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 What use can a computer be to someone earning less than a dollar a day? What use is information technology in a country that has a low penetration of telephony and computers, where even electricity is not assured, and where millions are still illiterate? These are standard questions. But diverse social and infrastructural needs must be addressed simultaneously to ensure a nation's future growth and prosperity. Already, several projects in the slums of New Delhi, in the fishermens' communities of Pondicherry and in the villages of Madhya Pradesh have demonstrated that information technology can and does positively impact the lives and livelihoods of the poor and semi-literate.
Information sectors in India / The feasibility of technology-driven social change in South Asia / Infrastructure bottlenecks / Focus areas of development ICTs / Impact on rural economies / Future digital development "… There is an urgent need to examine the catalytic and enabling role to be played by the government in ensuring that IT provides new opportunities for the 40 per cent of the people who are living below the poverty line, so that they may move above it." -- Government of India Working Group on Information Technology for Masses "Let IT remain the staple for academics and professionals. What will it mean for people in the thousands of miserable villages in this misguided nation? Please, please come out of your ivory tower and see the plight of Indian villages, sans water, sanitation and decent living. Photographs of farmers posing with PCs and fishermen analysing computer printouts may befit a TV ad, but what are you trying to sell?" -- Letter to the editor of a leading newsmagazine, responding to a feature on the digital empowerment of rural India. The idea that the Internet and related technologies might have an important role in aiding developmental efforts has captured a central place in international policy debates. In the year 2000, statements affirming the need to close the so-called 'digital divide' between social groups with and without access to the Internet were made through several UN agencies, at the G-8 summit, and at meetings of development organisations around the world. Many new websites now address this topic, and list server hosts have moderated endless rounds of debate between digital enthusiasts and digital sceptics. The idea of digitally-oriented development is as powerful and seductive as the technology upon which it is based. No single technological revolution has changed the lives of current generations in the way the Internet has. No cultural-technological innovation since television has had this kind of impact on the world's economy, its politics or its globalising popular cultures, or even its perceptions of distance and time. The promise of digital development is that it might have the same reach as the original Internet boom of the mid-1990s, only this time those who had missed out on earlier waves of technology might be able to 'leapfrog' over their more developed competitors. The greatest obstacles to rural development -- large distances and inadequate infrastructure -- might be obviated by instant access to virtual institutions that provide banking, education, healthcare, neonatal information, agricultural advice, and so forth. But sceptics also have good reason. Bill Gates' now infamous dictum, that a computer cannot benefit someone earning less than a dollar a day, remains a serious challenge to any attempt to ameliorate social and economic disparities through Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs). In South Asia, where most rural populations lack running water and sanitation systems, where electricity is still a scarce and intermittent resource, where roads are poor and education a luxury, these technologies really are, on first impressions, far removed from the everyday concerns of the poorest sections of the countryside. This article critically examines the problems and possibilities of digital development in order to reveal the larger impact that ICTs might have on rural economies and societies. EMERGENCE OF THE INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION SECTORS IN INDIA As is well-known by now, India's IT sector took-off in the early-1980s with the establishment of off-shore development centres. Relatively cheap English-speaking engineering and technical talent were employed at centres in Bangalore and Chennai, then Hyderabad, and now in the suburbs of New Delhi (NOIDA). Since the liberalisation of the Indian economy in the early-1990s, the Indian government has relentlessly promoted the IT sector as the harbinger of the nation's economic aspirations. Even though the country possesses only 3.7 million personal computers (PCs), Pentium I or superior, it houses the largest number of software professionals outside California, whose efforts might result in the export of software worth $ 8 billion next year, much of it to the United States. As of 2001, the initial euphoria surrounding India's successful software export industry has given way to a new introspection into the reasons why these intellectual and human resources have not been applied towards the development of India's public and