Vol. VI No. 4
April 2008
The first monthly magazine on ICT4D
Hand in Hand, India ICT and microfinance
e-Banking Technology, Estonia Adoption of Internet banking Information for development
ICT for Financial Inclusion Electronic banking for the poor
ISSN 0972 - 804X
Financial Inclusion and ICTs
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knowledge for change
INDIA
2008 29-31 July 2008, Pragati Maidan, New Delhi, INDIA India is home to one of the largest numbers of ICT4D projects in the world. Most of them are ‘telecentre’ initiatives in rural contexts, based on public access to technology approach. Rural telecentre projects exploring the contextual use of new ICTs hold great promise, not only in areas of health, education, public service delivery, social security services and livelihoods but also in greater political participation, stimulating local knowledge systems, developing empowering social networks and encouraging a vibrant local media. Critiques argue that most of these initiatives, including huge government-sponsored ones, have proceeded without a critical analysis of the social, economic and developmental objectives sought to be achieved in 'bridging the digital divide', and have been based on assumptions that ignore the social and economic complexities involved in this process. The Indian Telecentre Forum 2008 (ITF 2008), fifth in the series of Telecentre Forums organised by CSDMS, will provide a platform for all key stakeholders representing the government, the private sector, the civil society, and funding agencies to join and discuss the achievements, challenges and the progress in the telecentre movement. . The forum will create a common ground for equitable learning which will facilitate a process of overall development of the country. It will shape the way forward for the telecentre movement within India, and make it an example for the world to learn from.
Key themes
Who will attend
• A Close Examination of Telecentre Movement in India
•
Telecentre Practitioners and Telecentre Leaders
• Demystifying Social Enterprise Model
•
Technology Solution Providers
• Discussions on Achieving Balance between Financial and Social Objectives
•
Social Investors
•
Researchers and Project Implementers
• Asian Telecentre Leaders Knowledge Sharing Session
•
Private Sector Investors
• The Need of New Technologies and Innovations in the Areas of Content and Connectivity
•
Government Implementers
•
Funding Agencies
• Upgrading the Skills of the Grassroots Managers
•
Content Developers and Consultants
• Examining the Role of NGOs in Common Services Centres Programme
•
Community Mobilisers
• Will Mobile Phones Take Over Telecentres?
Call for Papers!
Expected outcomes • • • • •
Creating a synergy among different telecentre practices Knowledge exchange among Asian telecentre leaders Better understanding of social enterprise model Strategies to reach out the bottom of the pyramid Identifying innovative practices in the areas of content generation and connectivity
Submit 400 word abstract by 30 April 2008, at www.eINDIA.net.in/abstract
Supporting Partner
telecentre.org is a global community of people and organizations committed to increasing the social and economic impact of grassroots telecentres. The founding investors include Canada’s International Development Research Centre, Microsoft, and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation.The association will bring a knowledge sharing session for Asian telecentre leaders, an open conclave of service centre agencies, State IT secretaries and a high level delegation from Africa and telecentre.org village, at eINDIA2008.
www.eINDIA.net.in/telecentreforum Contact Person: Vignesh Sornamohan: Mobile No: +91-9999654458, Email: ITF@eINDIA.net.in
Contents
Vol. VI No. 4
April 2008
Mail box
Features
Rendezvous
5
Editorial
27
6
Hand in Hand, India
Extending banking to the marginalised
ICT and microfinance
10
e-Banking Technology, Estonia
13
ICT for Financial Inclusion
15
SKS Microfinance, India
29
et
online.n
info@i4d
ICT potentials in agriculture
Hemantha Kumar Pamarthy
19
A Special Online Forum, 10-28 March 2008, Bangladesh
37
Adoption of Internet banking Katri Kerem
Electronic banking for the poor David Cracknell
ICT for communities Vignesh Sornamohan, Jayalakshmi Chittoor, Rachita Jha and Aditi Pathak
39
Initiatives for the underserved A. Srikanth, Mamta Bharadwaj
Mann Deshi Mahila Sahakari Bank, India
Eighth Annual Baramati Conference on ICT for Development, 23-25 March 2008, India
Conference on Unlocking the Growth Potential of Rural India, 4-5 March, 2008, New Delhi, India Rural development: Issues and concerns
Taking banking to the rural women
Columns
Fiancial Inclusion: A global perspective
42
Bytes for All
44
Books received
45
What’s on
46
In Fact
The magic of plastic cards Ritu Srivastava
33
Ekgaon Technologies, India
35
Peruvian Telecentres
Rural financing and the role of ICT
Does policy provide practice or vice versa? Udo Richard Averweg
23
Advocacy and Interventions, Empowering Marginal Communities with Information Networking and Villages in the Future
ICT applications in the banking sector
29-31 July 2008 Pragati Maidan, New Delhi
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News 8
World News
18
India News
21
e-Agriculture News
32
Development News
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We, our readers in the library, enjoy reading your magazine very much. Please keep on continuing the work. Personally, I have been reading the magazine for two years. Editorial, Thematic Features, News and Rendezvous columns are commendable. iOpener, News, ICT News Letter, Books Received sections need to be improved. Dr. D.C. Samantray Hony. Secretary Orissa Social Service Institute, Cuttack,India dillip@yahoo.co.in
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Vol. VI No. 1
Lead up to GK 3 - Emerging Markets knowledge for change
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knowledge for change
ISSN 0972 - 804X
Left to Right: H.E. Mohammed Al Amer, Preseident CIO, Govt. of Bahrain; Niranjan Meegammana, E-Fusion Pvt. Ltd., Sri Lanka; Ms. Bela Diwan, Computer Teacher, Springdales School, New Delhi; Santosh Choubey, Director, AISECT; Ravi Gupta, Director, CSDMS; Ms. Simmi Kher, Head, Computer Dept., Springdales School; William D Dar, Director General, ICRISAT, India; Dr. M.P. Narayanan, President, CSDMS; Ahmed Mahmoud Mohamed Eisa, Chairman, GDCO, Sudan; Subhash Kuntia, Joint Secretary, Dept. of School Education and Literacy, Ministry of Human Resource Development. Govt. of India; Saurabh Gupta, State Informatics Officer, NIC Bihar, India; K. Anvar Sadath, Head, e-Krishi.
