Sustainability, scalability and collaboration for taking ICTs to every Indian village

Information kiosks in every village by 2007: Myth or reality OneWorld South Asia, M S Swaminthan Research Foundation November 2004. 32 p. This paper focuses on scalability, sustainability and collaboration aspects in building infokiosks or knowledge centres; summarising viewpoints from an e-discussion, Video Conference and the Task Force Reports emerged out of the National Policy Makers’ Workshop held in July 2004 in New Delhi. This Workshop envisaged the launch of Mission 2007, a nation-wide movement facilitating the setting up of knowledge centres/ infokiosks in each of India’s 600,000 villages by the year 2007. The paper elaborates key determinants for achieving the sustainability, scalability and collaboration framework for establishing infokiosks in every village in India: Scalability Reliable hardware, software and connectivity are seen as the key success factors for scaling up infokiosks movement. Infokiosks need to be built up using latest technologies and technologies that can be customoised according to local needs and environment. Feasibility of integrating community broadcasting facility into infokiosks needs to be experimented. Economic viability enhances its scalability and rollout in a large scale, so is the economic incentive from government. Information available through infokiosks shall be made available in local languages and should be retrieved from a user-friendly interface. Infokiosks can promote the use of locally relevant content aiming towards enhancing livelihood opportunities and promoting sustainable development. Sustainability Government’s critical role in infrastructure development ensuring sustainability of infokiosks is reiterated here. Both community engagement and long term investment strategy have been recognised as key drivers for infokiosk’s sustainability. The role of civil society organisations as the facilitators for community participation and capacity building has been pointed out. Academic institutions though their innovation and research, especially by harnessing the potential of distance learning techniques can help materialising this effort. Private sector can lead in financing and scalability. Collaboration Multi-stakeholder partnership synergising the efforts of government, private sector, civil society organisations and local communities can help the infokiosks movement harness ‘complete solutions’ for building its technology and content. Through providing physical infrastructure, financial assistance to local entrepreneurs and subsidising the Rural Service Providers (RSPs), the public sector plays a significant role in scaling-up the infokiosks movement. Corporate sector can collaborate with other sectors as part of their corporate social responsibility programs. Civil society acts as making government more transparent on policy and resources issues, besides creating public awareness of the scope of ICTs in development. Community needs assessment ensures effective design and implementation of infokiosk’s services for the service population. It is recommended that creating appropriate human development framework has to be seen as the necessary precondition for ushering a knowledge- based economy in India. (Reviewed by Atanu Garai)

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