private institutions, education systems, and infrastructure. These reasons are not hard to find: (i) the Indian software industry solves small components of larger problems for international clients; (ii) this work is usually protected by confidentiality agreements; (iii) many Indian software professionals and companies compete for the same international contracts; (iv) the opportunity costs of working for Indian versus international clients is very high; and finally (v) low teledensity, computer usage, literacy, the inadequacies of regional language software interfaces, and other obstacles of India's developing infrastructure, coupled with regulatory hurdles, inhibit such ventures. However, none of this prevented Andhra Pradesh's Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu from crafting an aggressive state policy to attract IT-oriented investments, while also claiming that this sector served the larger public interest. The constraints of electoral politics in India's largely rural society meant that economically liberal and technologically sophisticated leaders could not afford to leave themselves open to the charge of promoting IT at the expense of rural development. Even as he invited Microsoft to set up a software centre in Hyderabad's technology park, Naidu also installed a highly sophisticated network of communications systems in his home constituency of Kuppam, as a model for other regions of the state. Beginning in 1996, he was the first Indian politician to advocate e-governance to make the state machinery more responsive and sensitive to citizen needs at the district and panchayat level. By 2000, these policies were being emulated in the 'IT for the Masses' policy statement by the national government's task force on IT, as well as neighbouring Karnataka state's 'IT for the Common Man' vision statement. Naidu's approach represented a solution to the political dilemma of promoting high-tech alongside rural empowerment in a manner that long anticipated recent international debates on the 'digital divide.' Despite the on-going deregulation of India's telecommunications sector, its national teledensity (telephones/100 persons) has improved very slowly, from .06 in 1990, to almost 3 today (compare with China at almost 10). Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), and Wireless-in-Local-Loop (WiLL or WLL) technologies, however, now appear set to offer a cheaper and lighter form of telecom infrastructure, that should improve rural access exponentially. With some important exceptions, the export-oriented software industry has yet to take full advantage of the opportunities presented by the newly networking home market. The still-unexplored synergies between the infotech and telecom sectors represent the best opportunity for an ICT-driven social and economic revolution in rural communities across India. THE FEASIBILITY OF TECHNOLOGY-DRIVEN SOCIAL CHANGE IN SOUTH ASIA The problems and potential for ICT-driven projects in South Asia are truly enormous. This region hosts an extraordinary concentration of new technology-driven companies, tech-savvy administrators and managers, a political class suddenly aware of the possibilities of IT, social entrepreneurs and NGO institutional structures that could all come together to bring the benefits of networked technologies to rural and disprivileged groups. And yet, we must face the frustrations of intermittent, inconsistent electrical power, archaic, scarce and unreliable telephony and net-connectivity, neo-feudal politico-business consortia that hinder or hijack development efforts, deeply ingrained ideologies of caste-hierarchy, gender inequality, and religious-communal difference, as well as significant deprivations of basic human needs. These limitations cast grave doubts over the optimism of those attempting to use emerging technologies for development. A common objection to IT initiatives suggests that they are premature, or that they put the cart before the horse, in as much as electricity, telephony and connectivity are highly erratic and variable in many parts of South Asia. Moreover, more basic kinds of infrastructure including schools, healthcare centres, balanced nutrition, gender equity, employment and transportation are lacking. Why should we consider this expensive and elitist form of infrastructure, when more fundamental developmental needs remain unmet? This criticism assumes that there is a standard sequence and hierarchy for development: first a society must adequately manage its nutrition and healthcare, then it must address education and achieve total literacy, then it must provide electricity to all its villages, then it must install telephones, and so forth. In fact, post-colonial societies in Asia, Africa and the Americas have repeatedly shown that they can be successful in one or another dimension of human, social, and economic achievement, without necessarily replicating a normative European trajectory of industrial development. Diverse social and infrastructural needs must be addressed more or less simultaneously to ensure a nation's future growth and prosperity. It is naive to imagine that electricity, telephony and connectivity in rural areas will improve if the demand for these resources does not grow. In