knowledge for change
The first monthly magazine on ICT4D
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Learning skills for small scale entrepreneurs
GK3 overview Experencing the global knowledge
UIRI ICT project, Uganda
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e-Agriculture
Government investments in ICT4D
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ISSN 0972 - 804X
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ICTs for livelihoods
Lead up to GK 3 - Emerging Technologies
Promoting innovations, role of ICTs in SMEs
Knowledge process outsourcing
India as a trendsetter
Applications of ICTs in virtual universities
An emerging digital India Information for development
Distance education and ICTs
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ICTs and the challenges ahead Addressing the digital divide
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January
Global Knowledge Conference (GK3) Special
Feburary
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March
Differently Abled and ICTs
April
Financial Inclusion and ICTs
May
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June
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n Editorial Extending banking to the marginalised Advisory Board M P Narayanan, Chairman, i4d Chin Saik Yoon Southbound Publications, Malaysia Karl Harmsen United Nations University Kenneth Keniston Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA Mohammed Yunus Grameen Bank, Bangladesh Nagy Hanna e-Leadership Academy, University of Maryland, USA Richard Fuchs IDRC, Singapore Rinalia Abdul Rahim Global Knowledge Partnership, Malaysia Walter Fust Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, Switzerland Wijayananda Jayaweera UNESCO, France Editorial Board Akhtar Badshah, Frederick Noronha Group Directors Maneesh Prasad, Sanjay Kumar Editorial Team Editor-in-Chief Ravi Gupta Programme Co-ordinator Jayalakshmi Chittoor Sr. Sub Editor Rajat Bannerjee Sr. Research Associate Ritu Srivastava, Ajitha Saravanan Sr. Graphic Designer Bishwajeet Kumar Singh Graphic Designers Om Prakash Thakur, Shyam Kishore, Chandrakesh Bihari Lal (James) Web Programmer Zia Salahuddin i4d G-4 Sector 39, NOIDA, UP, 201 301, India Phone +91 120 250 2181-85 Fax +91 120 250 0060 Email info@i4donline.net Web www.i4donline.net Printed at R P Printers, Noida, India i4d is a monthly publication. It is intended for those interested and involved in the use of Information and Commnication Technologies for development of underserved communities. It is hoped that it will serve to foster a growing network by keeping the community up to date on many activities in this wide and exciting field. i4d does not necessarily subscribe to the views expressed in this publication. All views expressed in this magazine are those of the contributors. i4d is not responsible or accountable for any loss incurred directly or indirectly as a result of the information provided.
Centre for Science, Development and Media Studies, 2008 Except where otherwise noted, this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License
Financial inclusion is all about making financial sevices more affordable, accessible and cost-effective so that the unbanked and financially underserved communities of rural and urban areas can avail of basic banking services like opening a Savings Bank Account, taking a loan or buying an insurance. The entire argument on financial inclusion is whether the financially excluded community can be accomodated in the mainstream banking sector or not. Till the last decade, the commercial banks (mainly in the developing world) manifested their unwillingness to incorporate the marginalised in the mainstream banking community. This was chiefly because the functional costs were high and the profit of magin was low. In the developed world, because of diversified financial markets and intense competition in the banking sector, banks included even the lowest paid people thereby reversing exclusion. The scale and quantum of microfinance operations in both developed and developed countries have definitely grown over time and rural ATMs have been operationalised in many countries across the globe. ICT applications in the financial sector have really fostered the extension of financial services and aided the integration of banking products and services. The use of plastic card technologies in the form of debit cards, smart cards, biometric cards etc. and the subsequent implementation of mobile payment services have expedited transaction processes and have reduced accessibility costs. Despite the use and application of advanced communication and interactive devices and mechanisms, a substantial number of people are still out of banking reach. Till the 90’s of the 20th century, financial services in countries with both regulated and unregulated markets catered to the economically privileged sections and financial institutions were geo-politically restricted to the urban and semi-urban areas. People living on the fringes could not take recourse to retail financial services such as cheque encashing, money orders, remittances, stored value cards, loans, savings accounts etc. and insurance facilities. It is only very recently that commercial banks under certain regulation pressures and social concerns have started to take banking services to the unbanked comunities. Many commercial and public banks have started providing ‘Zero balance’ savings account and advanced insurance facilities (with low premium) and Microfinance institutions have started providing low-interest loans to the unbanked. The government bodies, private financial institutions and development professionals have entered into endeavours and ventures in terms of banking extension. Many Self Help Groups (SHGs), civil society organisations and informal financial organisations have come up and are either involving themselves directly or as intermediateries to monitor and control the disbursement of bank funds or locally generated funds. In this issue, we have underscored the need to extend financial services to the marginalised groups and have attempted to deliberate on issues, concerns and initiatives pertaining to microfinance and the effectiveness of ICTs in institutional financing.
i4d is supported by:
Ravi Gupta Ravi.Gupta@csdms.in
December 2007 | www.i4donline.net
ICT and microfinance Hemantha Kumar Pamarthy
CEO, Hand in Hand Micro Finance Limited, Chennai hpamarthy@gmail.com
Lessons learnt It has been deliberated and discussed, in detail, in the recently concluded 8th Annual Baramati Initiative, on the importance of reaching the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in India, especially to the areas that are normally out of reach, where the interventions of tele-Education, teleMedicine and tele-Governance, in addition to a plethora of innovative services such as smart card accessing, simputering and mobile banking, can be made possible. Some of the innovative programmes discussed during and off the meet that caught the fancy and the attention of the participants, were interventions such as mobile computer teaching facilities (of VIIT), informing of local agricultural markets and weather conditions to farmers on a daily basis over mobile phones (by Reuters), localised news on mobiles through SMS providing not only important information but also income and several job opportunities to the local youth. Guided by the vision of Kalpana Sankar, CEO, Hand in Hand (HiH) Tami Nadu, through its concept of ‘Citizen’s Centres’, is contributing to the spread of ICT as a process of ICT inclusion, in the rural, semi and peri urban areas.
Groups (SHGs) and Micro Finance Health and Hygiene Environment Protection through Watershed Development and • Solid Waste Management and • Village Knowledge Centres called Citizens’ Centres. Hand in Hand is presently operating in 13 districts of Tamil Nadu and in Pondicherry, offering Choice, Dignity and Hope to the disadvantaged needy and the poor through its work, supported by over 1,700 full time employees and 2,300 part time teachers and having the support of above 8,000 volunteers forming committees for advocating protection of Child Rights, Health Rights and Good Governance Rights. Hand in Hand has mainstreamed about 13,700 ‘children’ and succeeded in making 155 Panchayats Child Labour Free; Enrolled about 300,000 Women members through over 20,000 SHGs and helped create family enterprises through economic assistance to over 170,000 members. With many of the women from an agricultural background, these micro credit interventions and enterprises, backed by capacity building, handholding and monitoring can support the families with • •
sustainable growth in a steady manner, improve their confidence levels and importantly, with an enviable repayment rate consistently hovering over 99.6%, demonstrate that the poor are indeed bankable. The Health and Hygiene programme of HiH had facilitated around 400 Medical camps benefiting about 56,000 patients. The services of three ambulances, given by the government, through which about 685 patients have benefited so far; most of them being women in labour and who had to be taken to the nearest health centres for institutional deliveries. We try to protect the environment through watershed creation and solid waste management by covering over 30,000 households across four village, six town panchayats and three municipalities.
