Open data refers to information that is freely available, accessible, and usable by the public without any restrictions. When integrated into e-governance, it has the potential to foster transparency, accountability, and citizen engagement.

Role of Open Data in promoting transparency and accountability in e-governance in India

• Transparency: Open Data supports public oversight of governments and helps reduce. corruption by enabling greater transparency. It also encourages greater citizen participation in government affairs and supports democratic societies by providing relevant information.
  • Open Data makes it easier to monitor government activities, such as tracking public budget expenditures and impacts.
• Public service improvement: Open Data gives citizens the raw materials they need to engage their governments and contribute to the improvement of public services in e-governance. For instance, citizens can use Open Data to contribute to public planning, or provide feedback to government ministries on service quality.
• Identify gaps: Open Data can empower citizens with the ability to alert governments to gaps in public datasets and to provide more accurate information. It allows citizens to assess the quality and efficiency of public services.
• Enhanced public scrutiny: Open data allows citizens to scrutinize government actions. For instance, open data on public spending can help citizens understand where their tax money is being utilized, fostering government accountability.

Challenges in ensuring quality and reliability of open data in e-governance

• Data accessibility issue: Currently, all government departments have websites where they disseminate information. However, these reports, data etc. are in the image format or PDFs, implying a host of accessibility issues. Also, much of the information found on the websites does not have any timestamps.
• Inadequate data infrastructure: The absence of a robust data infrastructure in India complicates the collation, storage, and dissemination of high-quality data.
  • The lack of standardized data formats, interoperability, and data management protocols often result in poor data consistency and reliability.
  • There are not enough adequate public safeguards provided through a comprehensive data protection framework.
• Digital divide: India’s digital divide, caused by disparities in internet access and digital literacy, hinders the collection and use of quality data. This leads to a lack of representation from marginalized communities, thereby compromising the comprehensiveness and inclusivity of open data.
• Data privacy and security: The tension between maintaining data privacy and promoting transparency poses another challenge. Ensuring anonymity and secure handling of sensitive data is crucial to prevent misuse and maintain public trust in e-governance initiatives.
• Quality Control and Verification: Open data initiatives often suffer from inadequate quality control and verification mechanisms, leading to discrepancies and inaccuracies. Without a robust mechanism to check data validity and timeliness, the reliability of open data is undermined.
• Elite capture of data: Study on the Bhumi Project in Karnataka shows that the digitisation of land records led to increased corruption and time taken for land transactions.
  • With centralization of land management and open access to land records, corruption is cumulative at various levels.
  • It is due to digital illiteracy among farmers and data access by big businesses establishing monopolies over public land acquisition through their lobbying powers.

A comprehensive approach involving policy reforms, technological upgrades, capacity building, addressing digital divide, public-private partnerships etc. can help address the challenges and unlock the benefits of open data for e-governance in India.

Empathy refers to the capacity to imagine oneself in someone else’s position and understand how he/she is feeling, what he/she is thinking and emotionally engaging with him/her. It is a key element of emotional intelligence, the link between self and others, because it is how individuals understand what others are experiencing, as if they were feeling it themselves. Studies show that empathic skill is highly correlated to improved relationships, more caregiving behaviour, less anxiety, greater cooperation, greater belonging and greater likeability.
Given the diverse description of empathy, there are many approaches for understanding it. However, there are three fundamental elements that underlie the concept of empathy, which include:

• Affective understanding: It describes the skill of knowing how others are feeling. Some researchers test for empathetic skill through the ‘Reading the Mind in the Eyes’ task, in which a subject looks at pictures of people’s eyes and tries to guess what they are feeling.
  • For instance, in a two-person interaction, someone has to effectively communicate how he/she feeling, and the other person has to correctly interpret these signals. To correctly interpret these signals, an understanding of non-verbal signals, like facial expressions, gestures, tone, and posture are often more reliable signals than the words a person uses.
• Emotional contagion: It describes the phenomenon where one starts to feel what people around him/her are feeling it is what makes one cry at sad movies, feel happier when surrounded by happy people, or wince when one sees other people get hurt.
  • For example, one displays emotional contagion by sharing the joy and celebrating a friend’s success in clearing the civils services examination.
• Cognitive perspective-taking: It is akin to stepping into the other person’s shoes and understanding his/her perspective of the situation or circumstances.
  • For example, a manager in a corporate organization practices cognitive perspective-taking by assigning tasks and responsibilities to members based on their workload and challenges faced by them.

