I.C.

T Application for Rural Sector in India

Abstract: How can information technology (IT) contribute to rural

development? What are the channels through which impacts can be realized,
and what are the practical means for realizing potential benefits? This paper
provides an insight about various ongoing projects and its implication on rural
sector. These projects show how effectively IT can be implemented for the
development of the rural sector in India.

Key Words: ICT. Rural sector, Internet, India

1.0 INTRODUCTION
The rural sector had always been an untapped market with enormous potential, but lacking
in infrastructure. Even though India was forging ahead, the rural India remained poor. The
I.T sector was growing tremendously and the technologies were becoming more users
friendly and this led to thought that why I.T can’t be implemented for the development of
rural India. As a result many initiatives have been undertaken to enhance the lives of rural
people.

2.0 INITIATIVES

2.1 Gyandoot

Gyandoot is an Intranet based Government to Citizen (G2C) service delivery portal

commissioned in Dhar district of Madhya Pradesh in January 2000. Gyandoot aims to
create a cost-effective, replicable, economically self-reliant and financially viable model for
taking the benefits of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to the rural
masses. This is expected to lead to enhanced participation by citizens/government in
community affairs through creative uses of ICT and also ensure equal access to emerging
technologies for the oppressed and exploited segments of the society.

Gyandoot is managed by a society called ‘Gyandoot Samiti’ registered under Madhya

Pradesh Societies Registration Act. The District Collector is President of the Samiti. The
CEO of Zilla Panchayat (an officer of the Indian Administrative service, IAS) assists the
president as Secretary and the various departmental heads as members of the Samiti.
The operational team of Gyandoot Samiti consists of a Project Manager, an Assistant
Project Officer, a Technical Head (the District Information Officer) and four computer
operators.
 The services offered by Gyandoot encompass a wide range of government departments
can be accessed from any Gyandoot kiosk (soochanalaya) by any citizen, on payment of a
nominal transaction fee.
1.Giving information about the variety-wise current and prevailing rates of prominent
cereal crops like wheat, gram, soybean, etc. at local and other prominent auction centres
of the country.
2. To obtain Income Certificate, Domicile certificate, Caste certificate
3. E-education
4. Board Exam Result
5. Rural Market
6. Grievance Redressal
7. Employment News
8. Information on international news

2.2 ITC- e-choupals

ITC stands out among all other initiatives as a large Indian corporation serving global
markets. Its kiosks are called e-choupals, and they have several differentiating features.
The key distinguishing factor is that the e-choupals are totally designed to support ITC’s
agricultural products supply chain.ITC has been able to create a community of e-farmers.
E-choupals provide access to local market (mandi) prices and global market price
information, thereby enabling the farmers to compare prices. They give access to
operational information, developed by ITC experts, pertaining to cropping, seeds, fertilizer,
and so on. E-choupals are set up by ITC, with solar power backup and VSAT connectivity.
The equipment cost for the e-choupal is borne by ITC, with the selected farmer providing
the location. ITC’s strategic intent is to develop e-Choupal as a significant two-way
multidimensional delivery channel, efficiently carrying goods and services out of and into
rural India. By progressively linking the digital infrastructure to a physical network of rural
business hubs and agro-extension services, ITC is transforming the way farmers do
business, and the way rural markets work
 
Choup
al
Saagars offer a combination of services to rural India. 
Made-to-design agri-business hubs, they function as:

ITC agri-sourcing centres providing farmers a transparent best price sales window,

The shopping centres brings a range of products comparable to urban levels of choice,

The facilitation centres delivers a host of farm-related services – training, soil testing,
product quality certification, medical and clinical services, cafeteria and fuel station. 24
Choupal Saagar hubs are already in operation in 3 states, to grow to 100 by 2010.

