Date: Mon, 12 May 2003 09:39:48 +0530 From: Subbiah Arunachalam <arun@mssrf.res.in> Friends at lis-forum: I got this mail in another list. Found it extremely interesting and worth sharing with you all. Arun Dear Colleagues: The recent episode of Media Lab Asia raises an important issue. Can India go all alone in applying Information and Communications Technology (ICT) to Rural Development? The first question to be answered is, Does the Indian Government believe that applying ICT is essential for rural development? On paper there is evidence that it does. On the ground, it looks as if it is driven by personalities and not purpose. Many of the Government schemes and projects in this area have not been evaluated rigorously or lessons learned from them. Applying ICT for rural development is not just opening an information kiosk but developing the services and content necessary for supporting activities in rural development. This needs significant transformation in its Institutions and Organizations. There is strong evidence that India missed the opportunities offered by the personal computer and local and wide area networking to improve its Institutions and Organizations engaged in rural development and is now missing the opportunities from use of the Internet to improve governance, health, food security, agriculture, education and trade etc. for rural areas. The second question is what are the strengths of India in going all alone? A country that can launch Geo-Stationary Satellites does certainly have the technological skills. There are several initiatives in ICT application for rural areas that have drawn attention for their innovativeness and it is said in many International circles that if an "IT cannot work in India, it will not work elsewhere in developing countries". India is a leading test bed of ICT application for rural areas of developing countries and others use it for testing their ideas. India can certainly do it and if it needs collaboration, it is more South-South so that costs of innovating the needed technologies can be spread around developing countries. The third question is, what are its weaknesses? To answer this question, India should look at how other ICTs such as radio, television and telephones penetrated into rural areas. Radio receivers in the 1960's and 70's were made cheaply, batteries became available, the All India Radio established a strong network of local radio stations using medium wave band providing context specific rural information. In 1980's television black and white television sets became cheaper, low power transmitters and regional and state level television services were established. This led to the second generation Cable TV use largely supported in peri-urban and rural areas by small private entrepreneurs. Telephones became more ubiquitous, at least on major rural roadsides, through another public-private partnership of PCOs. The lessons India should learn are, let the government create the infrastructure for rural areas and let there be public-private partnership for the network and content. In case of new ICT, such as for access to the Internet, India would need public-private-community partnerships. The weaknesses, as I see it, is not of technology. The type of technology India needs for providing cheaper access to ICT services in rural area is already there. What India does not really have is a policy for ICT use across sectors in rural development. India has a telecomm policy, an education policy, an agricultural policy, livestock policy etc. but it has not integrated ICT either in these policies or integrated these sectoral policies into an ICT policy for development. Until India does this, It will not be able to decide how to lower access costs to ICT based services or create opportunities for partnerships. The fourth question is what are the opportunities? ICT and information access is becoming more a basic necessity just as electricity and water. The experience of Spain and Portugal of providing Automatic Teller Machines in rural areas that enabled farmers to access financial credit which in turn enabled these countries to become the vegetable and fruit baskets of Europe should be a lesson for India and is the type of direction needed from the Government to support ICT application in rural development. If India can prove success in ICT application in rural areas in the next few years, it can be a leader in ICT trade and services for Asia and Africa. The fifth question is of threats? The threats, as I see them, are more from not applying ICT in rural areas than in going alone. Indian software skills are world renown. With a billion people, the domestic market for intellectual capital (information and because the core issue will be context specific content in health, agriculture, education etc. which the North does not have for developing countries and not the hardware. IMHO India can go alone or with more South-South collaboration in this area of applying ICT to rural development. In the revamped Media Lab Asia, let its main mission be to apply ICT successfully in rural development and enable India to be a leader in trade and providing ICT services to rural areas in developing countries. Can Mr. Shourie do this? Warm regards, Ajit