Hand in Hand in ICT integration Ever since computer related technology came into existence and technology centric development became the mainstay, ICT brought in many dynamic changes such as the Internet becoming the vehicle for the Information Highway, by not only bringing the postman to be with you
Hand in Hand’s ventures Hand in Hand is an NGO registered in 2002 as a Public Charitable Trust. Though the activities of Hand in Hand, started with Child Labour Elimination, the consequential projects that evolved are • Child Labour Elimination through Education • Wo m e n’s D e v e l o p m e n t a n d Empowerment through Self Help
Citizens’ Centre of Hand in Hand in use
i4d | April 2008
to deliver mail at your convenience but also in connecting the countries and shrinking the globe to mere seconds. Yet, the access and availability of the technology has been limited and a gap emerged between the supply and demand, which is more reflected between the urban reach of ICT and that of the rural, in the developing countries such as India. In line with the importance given in the Millennium Development Goals for education, Hand in Hand is playing a catalytic role in creating digital atmosphere in the rural, semi and peri urban areas, by giving due importance to developing Citizens’ Centres which are also our vehicles for developing ICT and for narrowing the digital divide. After studying several existing village knowledge centre models, Hand in Hand had formulated an integrated model of ICT in its Citizens’ Centre which typically has an IT kiosk with internet linkage wherever connectible, a functional library with information made available also on IT related subjects, and a tuition centre. The centres’ goal is to inculcate the values of grass root democracy by conducting familiarisation programmes, on socio-economic and health issues and facilitating discussions on relevant topics. The important goal, though, is making IT facilities available to the disadvantaged needy in rural areas, in an affordable manner (significant amount of concessions are extended to the SC/ST students), to educate the interested on the basics of IT and to enable them use the IT services in addition to the other services and ensure that the ICT awareness does not remain in the domain of the urban populace alone. What started in a small way in Kancheepuram in April 2005 is now being scaled up through replication. Many of the Citizens’ centres found favour with panchayats who could identify a good location to enable these centres, run for the benefit of the respective villagers. However, on a micro level, especially while scaling up the centres, there are challenges.
Challanges and impediments The scaling up has to be in depth, that is by expanding equipment and facilities within the centre, and in width, that is by expanding in more geographical locations. The challenges faced in this regard are: • Finance needed for scaling up (where micro finance helps the start-ups) • Suitable Human Resources (HR) for teaching, training and handholding • Electric power related problems in rural areas While these are the challenges, the impediments are • Certification/accreditation issues for the courses offered • Language related issues for imparting and comprehending the courses • Restricted or insufficient reach of internet and so on To scale up, the above concerns have to be addressed forthwith. HiH is thus trying to convert the Citizens’ Centres, to ‘Citizens’ Centre Enterprises’ by providing not only knowledge, but also the finance and equipment needed to start such an enterprise.
Services offered Hand in Hand offers certain services in a typical Citizens’Centre Enterprise on the exchange of a nominal fee. These services include: April 2008 | www.i4donline.net
Computer teaching in a Citizens’ Centre of Hand in Hand • • • • • • • • •
Basic Computer Courses Computer support services that include facilities for playing games, working, copying, printing and scanning DTP work, project work for students and others Internet browsing (where connectivity is possible) Internet and Coin telephony Supporting in supplying and filling various forms needed to obtain several varieties of certificates or information from government agencies Women’s literacy courses, environment and health related shows through software and facilitating discussions Accounts and data writing for SHGs of not only Hand in Hand but also of other NGOs if and where willing Facilitating a small but functional library to cater to school going children, women and other enthusiastic readers
Some success stories Maheswari Ezhilarasan, hailing from Veerarajampettai a village about 13 kms from Kancheepuram, of Annamar SHG, is 30 years, of Most Backward Classes (MBC) and educated till 12th Grade. She had attended the ICT training programme conducted by Hand in Hand in August 2007. She was enthusiastic and wished to start a Citizens’ Centre and with the microfinance support from Hand in Hand started her enterprise in November 2007. Within five months she was able to earn about INR 3,000 from various services offered in her centre. She has also gained the recognition of one of the best Citizens’ Centre entrepreneurs of Hand in Hand. Chithra, 44 years, from Thendral Womens’ Self Help Group, Kattankulathur a village on the fringe of Chennai, also attended the ICT training programme and started an enterprise, with a micro loan and support from her daughter who is a B.Sc. Being in a peri urban location, her centre attracted a steady increase in customers and students and today she is able to earn around INR 20,000 per month With such encouraging success stories, HiH is creating living space for many rural folks. With the application of ICT tools, HiH is trying to expand the horizons and narrow the digital divide by innovating, implementing, replicating and scaling. n
World News e-Village programme underway in five provinces of Sri Lanka
Information for development www.i4donline.net
n e-Government egov Lithuanian Tax Inspectorate further improves on-line service The Lithuanian Tax Inspectorate is coming up with a new improved single form for tax submissions and an on-line calculator of tax-free income. The new improved form will be prefilled using data from the State Tax Inspectorate (STI) and expenses reported to the STI by the third parties like banks, insurance companies, computer retailers, etc. Now the tax department is trying to improve the on-line services and introduce the declaration process, and to encourage taxpayers to exchange the ‘hard copy’ declarations for on-line declarations. In 2006, 46 per cent of income declarations were submitted on-line. This was increased to 75 per cent in 2007.
n Education NCC, Nigeria to empower 581 schools The telecommunications regulator of Nigeria, Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) will empower 581 schools and colleges with ICT equipments nationwide. This number consists of 221 to be achieved under the NCC’s Digital Awareness Programme (DAP) and the other 360 to be made up from the NCC secretariat under the aegis of the Universal Service Provision Fund (USPF). The first phase of the DAP project was launched on 2004 with 12 institutions spread across the six geopolitical zones. Now, the project will cover 80 schools and each school would be equipped with at least 20 Personal Computers (PCs), furniture
The Secondary Education Modernisation Project (SEMP) of the Sri Lankan Ministry of Education along with the President’s Office jointly implemented the e-Village programme in five provinces of the country. The programme is aimed to empower rural communities by improving IT literacy rate, information sharing and creating employment opportunities. The first phase of the project was implemented in the Central, Sabaragamuwa, Western, Uva and Southern Province. In the second stage, community computer centres are scheduled to be constructed in addition to schools computer learning centres. The President has advised the Ministry of Education to initiate the e-Village concept in selected rural communities. So far, the SEMP of the Ministry of Education has established five projects.