Due to the advent of the digital age, it is the component of empathy that has seen one of the sharpest declines. The need of the hour is to motivate parents, schools, and communities to support programmes that help people of all ages enhance and maintain their ability to empathize with others. Researchers believe that people can choose to cultivate and prioritize empathy. People who spend more time with individuals different from themselves tend to adopt a more empathic outlook towards others. Also, studies find that reading novels and meditation can help foster the ability to understand others better.

A recent study identified 5.9 million ‘zero food’ children in India, who are infants aged 6 to 23 months and have not consumed significant calories in 24 hours. Two out of 10 infants in this age group had no solid or liquid food for a day. The percentage of zero food children increased from 17.2% in 2016 to 17.8% in 2021.

In this context, maternal nutrition seems important for the following reasons:

• Scientific evidence shows that the first 1000 days are key for proper nutritional development of every infant and mother.
• Women’s health and nutrition status, including weight, haemoglobin levels, age at conception, and micronutrient levels during periconceptional period, are crucial determinants for the child’s health.
  • Maternal undernutrition is estimated to cause 20% of childhood stunting in India, and 20-30% of infants experience under nutrition even during exclusive breastfeeding phase (first 6 months).
• Breastfeeding counselling during antenatal check-ups and frequent home visits have a significant impact with evidence indicating that infant daily weight gain increased by 30-35 grams, and underweight prevalence reduced by almost two-thirds.
• As per NFHS-5 survey, over 57% of women (15-49 years) suffer from anaemia, which has major consequences. India loses up to 1.18% of GDP annually due to iron deficiency.

Since under-nutrition and stunting that occurs in the first 24 months of life is largely irreversible, and contributes to an intergenerational cycle of poor growth and development, maternal nutrition needs to be made a priority in the following ways:

• Increased financial commitment: Mission Saksham Anganwadi and POSHAN 2.0 programme have seen only a marginal increase in budgetary allocation in 2022-23. Additionally, 32% of funds released under POSHAN Abhiyaan have not been utilised.
• Empowering frontline health workers (FHWs): FHWs are driving nutritional outcomes at the last mile. Thus, focus on their regular skilling, supportive supervision and motivation to deliver services would strengthen the nutrition system.
• Focus on girl child and adolescents: Adolescence is a crucial time to promote dietary diversity and correct nutritional deficiencies, particularly for girls, since their better health improves outcomes in future generations also.
  • Considering the 5% rise in anaemia among adolescent girls in NFHS-5 compared to NFHS-4, there is a need to adopt a gendered perspective in the National Nutrition Mission.
• Awareness creation: Awareness campaigns could involve discourses on care in the first 1000 days to educate mothers as awareness has a strong correlation with reducing gender-bias and improving girl-child health and nutrition.
  • This needs to be supplemented by strengthened nutrition counselling for adolescent girls, building a strong ecosystem in schools to promote healthy diets, and conducting community-based educational events.
• Addressing hidden hunger: Currently, 80% of adolescents suffer from micronutrient deficiencies, especially girls. Thus, addressing deficiencies of not just iron and folic acid, but also vitamin B12, vitamin D, and zinc is required.

Moreover, social movements for women’s rights and care during adolescence and pregnancy need a strong thrust for addressing the issue of preconception nutrition, maternal nutrition, and appropriate infant and child feeding to fulfil the dream of a ‘Kuposhan-Mukt Bharat’.