State Government's endeavor and commitment has established primary and upper primary schools within walking distance.The students, particularly from economically and socially disadvantaged background and especially Girls many a times had to drop out from high Schools owing to the distance. To ensure that all students graduating from upper primary schools (8th Standard) could continue in the high schools, Government of West Bengal announced the flagship scheme titled "Sabooj Sathi" in 2015-16 for providing bi-cycles to all students of Class IX to XII in Government Schools withmain objective to increase access to high schools.

The scheme was also expected to increase retention, inculcate sense of confidence amongst the girl students and promote environment-friendly and healthy means of transportation, aligned to four Sustainable Goals of agenda 2030- SDG3: Good Health & Well-being, SDG4: Quality Education, SDG5: Gender Equality and SDG13: Climate actions.

Sabooj Sathi Online 3.0 (www.wbsaboojsathi.gov.in) is the e-Governance mechanism which ensures end-to-end ICT enabled management of entire processes involved in implementation.

Hon’ble Chief Minister of West Bengal Mamata Banerjee flagged off the Sabooj- Sathi on 29th October 2015. Around 8.00 million students have already received bi-cycles so far, another 0.4 million will receive bicycles by December 2019. The scheme is continuing and the students are receiving bi-cycles immediately on admission in class IX.

During the last four years of implementation, enrolment in high school increased by 12%; among the students appearing in Board exams girl students are more than the boys. The bi-cycles increased general mobility of the students, particularly the girls. These bi-cycles are also being used for various domestic and social purposes. According to Pratichi (India) Trust, an organisation founded by Nobel Laureate Dr. Amartya Sen, these bi-cycles are breaking many boundaries.

https://wbsaboojsathi.gov.in

• State of West Bengal, India

• Youth
• Women
• Indigenous and nomadic peoples
• The poor
• Remote and rural communities
• Students

In this E-governance mechanism all National Master Directories are used. The system was developed using open source technology. Cloud based server ensures resources availability dynamically as per user requirement. The stakeholder’s logins were password protected, latest encryption algorithm (md5) has been used for password authentication with an additional security of “dynamic salt”. The user sessions are well secured and protected from any external session hacking and forgery.

The Government of West Bengal and Government of India are implementing different schemes of individual benefits in different sectors. In such schemes direct benefit transfer is impressed upon so that the target group derives maximum benefit. In all such cases, this can be used as a replicable model since it ensures accuracy; transparency, efficiency and cost minimization which are crucial components of good governance.

The e-Governance mechanism for Sabooj-Sathi was developed by the State Government with technical assistance of National Informatics Centre (NIC) the IT major in the Government sector. IT backbone of the Government was utilized and the ICT platform was managed through various teams of NIC. The software development, Cloud, and Operation Support teams worked in tandem to provide seamless services.
It has used the existing Cloud Platform as “Service” mode. The e-Procurement platform is used for e-Tendering, Mail & SMS Gateways of NIC are used for providing various e-Services & m Services. The entire operation was carried out using existing Government manpower, machinery and infrastructure. No operation of the Scheme was outsourced. It is pertinent to mention that overall operational cost was even below 0.5% of the Project cost. The e-Gov mechanism is highly sustainable having dependency only on Government resources which are always available.

The distinctiveness of the programme draws heavily on three aspects which are aligned to WSIS preamble and commitment - development, promotion and use of technology for inclusiveness, holistic development, citizen-centric services, capacity building, transparency and accuracy: A. Equity and inclusiveness: Driven by a moral commitment of holistic development, which adds primacy to provide all children equal opportunity of education, the Sabooj Sathi programme, is the first of its kind in the country to bring all high school-going students into the fold of the programme. Secondly, owing to the prevailing geo-social divisions, opportunities are also distributed unevenly. The poor and disadvantaged, most of whom live in the hinterlands have very limited opportunities of achieving competitive educational quality. In other words they are pitched in an uneven competition with the traditionally privileged, having facilities of good schooling, supplementary tutorials, libraries, and various other sources. The bicycles at the disposal of the disadvantaged students has wielded a neutralizing effect by allowing them comparatively easy access to the facilities required for the competition. B. Complete transparency: Technology has been used in such a way that any student can check the fully computerized data of distribution of the bicycles. Furthermore, the entire procedure of procurement of the bicycles is fully online and transparent. By this the programme has insulated itself from the charges of corruption or unethical practices. C. Highly efficient delivery: The implementation has been developed in such a decentralized manner that the bicycles in tandem reach the beneficiaries in all the districts remarkably quickly.