addition, information networks can become conduits that allow money to flow into the village through new kinds of non-discriminatory, clean and relatively unoppressive industries. Information and communications technologies can also compensate for other kinds of infrastructure limitations. For example, if online work, trade, or payment were to become available for members of a village community, the poor quality of roads to and from that village becomes less of an obstacle to earnings and employment. Finally, and most importantly, if capital were to become more readily available within a village community through such networked systems, it would then be in a better position to finance the basic infrastructure that it needs, including roads, dispensaries, water and sanitation systems. It may be correct to say that PCs remain expensive, fragile, quickly obsolete, English-centric, complex and difficult to master, and therefore almost entirely elitist in their scope and operation. Nevertheless, networks of human-mediated computer kiosks, shared among multiple users of a rural community, could in fact prove to be the most inexpensive and inclusive form of rural infrastructure possible today. Although this kind of a public information centre would require a hardware-cum-software-cum-connectivity investment of about Rs. 40,000 (approximately US$ 850), this resource could then serve between 500 and 5,000 citizen-consumers. The technology's cost per capita is therefore minuscule. The M S Swaminathan experiment in Pondicherry, and the NIIT experiment in New Delhi's slums have demonstrated that even those with limited education, literacy or English competency can quickly master Windows-based point-and-click graphical user interfaces. Moreover, the Gyandoot Project in Dhar, Madhya Pradesh, has demonstrated that rural citizen-consumers are quite willing to pay for the services of such centres, so long as these transactions make a direct and real impact on their life and livelihood. Rural information networks can allow knowledge, services, money and certain kinds of products to flow more easily from node to node across long distances. Each village node can also serve as a range of virtual institutions, such as a community centre, a bank, a medical centre, a government information centre, a matrimonial office, a public telephone booth, a public library and educational resource centre, all at a fraction of the cost of corresponding 'real' institutions. By making these resources available in villages, information centres can help ease the asymmetries between urban and rural environments. OVERCOMING INFRASTRUCTURAL BOTTLENECKS The three basic infrastructural requirements for rural ICT initiatives are, of course, (i) Electricity, (ii) Telephony (or its equivalent), and (iii) Network Connectivity. The problems associated with these inputs must be recognised as inherent features of the landscape, and tackled as an integral part of the implementation process. (i) Electricity: In many rural areas, electric supply may be restricted to only six or eight hours a day. When electrical power is available, its voltage and frequency may vary far outside the acceptable limits of most hardware. Finally, there is often no earthing provided. For most rural ICT projects, battery back-ups and Universal Power Supply (UPS) are mandatory. In some cases, multiple tractor batteries have been connected in parallel to create a mammoth UPS that can withstand day-long powercuts. In addition to these battery systems, circuit breakers and voltage stabilisers are also necessary. Several agencies have had to create their own earthing pits outside their village centres, by digging shallow trenches, filling them with salt, and making sure they are watered on dry sunny days. Constant maintenance of this privately constructed earthing pit is necessary to ensure that the equipment within is protected from power surges. (ii) Telephony: Landline telephones are still not available in many villages in South Asia. Where they do exist they may be down for weeks at a time, and there may be other kinds of incompatibilities, which prevent data transfer. Several different kinds of short-term solutions are possible to circumvent low teledensity in rural areas. A project in Pondicherry has implemented a wireless system for relatively slow data transfer using fax protocols. Short bursts of these wireless transmissions update the off-line content available at the village centre. The various educational enterprises of Zee Interactive Learning Systems rely on Very Small Aperture Terminals (V-SATs), which connect directly to their own communications satellites. The Gyandoot project in Dhar, on the other hand, initially chose its target villages on the basis of their telephone access, and their location relative to proposed Optical-Fibre Cable (OFC) routes. Although it is possible to design rural ICT projects on the assumption that basic telephony will not be available, there is another, better, approach: Rural ICT projects may be used to test and design new kinds of telecommunications infrastructure, including, for example, Wireless-in-Local-Loop (WLL or WiLL) technologies, which offer a cheaper, lighter, and more intelligent type of network. WLL systems allow