ICS) wing came into the picture. Debkumar Bandopadhyay, head of business, ICS, South Asia (VFS Global), said the company runs facilitation centres in Mumbai and Pune, where people are assisted in availing civic services like birth and death certificates, shop licences, or paying property tax and water bills.
The doorstep scheme goes a step further. “As the service implementation partner, VFS Global is responsible for providing the end-to-end IT solution for the service, and managing the entire manpower of ‘Mobile Sahayaks’ who are delivering this service at the front-end to citizens. The call centre staffing and operations are managed entirely by the Delhi government. The training of the call centre staff (about the process) is managed by VFS Global,” he said.
Mohan said the Noida-based call centre was hired by the Delhi government. VFS, in turn, is utilising the services of another firm, Matrix Processing House, in managing the sahayaks.