and Internet facilities. Additionally, the programme will provide basic training for the teachers and students to enable them effectively use the provided ICT tools.
n Health Sweden gets national patient records system The Swedish healthcare advisory organisation, SVR AB is planning to implement a National Patient Overview (NPO) to improve patient security and quality of care. By this, Swedish residents will be able to access their own medical records. The NPO will make real time patient information available nationally to county councils, local authorities and private healthcare providers in Sweden. Under the agreement, Sweden based IT company TietoEnator and Finland will provide the NPO system. The deal is worth €12.2 million and runs for five years, with an option to extend it for a further two years.
n Livelihoods Grant to help Vietnam improve disadvantaged children’s development Japan and the Asian Development Bank (ADB)are helping Vietnam to expand its investment in Early Childhood Care and Development (ECCD) programme. The Japan Fund for Poverty Reduction (JFPR) is providing a $1.9 million grant to pilot community-based ECCD models, while ADB will manage the grant. JFPR is funding the grant to children
who are less than three years of age. ECCD will provide opportunities for innovation and transform from traditional institutional approaches to community based approaches, especially relevant for disadvantaged population. The project will help to identify how child care can be brought into the remote ethnic minority communities.
n m-Serve People in Bangladesh spend lowest on mobile phones According to recent study, conducted by LIRNEasia, people in Bangladesh spend less on mobile phone use than any other people in South Asia. Afghanistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, Bhutan, Sri Lanka and the Maldives were brought under the study. Bangladesh has been ranked No. 1 in terms of affordability of cost by the low, medium and high mobile users in both prepaid and post paid, followed by Pakistan, India and Sri Lanka. According to the study, a low prepaid user means a person who talks 68 minutes per month on an average and low post paid user means a 207-minute talking time per month. In terms of Purchasing Power Parity (PPP), Pakistan has been adjudged the most affordable, followed by Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and India in the prepaid segment. In the SAARC region, people from Afghanistan spend the highest on mobile phone use. Among the eight South Asian countries Bangladesh is as low as $2.46 per month in case of prepaid. i4d | April 2008
Adoption of Internet banking Katri Kerem,
Associate Professor Estonian Business School, Estonia katri.kerem@ebs.ee
Background Estonia is internationally renowned for being a pioneer in the adaptation to new banking technologies. Estonia is currently belonging to the country group of medium Internet penetration on the global scale outnumbering its Baltic neighbours and Eastern-European countries but being somewhat behind from the Scandinavian countries, USA, Canada, leading European countries and some Asian countries. Rapid adoption of new technologies has helped the Estonian banks to leapfrog some of the traps that have slowed down the process of development in countries with better starting position. Creation of the world’s leading electronic banking systems has been done at a remarkably low cost compared to other world class Internet banks and Estonian Internet banks have been successful with respect to both supply of services and number of active customers. The functionality development of the Estonian Internet banks has been from general and simple services towards more sophisticated ones. In 1996 the site of Hoiupank offered possibilities to view account balance and statement and execute domestic payments. Already a year later, new features were added for securities transactions, international payments, viewing credit card statements, deposits and account history, sending messages to the bank and viewing a loan account. From 1999 onwards, the customers started managing their contact information online. They also started applying for
10
loans. In the same year the 3rd party services and shopping options were added. From 2000, banks started cooperating with the tax board for both private and corporate customers and more 3rd party projects were added. Customers could send e-Mails from the bank’s home page. Banks could be accessed via mobile phones and e-Bill solutions emerged for the first time. Banks started using their sites to successfully promote and cross sell their services and products among existing customers.
The case for online banking A person’s usage of Internet banking basically depends on access to a computer with an Internet connection either at home or in the office. It is possible to use computers with Internet connection in some of the self-service branches. The research of online shopping has pointed out that prior to web experience has had an influence on the person’s beliefs about computers and technology. Consumers who are at ease with computers find it convenient to start banking over the Internet. Although personal characteristics have been identified as significant predictors of consumers’ adoption of an innovation,
Estonian Internet banks have simple and clear user interfaces and the pricing policy has favoured the use of electronic channels.
several researchers have shown that it is the perceived attributes of the innovation itself rather than the characteristics of the innovators that are stronger predictors of the adoption decision. Clients demand a minimum relative advantage in order to switch channels. It means that the new innovative service should be perceived to be better than its predecessor. In the case of Internet banking in Estonia this is achieved via two strategies: added convenience and price incentives. The branch-banking venue is characterised by long waiting queue and slow service and it is quite logical for the people with knowledge and accessibility to switch over to Internet banking. The negative motivation of pricing has been successfully used by the banks. The transactions in Internet banks are either considerably lower priced or without any fee at all but for the transactions in branches the fees are very high according to the Estonian standard. That is definitely one of the main reasons why the branch transactions are quickly losing their popularity.
Factors behind banking success In a country with low population density, servicing outlaying areas effectively can be costly for national banks. Estonia is a very small country but it has its own remote areas where online banking is the only possibility to offer banking services at all. Achieving critical mass is a key success factor in electronic banking development. This can be achieved when there is substantial Internet penetration and banks are able to provide services, which have very broad demand. In this case, the satisfied users will serve as endorsers and marketers of the service. The power of person-to-person communication and word of mouth can never be underestimated. Estonian Internet i4d | April 2008
banks are successful because they enjoy a wide demographic appeal to different age segments. In countries with more mature banking industries, Internet banks tend to attract younger generations who are financially not so affluent. Thus banks are also not so motivated to invest into Internet strategies. In general the Estonian government has taken a laissez faire approach to the regulation and supervision of the economic policy. Governments’ main role is enhancing the enabling environment, as it is known that the direct intervention into financial markets may have poor results. Governments’ own usage of ICT has generated positive publicity, which has fostered positive attitudes nationwide. Infact, many people underlined that readiness of the telecommunications infrastructure is playing a key role in the success of Internet banking. The telecommunications monopoly of Estonia came to an end earlier than for example in Latvia and Lithuania and this is one of the explanations behind the lower Internet and also electronic banking usage in these countries. The same opinion has also been validated in international research. Another important aspect in developing electronic financial services is the quality of the regulatory framework. Designing a public key infrastructure is a crucial question. However, it must be noted that the existence of relevant laws does not automatically mean that relevant services will be launched immediately. For example enforcement of the Digital Signature Act did not bring along any changes in the way e-Business is conducted. Estonia features also a relatively low level of Internet connection costs. One of the explanations for this is free telecom market in Estonia, with two big competitors in ISDN market. For example, the monthly
Mobile banking sytem: The ‘YES’ initiative YES Bank is trying to provide high-end corporate solutions to its remote customers. With the launch of mobile-to-mobile cash transfer service, YES Bank has moved one step ahead in providing easy cash transfer service to its customers. YES Bank, in order to provide secure mobile payment solutions in India, has partnered with Obopay India, a wholly owned subsidiary of Obopay U.S.A. The secure Obopay mobile payment solution will ensure YES BANK customers to instantly transfer money from one mobile number to another. The mobile phone would be based either on General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) or Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) technology. Users would be able to transfer money upto INR 25,000 per transaction by using SMS facility. Customers would also be able to withdraw cash received through such transfers from over 21,000 ATM’s across the country using the YES BANK debit card. To avail of this service at a national level, YES Bank customers need to fill out a form which is available at the bank’s retail branches and across 75 ATMs in Mumbai and National Capital Region (NCR). Customers registering for this service by April 30, 2008 will be given a special incentive of INR 100 by Obopay which will be credited to the customers account. The incentive will be provided in two parts; INR 50 at the time of registration and another INR 50 on completion of three successful transactions. April 2008 | www.i4donline.net
fee for ISDN connection in Netherlands is 30 Euros, in Finland 65 Euros and in Estonia 15 Euros (2002).