simultaneous data and voice telephony across long distances (wireless), thanks to a local network of cables provided and maintained by a rural entrepreneur (local loop). Important applications of this technology have been developed at the TeNet Group at IIT-Chennai. (iii) Connectivity: Internet subscription is not always available in rural and underdeveloped sections of South Asia. Even when it should, in theory, be available, long distance calls to nearby towns may be required in order to achieve true connectivity. Poor telephony ensures that modem speeds are often restricted to 28.8 kbps or slower. The wireless-fax system in Pondicherry runs even slower, at under 14.4 kbps. While WLL technologies will soon be able to provide simultaneous and continuous voice and data connectivity in local areas, computer kiosks in villages can also be designed so as to require only limited connectivity. Projects in Pondicherry and Warana, for example, allow users to access offline content, which is updated several times a day in brief bursts of data. In this way, a range of services may be continuously provided, notwithstanding narrow bandwidth, slow transfer rates, and intermittent connectivity. FOCUS AREAS FOR DEVELOPMENTAL ICTS Technology & infrastructure developments The three major hurdles to the use of Information Technology in rural areas of South Asia have been: (i) inappropriate software (ii) expensive hardware and (iii) weak infrastructure. In each of these fields, however, the landscape is slowly changing. The Centre for the Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC; www.cdacindia.com) has been working on Indian language fonts and software for over a decade. Most State-sponsored IT initiatives, as well as many rural ICT projects, now use their fontographic standards, if not their text-processing software. In another significant development, a machine language translation project based in Hyderabad called Anusaraka www.iiit.net/anu/anu_home.html) promises to allow Indian language users translation between various Indian languages, as well as access to English language resources on the Web. As even occasional computer users will be aware, the cost of hardware is continuously falling, such that computers that were state-of-the-art three or four years ago, are now available for a fraction of their original cost. Those computers -- or, indeed, new computers configured just like them -- are still good for basic text-processing, email, and browsing functions. In addition, however, new entrants into the basic computing market such as the Simputer (www.simputer.org) and the iStation (www.inablers.net) have been specifically designed for a mass market, including both urban and rural users. As mentioned above, Wireless-in-Local-Loop and related technologies have emerged as a cheaper, smarter form of telecom infrastructure, in comparison with traditional wire telephony. The TeNet Group (tenet.res.in) at the IIT-Madras has been at the frontline in developing applications and incubating companies that seek to develop telecommunications infrastructure in rural areas. Rural connectivity Several projects are now attempting to provide information and services to rural citizen-consumers via human-mediated intranet systems. These include the Village Knowledge Centres Project (www.mssrf.org) in Pondicherry, the Warana Wired Village Project (warana.nic.in) in and around Warana, and the Gyandoot Project (www.gyandoot.net) in Dhar. Important lessons remain to be learnt from each of these initiatives, concerning, for example: the appropriate role of NGOs, the private sector and the State, the financial and entrepreneurial models which can make such infrastructure development feasible, and the socio-economic impact of such projects upon the village communities in which they are located. The Sustainable Access in Rural India (SARI; tenet.res.in/rural/sari1.html) project in Madurai is a newer, more ambitious project in the planning stages. It seeks to wire up all 1,000 villages in the district using WLL technology developed out of IIT-Chennai. Tarahaat.com (www.tarahaat.com) is a new company seeking to build branded computer kiosks in relatively prosperous rural areas. The NIIT 'Hole-in-the-wall' and Kiosks Project (www.niit.com) consists of unattended point-and-click devices in urban slums. E-governance Some of the rural ICT projects mentioned above offer limited e-governance functions or services. With the exception of the Gyandoot project in Dhar, however, these remain very rudimentary, and may be restricted to printing out standard government forms. Several state governments have announced high-profile projects to put their land records online, including Karnataka (Bhoomi; revdept.kar.nic.in) and Andhra Pradesh (CARD; www.ap-it.com). The computerisation of land records is an extremely labour- and time-intensive process, the rewards of which are very long in the coming. Computerised land records are available on an experimental basis for a number of districts in these two states. Wired Microcredit / Microfinance / Micro-ecommerce There is no doubt that the computerisation of microfinance and microcredit records could result in savings of time and effort, and generally facilitate the maintenance of these