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Nikhil Raj
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A two-day National Policymakers Workshop (July 9-10, 2004) was organised in New Delhi to chalk out a strategy for taking the benefits of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) to rural India. Jointly organised by the M S Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF) and OneWorld South Asia (OWSA), and supported by Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), International Development Research Centre, Canada and the National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM) Foundation, the workshop sought to formalise the National Alliance on ICTs for Meeting Basic Human Needs. The workshop was the first major event of its nature organised by civil society organisations.
Formed under the auspices of MSSRF on May 20th 2004, the National Alliance, through its Mission 2007: every village a knowledge centre seeks to work towards enabling a knowledge revolution in the country. The participants at the policymakers workshop aimed at devising a strategy for the evergreen revolution in India through the Mission 2007 initiative. Almost 200 participants including senior government officials of key ministries and departments such as telecom, information technology, and science and technology, corporates from the IT sector, civil society organisations, and concerned citizens were present.
Another major highlight of the workshop was a videoconferencing held on the evening of July 9, 2004 with participants deliberating on the same themes at the four metros, namely Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata. This was done in collaboration with the British Council and its regional centres.
For M. S. Swaminathan, Chairperson, Mission 2007, the key expectations of the workshop were the resulting recommendations, commitments from stakeholders, specific action points along fixed timelines and the mapping of resource availabilities.
Call for policy level intervention
Prior to the workshop, seven task forces were constituted on some of the issues deserving policy level intervention. These issues were: connectivity; content; space applications; technology; organisation, management, monitoring and evaluation; training, capacity building and election of fellows; and policy issues. Co-opting the recommendations of these Task Forces, the three major areas of discussions were the scalability, sustainability and collaborations required to achieve Mission 2007.
Connectivity challenges
At the plenary session on Strategic Planning for Mission 2007, K. K Jaswal, Secretary, Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, Government of India pointed out that there is a need to build on earlier ICT initiatives in the development sector. He also spoke of the need to find fiscal solutions to make connectivity charges more affordable. The lack of connectivity continues to be a major bottleneck, making it difficult to take ICTs to rural India. D. P. S. Seth of Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) spoke of the need for proactive governmental steps aiming at policy change. Media Lab Asia was suggested as a possible partner in pilot projects on connectivity issues.
Sam Pitroda, popularly known as father of PCO revolution in India, suggested that the stakeholders should learn from the telecom revolution that started in the country nearly two decades back. It is essential to distinguish between deliverables (such as connectivity at an affordable price) and processes (such as those dealing with investments, standards). So that a sustainable business model enabling social transformation can be created.
Scalability, sustainability and collaboration
Even while we need to resolve the issues of connectivity and appropriate technology to reach the last mile, Basheerhamad Shadrach, Secretary, Mission 2007, pointed out that the sustained generation of generic and value added content has a greater role in scaling up the knowledge centres.
It was also decided that online content should be created mostly by those who needed it i.e. those whose livelihoods would be the subject of the content. Given that the amount of agricultural information available in the digital format is limited, Alliances activity includes the digitisation of this content.
On the issue of collaboration, participants agreed that the government would also have to facilitate the co- operation of the corporate sector, which in turn would generate additional resources for scalability. Such collaboration for scalability would need to be intertwined with the need for sustainable models. The sustainability dimension of Mission 2007 would require increased commercial and production efficiency in rural areas and the promotion of niche operators through supportive regulatory and policy initiatives.
Experts from ISRO urged the stakeholders to explore options of space-enabled village resource centres so that the same communications bandwidth can be used for several uses. Existing Krishi Vigyan Kendras were also considered to be ideal candidates to access farmers and the rural folk.
R. Chidambaram, Principal Scientific Advisor to the Government of India, suggested that leading research and development institutions should strive to improve the process of technology and knowledge transfer, keeping in the mind the affordability of the technology. Kapil Sibal, Minister of State for Science and Technology, Independent Charge, argued that human resources needed to be accorded adequate importance.Almost hundred per cent literacy is required for enabling people to exploit any technology, and a major project to be advanced through technology is to achieve 100 per cent literacy. In the valedictory session, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Deputy Chairman, Planning Commission, GoI, recognised the significance of Mission 2007, and expressed governmental interest in it.