Other supports for Internet banking Obviously the level of Internet usage is important for the success of Internet banking but Internet penetration alone does not guarantee online banking penetration. The initiatives should combine Internet access with relevant training for wider segments. The importance of the Tiger’s Leap programme is based mainly on the fact that it has succeeded to connect all the schools to the Internet and the future gains from this initiative are expected to be high. Look@world project aims to provide basic computer and Internet training for 100000 persons who are currently not using Internet. The importance of the Public Internet Access Point network is twofold. Besides providing possibilities to use Internet for wider public, the initiative has also generated positive media attention, which has helped to shape favourable public opinion towards technology use. Another possibility is to promote the Internet as a channel for accessing information and using services via adding content that is relevant and useful for the target groups. From among the several web services, the tax board and e-Government were pointed out most often.
Market and Internet banking Experience from other European countries shows that Internet banking is stronger and has started off earlier in countries with a few major players (Sweden, Finland, Estonia) compared to highly competitive markets (like UK and also Norway). Late start of contemporary banking in general has contributed to the rapid adoption of most up to date technologies, as old technologies can be very expensive to develop further. Some of the Scandinavian banks are still dependent on the information systems of the 1970s. There are no old payment methods used in Estonia like Giro system in Scandinavia. Lithuanian banks decided to continue using book payments and are now having hard time trying to re-train their customers to start using Internet. As mentioned previously the small size of the market is positively linked to the development of Internet banking as banks can cooperate closely in the field of developing standards to offer services to third parties. Till now, all developed standards are public and are not patented, that allows fast and coordinated spreading of bank-link and ATM. Common standards are useful and efficient not only for users of these services, but also for brick-and-mortar and virtual shop owners, as the implementation of common standards does not require considerable technological expenses. In Finland, for example, there are multiple technological standards for some e-Banking services that complicate fast spreading of these innovations.
Management aspects There are also some general management aspects, which have made it possible to achieve 22 percent of Internet bank usage rate. Estonian banks have adopted a long-term perspective - implementing Internet in banking is not a campaign but longterm process which is looked upon as an investment, not an expense. Although price incentives can play significant role in
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getting customers online the service needs to be based on quality rather than price only. Developing technological solutions was not done with a product or line of business in focus but with a customer relationship focus with integrated delivery of products and services. Success or failure in Internet banking in Eastonia has been greatly determined by the integration of technology infrastructure with the business processes. The Estonian experience suggests that multi-channel strategy is most viable with different channels complementing each other and catering to different needs of the customers. It should also be pointed out that Estonian Internet banks have simple and clear user interfaces and the pricing policy has favoured using electronic channels. A critical factor for changing customer behavior is a feeling of comfort and security. Estonian banks have been successful in delivering user-friendly solutions that are secure, and are also perceived to be secure. Estonians are generally very technology prone and the small size of the market gives excellent conditions to experiment with new solutions.
declarations were submitted electronically). This is increasing the benefits of Internet banks for the consumers and is a win-win situation also for the banks and service providers.
Concluding remarks The reasons behind the success of electronic banking in general and more specifically Internet banking are complex. It is clear that banks activities alone may not be sufficient in achieving growth if general infrastructure, economic environment and government initiatives are not supportive. Although the usage levels of Estonian Internet banks are remarkably high compared to the other East European countries and comparable to the adoption rates in the Scandinavian countries it is clear that still a potential for further growth exists. One of the main reasons why the user base cannot grow is the limited access to Internet among some customer groups and the growing digital divide. This means that unless specific measures are employed on a state level, the activities taken by banks are not so significant. However, banks have also found possibilities to contribute to improving Internet access and user skills by participating in training projects and supporting public Internet access points. The other big group of non-users is those who use Internet but are not using Internet banking. In some cases the non-usage actually means that someone from the household takes care of all the banking activities of the family. If the family members do not have individual bank accounts and do not use sophisticated banking services, they pool together their household bills and one person pays them. As banks own marketing activities were not seen as crucial in the adoption decision it is clear that advertising alone cannot convince the non-users of Internet banks to start using the services. Estonian banking experience represents one of the best cases of financial inclusion in which many people were integrated into larger banking community because of the advanced technological applications in banking. n
Broad range of electronic services The Internet banks also serve as gateways offering identification and authorisation services to a number of third party service providers. There are user-friendly opportunities for conducting businesses over the Internet with telephone companies, energy companies, tax boards and other institutions. Demand for the services influences the usage rates of Internet banks. For example in 2002, 81867 private individuals submitted electronic tax declarations 79727 of them did it through Internet banks and 2140 through tax board’s own home page. (20.3 percent of
Financial inclusion and the RBI initiative The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is up on its toes to create financial circumstances that are convenient to the underprivileged sections of the community. In one of its current moves on inclusive banking, RBI has planned to float a pilot project on IT-enabled financial inclusion through smart card in Bellary and Chitradurga districts of Karnataka, India. The functioning of IT-enabled financial inclusion will expedite and foster easy payments to the beneficiaries under various schemes of the state and central governments. In order to implement the smart card project in Karnataka, RBI constituted a sub-committee of the RBI’s Empowered Committee (EC) on Regional Rural Banks (RRB). A plan is also on anvil to bring the entire state of Karnataka under 100 percent financial inclusion programme, in coordination with other banks to implement the same in areas covered by Greater Bangalore City Corporation (GBCC). So far 23 banks have completed the survey work and account opening is in progress. Under the exclusive supervision of RBI, a substantial number of no-frills accounts have been reported to have opened under the financial inclusion programme and General-purpose Credit Card (GCC) facility has been extended to many economically underprivileged persons. Till date 27 lakh no-frills accounts have been opened under the financial inclusion programme and the GCC facility has been extended to 47,654 persons.