accounts. However, the real transformative effect of this technology will be seen only once microcredit accounts come to be used for online or distance transactions amongst or within village communities at the grassroots. This will allow rural entrepreneurs and craftspersons the same savings of time, travel and effort that the Internet has afforded individuals and institutions in the industrialised world. These possibilities have not yet been charted in any rural ICT project. The Swayam Krishi Sangam (SKS; www.sksindia.org) project is recording transactional information on optical ID cards for microfinance, as well as for education and healthcare. Dr Mohammed Yunus, founder of the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh, has notably called for the establishment of an 'International Centre for Information Technology for the Elimination of Global Poverty'. A related agency, Grameen Telecom (www.grameen.org) has attempted to provide mobile telephones to rural consumers through existing MFI / MCI networks. IT-enabled artisanal industries In addition to facilitating the flow of capital across rural areas, online financial and commercial systems could also provide the capital and infrastructure for new kinds of IT-enabled industries, in fields such as regional language data entry, Computer-Aided Design (CAD), and Computer-Aided Manufacture (CAM). These applications of information technology, of course, will only become possible on a large-scale once rural ICT projects are better established in the landscape. The Asian Centre for Entrepreneurial Initiatives (AsCent; www.toeholdindia.com) has made an early attempt to introduce CAD / CAM technologies to artisans in north Karnataka, alongside online advertising and sales. Computer training and IT-enabled education So far, computer-training and IT-enabled education has been distressingly conflated and confused in the understanding of administrators and policymakers as well as the general public. Most commercial providers, moreover, are involved in both sectors, and aggressively cross-market themselves. Pratham (www.pratham.org), Akshara and the e-Learning Centre together represent the most important attempt to create IT-enabled learning software for underprivileged children. In Karnataka, 1,000 rural schools are to be computerised by private operators, including NIIT (www.niit.com). School Net India (www.schoolnetindia.org), the educational infrastructure wing of Infrastructure Leasing and Financial Services (IL&FS), is building multilingual educational content online, as well as CD-ROMs for use by teachers as a supplement to classroom education. eGurucool (www.egurucool.com) and Zee Interactive Learning Systems (www.zils.com) represent commercial attempts to provide online educational resources coupled with products ranging from in-class instruction to interactive CD-ROMs, to cable-TV programmes. These products are predominantly in English, although regional language translations are sometimes possible. Tele-health Computer-based and online expert diagnostic systems could enhance the quality of healthcare and diagnosis available to rural citizen-consumers in many remote parts of South Asia. The real benefits of these systems, however, may be the collation of more comprehensive public health information. In addition to tracking the case study of an individual patient, therefore, such systems could also collect data on public health in a region, for further epidemiological study. The George Foundation (www.tgfworld.org) has experimented with an expert diagnostic programme on a freestanding PC in Dharmapuri district of Tamil Nadu. Other initiatives by privately-run hospitals are in the planning stages. Research, advocacy and consultancy resources Non-profit industry groups such as India's National Association of Software and Service Companies (www.nasscom.org) have served as advocates against policy regulations that might inhibit the growth of bandwidth and connectivity in South Asia. Their website hosts important statistics and information on India's Internet economy, as does Inomy.Com (www.inomy.com). BytesForAll.Org (www.bytesforall.org) is a voluntary online community that shares information with other Web-oriented advocates across South Asia. The NGO Voices serves as a research and capacity-building resource for community radio, and is beginning to experiment with the interface between Internet and radio. Mahiti.Org (www.mahiti.org), a branch of the NGO Samuha, provides IT-services for NGOs in the Bangalore area. The Centre for Knowledge Societies - Bangalore (www.cks-b.org) has collected socio-economic data on many of the projects mentioned above, and provides research and consultancy services for governments, the private sector, and international development organisations. POTENTIAL IMPACT ON RURAL ECONOMIES AND SOCIETIES Up until this point, ICTs have been largely understood as a new kind of media or telecommunications infrastructure, which allows the dissemination of information, commands, or even education across distances. Development ICT projects, therefore, have attempted to assist rural communities by providing them news, information, advice and knowledge which has hitherto been inaccessible to them. These kinds of inputs have allowed