KOCHI: A unique project by St Teresa’s College is continuously garnering laurels and winning accolades one after the other. The e-Jaalakam project, after pocketing the State Government Award for Innovation in Public Services a few months ago, has been selected for the National Award for ‘Outstanding e-governance Initiative by Academic and Research Institutions’ instituted by the Central Government now. ‘e-Jaalakam’ is a 30-page handbook of compiled data, perhaps for the very first time in India, on how to access essential e-governance services offered by the Kerala Government online, which a woman would need during her lifetime. The data, arranged in a life cycle pattern from birth to death that took six months to be compiled was released on September 10, 2013 by then Union Minister Kapil Sibal. It became an instant hit in schools and households in the city and was later introduced across Kerala.
“We just wanted to make people know, especially women, on how to access basic government services,” says Nirmala Padamanabhan, head of the Economics Department who along with a team of students scripted the success story and lent the project the idea and form.
Nirmala also expressed gratitude to ‘The New Indian Express’ which was one of the first to report on the significance of the project. The report published in ‘Express’ on December 1, 2013 caught the attention of the state and national agencies and the ‘e-Jaalakam’ team was invited to make project presentations across India, she said.