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Call for Papers/Articles for i4d Magazine The forthcoming issues of i4d magazine deal with diverse areas that invlove the use of ICTs. Submission of articles, reports, white papers on the following topics is encouraged. Publication Period
Theme
Submission Deadline
May 2008
Climate Change and ICTs
22th April
June 2008
Mobiles for Development
22nd May
July 2008
Gender and ICTs
18th June
An ideal article, report or white paper should be between 1500 and 2500 words, lucidly written and well-supported with data, relevant statistics and current trends. Graphs and pictures should be send in high-resolution .jpeg, .gif, .tiff or .bmp formats. For further details about editorial guidelines kindly refer to http:// www.i4donline.net/Editorial/Editorial_Guidelines.asp
i4d | April 2008
Electronic banking for the poor David Cracknell
Director for Africa, MicroSave, Nairobi, Kenya david@microsave.org
Why electronic banking? Change is being driven by falling costs of technology, by competition and by the ability of electronic banking solutions to offer customers an enhanced range of services at a very low cost. There are a number of advanced technologies and tools that can be used to expedite e-Banking mechanisms and applications. Technologies used in electronic banking include, but are not limited to: • Personal Digital Assistants: Used by microfinance programmes to automate record keeping. • Automatic Teller Machines and Point of Sale Devices: Used in conjunction with Magnetic stripe or Smart cards. • Magnetic Stripe Cards: Low cost cards operated through a magnetic stripe on the reverse of the card. • Smart Cards: More expensive chipbased cards that can store information offline on the embedded chip. • Cell-phone banking: Banking through cellular phones, either through menus or through SMS. Whichever technical option is chosen the development of an electronic banking solution should consider the customer perspective – the customer value proposition; the institutional perspective – the business case; and the e-Banking environment.
Customer perspective – the value proposition An electronic banking solution must April 2008 | www.i4donline.net
provide sufficient value to persuade the customer to move transactions away from cash. However, cash is an incredibly versatile medium of exchange. It is universally recognised as a store of value; and it is accessible, portable and divisible. So what drives value for the customer? • Features: What needs does the eBanking solution meet? What features encourage the user to maintain an electronic account in preference to cash? - For example, improved personal safety and the ability to transfer value from person to person. • Accessibility: Limited distribution of transaction points strongly reduces the value proposition to the customer. Walking many kilometres to access
Electronic banking or e-Banking has the potential to extend low cost virtual bank accounts to a large number of currently un-banked individuals worldwide
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services is inconvenient and costly. Saturation of an area with the service is preferable to a wider and thinner distribution. Affordability: Cash is inherently ‘frictionless’. There is no charge that gets levied each time value is transferred. Given this, start up and
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transactional costs need to be as low as possible for both the end user and the merchants these users frequent. Ease of use – convenience: The eBanking solution needs to be simple to use, fast and user friendly.
Institutional perspective – the business case From an institutional perspective, the electronic banking solution should increase profitability. This means careful consideration of functionality, business volumes, fees and charges, efficiency gains, development costs, partnerships, and distribution channels. The business case should consider: • Fu n c t i o n a l i t y : T h e l e v e l o f functionality that the institution wishes to develop, whether this should be narrowly or widely focused. • Bu i l d i n g vo l u m e t h ro u g h segmentation: By careful development of different business segments the financial institution is able to build transaction volume through the core e-Banking infrastructure. • Fees and charges: Developing an appropriate revenue strategy is heavily influenced by the functionality offered, the segments served and the anticipated volume of transactions. • Efficiency gains: The financial institution is able to handle substantially increased business transactions without corresponding investment in physical infrastructure. • Controlling development costs: Costs must be controlled during the development phase to ensure positive returns on investment. • Partnerships: Multiple business partnerships are essential in building a multi-functional e-Banking solution and in supporting the distribution network.
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Distribution network: The distribution network must meet customer requirements for accessibility, ease of access and widespread functionality, whilst meeting institutional cost requirements. Developing multiple business cases: Each partner involved in the solution must benefit, whether through reducing costs, increasing efficiency, increasing turnover, or through direct income.
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The e-Banking environment To develop an environment conducive to electronic banking, it is very important to see whether the regulatory and policy environment that includes appropriate banking regulations and communications, security, and information policies etc is supportive or not. The development and management of an electronic banking solution is far from easy. Risks during development and design must be carefully managed. These include: • Institutional capacity: The financial institution will require new technical competencies in order to run the e-Banking solutions. New functions like risk management, call centres and relationship managers may be necessary. Existing functions such as treasury management, internal audit and marketing may need to be strengthened. • Managing development risk: The development phase carries considerable risk that the solution will not be developed as anticipated or will run over cost. • Pilot testing: Whilst pilot testing may demonstrate the product to the competition, it represents the final opportunity to make changes to the design and/or implementation of the product. • Research: The pilot test phase provides an opportunity to research client acceptance of the product, to refine marketing and communications, to test the suitability of the distribution infrastructure and to test assumptions in the business case. As the level of financial literacy determines the nature of the distribution channel and the nature of transactions made, it is also important to see that e-Banking develops in a financially literate environment.
Future of e-Banking Future of e-Banking depends upon how the technologies and tools are used in the banking sector. For example, many e-Banking projects have developed or are developing in South Africa. This is not the result of chance, but rather that the South African environment is particularly favourable for electronic banking. There are well-developed banking and retail sectors, a supportive central bank, good communications and a generally positive policy environment. �
References • •
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Cracknell David, ‘Electronic Banking for the Poor – Panacea, Potential and Pitfalls’, MicroSave (2004) Waterfield, Charles, ‘Conference Summary – Virtual Conference on Electronic Banking for the Poor’, MicroSave (2004)
ADB and Japan help Philippines to provide insurance to the poor Japan and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) have provided a one million dollar grant to Philippines to establish access to insurance for millions of people, most of whom have no financial protection. The Japan Fund, which will be managed by ADB, will provide the a grant for Poverty Reduction. The grant will enhance the induction of implementation guidelines and standards for an insurance service that will not only cater to the needs of low-income people and their families but will also protect them against the risk of losing their main income earners to death, illness or injury at their place of work. Presently only 3.1 million poor people in the Philippines are insured. The Philippines Government has signed an agreement with ADB in this regard.