rural citizen-consumers to make more informed economic decisions: farmers can decide whether to sell their produce locally or transport it themselves further afield; landless labourers have been able to negotiate their daily wage more effectively; tractors, threshers, old television sets, cattle and motorcycles have all been traded across towns and villages thanks to online advertisements. However, rural ICT projects are yet to effectively position themselves as a vehicle for online commerce and a mechanism of employment for village communities. The first step in this direction would be to put rural Self-Help Groups (SHGs) and other Micro-Credit / Micro-Finance Initiatives (MCIs / MFIs) online. This abstraction of cash money onto an online financial system would lay the groundwork for a new kind of rural e-commerce, which could prove extremely enabling for many communities, especially non-agricultural artisanal groups. Entrepreneurs and small-scale industries might then be able to regularise existing off-line trade relationships into online systems that track raw materials, designs, quality control and delivery mechanisms. New kinds of banking and finance systems in rural areas would make investments in rural infrastructure as well as new businesses more easily available. It will only become possible to realise these diverse opportunities once significant sections of rural South Asia achieve connectivity with one another and with the world at large. Despite the economic promise of ICTs, their social benefits may not emerge immediately. According to a preliminary estimate prepared by the Centre for Knowledge Societies - Bangalore, the immediate impact of ICT projects upon their rural contexts will be far from equitable. Rather, ICT access is likely to increase socio-economic opportunities for dominant caste landholding elites, relatively disprivileging non-elite, non-landholding artisanal communities. There are several reasons for this: (i) Access to capital resources: Landholding groups always have access to capital in the form of land, which they can sell to start a business, move to the city, rent, etc. Even if they keep the land, their agricultural incomes will always be higher than the non-agricultural incomes of landless groups. (ii) Literacy and education: Dominant caste agricultural communities tend to have higher literacy and education levels relative to disprivileged artisanal groups. Moreover, there are many young men and women, who may have completed secondary school or college. Members of this class are likely to be the first beneficiaries of ICT-driven rural education, training and employment opportunities. (iii) Social and educational access: Dominant-caste landholding communities are often organised through their caste associations and other socio-religious institutions. These institutions have sometimes founded schools, hospitals, hostels, colleges and even professional schools. Non-elite rural communities lack these kinds of social networks and access to social, intellectual or financial capital, and will therefore find it more difficult to take advantage of rural ICT networks. (iv) Agricultural technologies: States like Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh are racing to develop agri-biotech and agri-infotech policies and projects, in order to demonstrate that emerging technologies can actually help rural communities. All of these technologies will only serve to further advantage rural elites who have significant landholdings and enjoy an agricultural surplus. The net effect of all these factors will be that most of the new entrants into South Asia's middle classes will come from rural landowning communities. Artisanal groups, Dalits, adivasis and other disprivileged groups will be relatively disabled from taking advantage of the opportunities offered by emerging technologies. It is therefore of the utmost importance that rural ICT projects be carefully designed with a view to enabling and including the very rural non-elite non-agricultural communities which are most likely to be left out. Funding organisations and policymakers can encourage such innovations by stipulating that their projects routinely undergo socio-economic impact analyses by external agencies. FOR FUTURE DIGITAL DEVELOPMENT Although many states in India are eager to establish networked initiatives in rural areas, there remains considerable uncertainty about the appropriate administrative, regulatory and economic models for such projects to work. It seems likely that the rural initiatives most likely to succeed would integrate the State, the private sector and non-governmental organisations strategically, so as to maximally utilise their respective strengths and expertise. In order to do so, it is important that digital pioneers working in rural areas learn from experiments in digital development that have already been implemented. Notwithstanding the extreme hyperbole that always accompanies new technology on the one hand, and the extreme scepticism of the uninitiated on the other, emerging information and communications networks remain an unparalleled opportunity for effecting economic development and social change across rural India.
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