Private sectors social interests
A major outcome of the Workshop was the felt need for public- private sector co- operation. This may be at different levels, such as support from the village community combined with private sector support.
Saurabh Srivastava, Chairman of NASSCOM Foundation, an Alliance partner, spoke of how NASSCOM wishes to harness the talent in the information technology (IT) industry to aid development and to encourage its members to implement the power of IT in areas like education and livelihoods.
Mission 2007 and the evergreen revolution
How will these interventions aid in alleviating extreme poverty and hunger by providing access to food and improving food security? This can be understood in the context of prior interventions in agriculture. The Indian Green Revolution of the mid-sixties was highly input- intensive involving the use of High Yielding Varieties (HYVs), fertilisers and water, leading to a significant jump in production and food availability in the country.
However, the food grain production and access structures have shown signs of instabilities either on account of natural calamities (droughts or floods) and/or due to incentive structures laid by the policy makers for the farmers that do not work in favour of small, and marginal farmers and landless labourers.
Regardless of the claims of self-sufficiency in food grain production, those living at the margins have often been exposed to drastic fluctuations in access to food. Access to adequate amounts of food and indeed information for these groups of people becomes the first casualty of an unequal system. In a situation with few income-generating opportunities, hunger and malnutrition are only some of the natural consequences.
The deliberations at the launch workshop of Mission 2007 concluded that ICTs could be effectively used to enhance food grain production. All those involved in Mission 2007 feel that ICTs can play a facilitating role in bringing about the evergreen revolution. This revolution aims not only to increase food grain production, but also to improve marginalised and poor rural peoples access to food and expand their choice of alternative livelihood options.
Access to information, access to food
Given the current lack of disaggregated information on the reach and impact of food assistance programs on individual beneficiaries, it is felt that ICTs can serve as a major management tool because of their advantage of quick data compilation and retrieval. ICTs can further enhance the transparency of data validation and can therefore be efficient tools in the selection of beneficiaries.
The food distribution system is plagued by the lack of information on the availability of food grains at distribution centres. Most participants at the Policymakers Workshop felt that such problems can be overcome by ICTs through the provision of timely information to those who can ensure food availability. The logistics could then accordingly be managed by making those who deliver food responsible for reaching the intended target population. The simplification of the transport of commodities and better logistical management could thus be important steps in improving food availability and access for millions of people.
Some participants at the workshop argued that since higher crop production may not always result in more employment, the option exists of creating jobs through Village Knowledge Centres.
The accelerated development of rural economies requires an equal emphasis on
agriculture, dairy and craft industries. Neglect of any one of these would lead to one- sided, unsustainable models. Namrata Bali of SEWA spoke of the need to integrate these sectors in the proposed information centres thus expanding the possibilities of alternative livelihood opportunities.
While exploring the possibilities of ICTs to fight food insecurity and hunger, the participants at the workshop suggested some important prerequisites:
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adopt an integrated approach at the national policy level where all relevant sectors for income diversification have been included
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build synergies with the government
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focus on deliverables whereby access is improved and usage rate is also increased
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focus on processes which includes investments (public and private), standards and incentives
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issue of spectrum needs attention if the bandwidth is available, it can
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be made cheaper with policy interventions
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remove conditions that prevent private players entry into rural areas by preparing the regulatory system
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prepare basic content beforehand and develop a large number of content players
At the end of workshop the message was clear: while the green revolution in the 1960s was a result of the intensive use of material inputs, the evergreen revolution critically depends on the ability of stakeholders to deliver relevant knowledge and information to those who need it in rural India.
The revolution must finally enable and empower rural people to utilise this information to enhance their productive capacities and incomes.
Author: Nikhil Raj is the Editor of Mainstreaming ICTs at OneWorld South Asia.
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