Corporation Bank - Biometric card for branchless banking Corporation Bank’s initiative, ‘branchless banking model’ makes use of biometric card based authentication devices at the select villages of four southern states in India. Through these cost effective ICT devices, the bank is providing basic banking services to the rural folks without incurring any extra cost associated with setting up of an Extension Counter, ATM or a Branch. The model developed by the bank to cover a large number of un-banked villages is making use of small ‘Point Of Transaction’ (POT) device indigenously developed ICT applications by two local vendors. The adoption of new technology facilitated basic identification of the customer based on the survey details, minimising procedural hassles like filling up of challans, cheques, etc. Automated voice guidance to the users in local language is also provided conveniently while depositing/ withdrawing the cash. The process is made operational through the bank’s Business Correspondent’s at the villages. The Bank is also planning to introduce remittance products for the card holders and factor in Government payouts such as pension, NREGP payments, etc. through the card holder’s account. The bank is also planning to commence a project to disburse group loans through the business correspondents to SHGs and additional services like Utility Payments, Mobile bill payments, etc., through this account.
Feedback and Suggestions The suggestions and comments of readers has always been a guiding force of i4d magazine. We sincerely request our readers to take a few minutes from their valuable time to fill the i4d Feedback Form available online http://i4donline.net/feedback
i4d | April 2008
Initiatives for the underserved SKS Microfinance is working extensively on rural credit and microfinance and trying to identify feasible financial solutions for the rural Indian folk.
Introduction Padma, residing in a tiny village in the arid regions of north Andhra Pradesh, used to have a tough life. She and her husband used to work hard on their farm to make ends meet and look after the needs of their three little children. About two years ago, Padma took a loan of INR 8,000 from a Microfinance Institution (MFI) to buy a sewing machine and started a small tailoring unit at home. She would stitch clothes, embroider sarees and dresses. She started making a reasonable amount of money to help the family improve living conditions. A cell phone, again bought with a loan, helped improve source orders from neighbouring villages. The mobile also helped the couple know the best markets to take their produce to and to get the best price. Life was looking up. Technology can play a critical role in the larger goal of financial inclusion. Microfinance institutions are today in a position to reach out financial services to the poor women residing in remote villages. Since these are small loans given to many individuals, the cost of reaching to the customer is high. Technology can intervene and provide solutions that make this transaction viable for the MFI and affordable for the customer.
The SKS initiative At SKS Microfinance, technology has been recognised as a key driver in saving costs, time and ensuring data accuracy. The company was among the first in the industry to develop an in-house Management Information System (MIS) to manage data. Over the years this has become the industry standard. The MIS has helped manage the company’s growth April 2008 | www.i4donline.net
to nearly two million customers. The next phase of growth which is targeted at reaching five million customers by 2009 is the next big challenge. How does one track and service five million loans averaging INR 8000 each every single week for 50 weeks without error and efficiently? SKS’ next phase of IT investment is aimed at addressing this issue. The company has entered into strategic tie-ups with IT majors like Compulink Software, HCL, Microsoft, Tulip IT and Wipro Infotech to put in place IT infrastructure that can handle issues such as capacity, security, scalability, optimisation and performance specific to the microfinance sector.
Technological solutions SKS is putting in place a new three-tier web application to develop highly-scalable
software applications for internal systems and to complement web hosting services. The new system will not just support SKS core banking solutions but will also provide the advantage of minimal IT infrastructure, rapid deployment, quicker scalability and upgrades. To support connectivity across all 700 existing and future SKS offices, a hybrid solution with a mix bag of MultiProtocol Label Switching (MPLS), Radio Frequency (RF) and Very Small Aperture Terminal (VSAT) solutions is being put in place. The Wide Area Network (WAN) infrastructure aims at providing complete end-to-end communication services with security, enhance agility, profitability and productivity. This will help in resource consolidation and form a centralised information system for entry and retrieval of operational and financial data from any
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In order to standardise quality and address compatibility issues across offices a central procurement system model has been implemented. IT Assets include categories such as PCs, servers, peripherals, telecom/ networking, software and other technology services. The centralised procurement model will result in annual improvements in price, quality, and service. This will help the company manage IT sourcing and post sale service across all SKS offices. SKS strictly follows an antipiracy policy in its software use and complies with all licensing norms. A new model in software licensing has been adopted to take care of the organisation’s software needs and is aimed at maximising licensing flexibility and choice even as SKS meets the business requirements for the next three years. This will help SKS in easier license management, increased value on software with ability to calculate accurate return on investment, predicting planning and budgeting. The new IT backbone is expected to be in place by July, 2008. With this, the existing MIS at SKS Microfinance will be decommissioned in phases.
of the offices. SKS Microfinance plans to increase the number of branch offices to 1500 by 2009.
Ensuring better microfinance management To support mission critical systems and protect them from virus threats and attacks, a state of the art data centre is being set up in Bangalore. This will help SKS Microfinance consolidate multiple applications onto a single server with virtualisation technologies, investment protection for applications running on different operating environments, reduce management costs and risks through greater automation of administration tasks and minimise the cost to train and retain highly skilled technical staff.
Empowering lives A few years from now, people like Padma would be completely empowered by technology even though they are living far away from the hustle and bustle of urban life. Thirty-two-year-old Kamala lives in a remote village with her husband and two children. Her day starts at 5 AM when she does the household chores, sends her children off to school and sees her husband off to the farm, cooks for the day and settles down to work from home. She switches on her solar backed-up personal computer and checks her yahoo mails and makes sure to reply to her customers on status of the saree orders which she received a week back. She gets into a web portal and tracks whether her order logistics is on track or not. She switches on her webcam and uses video conferencing with her vendors and takes the latest positions on the stocks and materials. She is able to source the best material, use local talent and skills and build an enterprise right from home. On her mobile she checks her bank account balance, and finishes her shopping in the nearest kirana store paying him using her mobile banking gateway system. She uses her mobile to chat on tele medicine and confirms the prescription she is using for her son who is suffering from a minor infection. Sounds wild? This could be the future of Indian villages with technology and education. The world would be at our doorsteps literally. n
SKS Microfinance ties up with IT majors to expand financial reach In order to accelerate the mission of financial inclusion for the underserved, SKS Microfinance has recently launched a technology initiative in partnership with five IT majors viz. Microsoft, HCL Infosystems, Wipro Infotech, Compulink and Tulip. The initiative, expected to be operational by July 2008, will not only aid the creation of a conducive IT infrastructure but will also expand SKS’s services to reach the unreached. The new IT structure would significantly bring down the transaction costs, initiate faster processing of data, strengthen security, enable real-time data analysis and accelerate scaling in providing convenient services to poor. In this endeavour, SKS is planning to outgrow from its current base of 650 branches serving 17 lakh poor households to 1,500 branches serving 40 lakh households by the year 2009. The leading microfinance organisation has already provided over 432 million dollars in loans to over 14.5 lakh women. It plans to disburse an additional amount of INR 5,200 crore to rural clients in nearly 40,000 villages and slums in FY 2008-09 and plans to add a host of new financial services.