The initial benefits of the ITC effort include a substantial reduction in transaction costs,
from approximately 8 percent of a transaction, down to 2 percent. It is estimated that these
gains are shared roughly equally between ITC and individual farmers. Some ofthis gain
may be at the expense of traditional intermediaries, who operate in mandis, but much of it
comes from genuine efficiency gains, including clearer quality guidelines and
measurement, greater timeliness and reduced waits, quicker payments, and reduced
uncertainties.ITC has been able to identify the deficiencies pertaining to each region and
make an action plan best suited to each region.

2.3 Akshaya

Akshaya is located in Malappuram district in Kerala, and has 630 kiosks. The initiative for
the project came from the district level local government, and strong support came from
the state government. The project was launched in late 2002.Village level governments
were involved in the selection of kiosk operators, and significant funds were expended in
training the local populations in computer use (“e-literacy”).

The kiosks were divided into six groups each with a specialization, for which further
training was provided to operators. One group would focus on data digitization for the state
government, a second on hardware servicing activities, a third on insurance, financial
services and tourism related activities, a fourth on multimedia, animation and design, a
fifth on IT-enabled services such as health-mapping, Ayurvedic plant cultivation
information and market linkage support, as well as health services, and the last group on
product sales.

Akshaya Project aims to set up a network of 9000 information centres that would be able
to impart basic IT literacy to at least one member in each of the 6.5 million families in
Kerala; provide services like data-entry, Desk Top Publishing, Computer Training and
Internet Telephony; generate and distribute locally relevant content; improve public
delivery of services for Government departments like payment collection, e-commerce, e-
courier; and create employment opportunities.

2.4 TARAhaat

TARAhaat is a gateway that connects the village user to information, social services,
entertainment, and also to various markets, through a network of franchised cyber centres,
customized in the language of their choice. TARAhaat covers all three components for
rural connectivity: content, access and fulfilment. The TARAhaat.com mother portal, a
growing repository of information on issues of sustainable development, furnishes content.
Access is provided through a network of franchised local enterprises. Delivery of
information, goods and services is provided by local courier services or franchised
TARAvans. The pilot phase began in August 2000 in the districts of Bundelkhand,
surrounding the city of Jhansi. TARAhaat has been conceived with the view that it has to
be mastered and used by people with wide variations in literacy, language, financial
liquidity and levels of understanding. The project is implemented by an NGO called
Development Alternatives.

TARAhaat is a company dedicated to continuous innovation and product development. It

creates its products and services in response to the needs of its customers. Content such
as law, governance, health and livelihoods are already available, and additional content is
added every day. Commodities market information, listings of the local yellow pages, and
information about products are also available. One of the largest revenue streams of
TARAhaat is envisaged to be e-education. The portal has begun delivering a basic
computing course that combines classroom teaching and hands-on computer practice
(offline and online).

The subsidiary units in the portal include:

 TARAdhaba - provides the villager connectivity and access to a new world.

 TARAbazaar - provides access to products and services needed by rural households,
farmers, and industries.
 TARAvan - delivers goods ordered.
 TARAdak - connects the rural families to the daughter married far off and to the son
posted on the front.
 TARAguru - provides mentoring and consultancy to village-based mini-enterprises.
 TARA scouts/TARA reporter - collects relevant information for the portal.
 TARAvendor -runs the store that will cater to products available at Tara bazaar.
 TARAcard - enables the villager to order goods and services on credit.

2.5 n-logue

n-Logue has its origin and chief presence in the south. It is a for-profit corporation, with
majority ownership residing with a non-profit organization. The main impetus for n-Logue
came from the IIT Chennai research group headed by Professor Ashok Jhunjhunwala.
This group has been responsible for a stream of hardware and software innovations that
enable rural IT-based service delivery, through connectivity and applications.

The core innovation at the heart of n-Logue’s operations is a WLL technology, Cordect,
which provides joint wireless Internet and voice connectivity. The kiosk-level hardware is
relatively inexpensive, and adds only marginally to the overall cost of a kiosk. However,
the construction of WLL towers and maintenance of the WLL hub is relatively costly, and
this fixed cost requires a substantial density of kiosks within a particular radius of the
tower. The n-Logue model is designed to achieve this density, with kiosks generating
returns from fairly small user populations. Furthermore, n-Logue has progressed well
beyond being simply a connectivity provider, to delivering a range of services – these can
be adapted to different connectivity technologies. N-Logue is the second largest
organization in this field, supporting over 1000 rural-IT kiosks.

The various services being provided by n-logue are Communication. Computer

education, Remote tutorials, Agriculture consultancy and veterinary, Health care,
e-governance etc.

The initiatives undertaken to implement ICT for the rural development has been able to
bring about a change and bridge the digital divide to an extend. Though each project has
benefited some user groups, none is significant enough to have had a general
socioeconomic impact at its location, and none offers a replicable, catalytic model toward
achieving such impact.
3.0 Reasons Contributing to the Ineffectiveness are:

3.1 Absence of useful content.

Most of the ICT projects are unable to attract the users as they lack in content that is
significant to the users. Users appear to be more concerned although largely unable to
identify the specific programs they miss. Low content relevance is probably a combination
of unfulfilled promises from government, language and other localization issues, poor
awareness (among both users and providers) and inadequate understanding of user
needs.

3.2 Lack of awareness among consumers.

In many cases, users were unaware of the full range of available services and concluded
that the computer was either for a specific use. For e.g.: in Gyandoot, many were unaware
of the e-Governance services available. Since consumers are not aware of many of the
services available, the actual purpose of these initiatives gets lost.

3.3 Inadequate operator selection and training

The center operator needs to understand the basic technology, such as how to navigate
the Internet or to maximize the use of the available tools, and marketing.

3.4 Exclusion of some segments of population

Several projects discriminate among the local population, usually unintentionally. For eg e-
choupal excluded

3.5 Undefined expectations in sharing project management.

Several projects began as partnerships or involved contractual relationships among
several parties. For some, failure was often attributed by one party to other parties that
believed that their responsibility was complete. The failures involved both content and
technological services.
3.6 Lack of a realistic financial model
For all the projects, the costs of deployment are very high relative to revenue. The major
deployment cost is building out the technology infrastructure. Despite claims by some site
managers, usage at most sites is simply not high enough to cover costs in the foreseeable
future.

3.7 Widespread infrastructural and hardware problems

Both power shortages and connectivity are major issues. In almost all initiatives the main
cause for concern was the power shortages and connectivity problems. Many initiatives
are lagging behind mainly because of these two reasons.

4.0 How Effectiveness can be brought into I.T initiatives

 Use of the Internet as a carrier of informational services.

 Public-private partnership projects in case of large investments.
 Community involvement adds value to informational services
 Attention to maintenance and development of infrastructure adds value-
 Local language content adds value
 Intermediaries improve usage
 Partnership for contents add value

5.0 CONCLUSION

To sum up all the initiatives have been successful in delivering a significant level of
benefits to the rural communities. There have been many challenges in the ICT
implementation which, if managed properly can bring about a great change in the lives of
rural people.

6.0 REFERENCES

1. CEG, IIMA, October 2002,Gyandoot –an evaluation study,

http://www.iimahd.ernet.in/egov/documents/gyandoot-evaluation.pdf downloaded on 24.10.09.
2. Prof T.P Rama Rao, ICT and E-governance, http://www.iimahd.ernet.in/egov/documents/ict-and-
egovernance-for-rural-development.pdf ,downloaded on 24.10.09.
3. D.C. Misra, 2005, Enabling ICT for rural India, http://iis-
db.stanford.edu/pubs/20972/ICT_full_Oct05.pdf, downloaded on 24.10.09
4. Nirvikar Singh,2004,ICT for rural development in India, http://www.idfresearch.org/pdf/singh.pdf,
downloaded on 24.10.09.