A.Srikanth, Assistant Vice President, srikanth.a@sksindia.com Mamta Bharadwaj, Vice President, mamta.bharadwaj@sksindia.com
SKS Microfinance, India
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i4d | April 2008
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Empowering rural India India Development Gateway (InDG) is a country led initiative that seeks to provide responsive and credible information products and services catering to the needs of rural communities in local languages. InDG catalyzes the use of ICT for collaboration and knowledge sharing among development stakeholders representing from Government, NGOs, community based organizations, private, and Academic, Research Institutions.
Objectives of the InDG initiative • •
• •
Strengthen the First level service providers to discharge services more effectively Educate the actual end user on various issues in the identified five sectors (Health Primary Education, Agriculture, Rural Energy and e- Governance) Establish Linkages with other portals and initiatives of similar nature Us e o f t e c h n o l o g y t o e n a b l e information availability and access
www.indg.in - A multilingual portal to address the information needs of the rural communities The uniqueness of the portal is the following aspects • Information, products and services in local languages • A one stop portal for information related to five important sectors related to rural livelihoods (Agriculture, Primary Education, Health, Rural Energy and e-governance) • A wide partnership base of varied development stakeholders for content generation • Value added content and services through an online as well as offline presence • A pro poor and pro women orientation in all aspects of portal development • Framework for sustainability of the initiative built-in www.indg.in hosts a variety of features that makes the portal user friendly and interactive. To highlight a few - a customised Content Management System supporting multilingual multimedia content, multilingual Discussion forum, online courses, live search, automated content flow, quarterly newsletter, polling and users feed back collation mechanisms. The portal presently hosts multilingual information on over 1000+ topics in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu and English related to the five focal areas for livelihood improvement. Marathi and Bengali are to be added
shortly. In each of the identified verticals, the portal hosts information related to the major issues of rural interest in the sector, important government schemes, technologies, database, credit options, field experiences, news update, downloadable forms, FAQs etc. A range of offline products in the sectors of Agriculture, Health and Primary Education are also available for use.
Connecting to the grassroots… InDG derives its strength in connecting itself to the grassroots through the outreach activities in select areas of Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand and Tamil Nadu. Community level workshops, Multi-stakeholder consultations and Capacity building activities for the first level service providers and the Village Knowledge Centre operators are facilitated in partnership with various agencies at regular intervals. �
India Development Gateway is an initiative supported by the Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, Government of India and executed by Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC).
April 2008 | www.i4donline.net
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India News SBI plans to sell products via e-Gram
Information for development www.i4donline.net
n Community Radio State-run radio in demand in India Fives states of India have expressed their desire to start their own radio stations and FM channels. Madhya Pradesh (MP), Bihar, Delhi, Karnataka and Punjab have put in applications to this effect with the Union Information and Broadcasting Ministry. The states have been pushing for their own radio stations despite a 1995 Supreme Court ruling that the ‘broadcasting media should be under the control of the public as distinct from the government’. After I&B Ministry’s approval, some states have even tentatively named their radio stations. So there is Karnataka Government’s Namma Banali (Our Voice) and MP’s Azad Hind Radio, both waiting for frequencies to be allocated to them. The Bihar Government has proposed Gung-ho project. The Delhi government’s plans too are awaiting a go-ahead from the I&B ministry. The Rajasthan Government is also giving shape to its broadcasting ambitions to promote community radio. Karnataka is going to the extent of picking and choosing government-friendly NGOs to transmit its message. The state will be putting in two-thirds of the finances.
n e-Governance e-Governance Scheme for cities finalised by Government of India
egov
Government has finalised a scheme on eGovernance in civic bodies of cities with a population of one lakh and above. The National Mission Mode Project on eGovernance in municipalities in 423 cities having a population of one lakh and above
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The State Bank of India (SBI) in the state of Gujarat, India will provide all banking services through e-Gram project. With this service people from rural areas will be able to avail of banking products without having to personally visit the nearest branch. The bank is looking to target more than 5,000 rural ICT kiosks in the next one year. The initiative will enable villagers to start a bank account with deposit amount as low as INR 50. People can also maintain their account with zero balance. SBI has also signed a MoU with Indian Postal Department to act as a facilitator for 50 post offices in a pilot project at Surendranagar, Anand and Bharuch districts in Gujarat. It has also signed up with Gujarat Agro Industries Corporation to market the bank’s products in 700 outlets out of the 1,200 outlets in the state.
over a period of five years has been prepared by the Urban Development Ministry. The exercise is aimed at enhancing the preparedness of urban local bodies to approach the market to finance its projects, he said. The scheme has been designed to cover eight services within urban local bodies. The services include registration and issue of birth and death certificate, payment of property tax, water supply and other utilities bills and procurement and monitoring of projects including e-Procurement.
from each house in all the villages across the state. The project is a time-bounded one and a weekly progress report has to be submitted to OPEPA, the monitoring agency for the said project. The government has established an Intranet system across various districts of Orissa The state government has also developed a real-time web based project monitoring system to keep tabs on the weekly progress in terms of financial and physical achievement, civil work and disbursement of different progress reports.
n Education Online database of Orissa kids launched
n Technology IT in India to get big boost in 2008
In one of the promising and pioneering efforts of Orissa based firm Cybertech Software Multimedia Pvt Ltd (CSM), a comprehensive and unique database of 10.68 million children of the entire state of Orissa has been developed. This database will aid in sharing with other departments vital statistics and data on children and will expedite the functioning of the much talked-about e-Governance project, ‘eShishu’. This movement under the Sarva Sikhsya Abhiyan (SSA) in the state. The Orissa Primary Education Programme Authority (OPEPA) has been selected as primary implementing agency. e-Shishu project includes codified household, school, teacher, child information in the state. The database also includes geographic, demographic and educational details of the children between the age group of 0 and 14 years. The project aims to collect information of children
The Department of Information Technology, Government of India announced that the year 2008 will be a roll out year for ICT in the country. The department is planning to connect 18,000 colleges across the states with higher educational institutes and computerisation of 13,000 courts. The department will also introduce broadband connectivity in rural areas and set up of 25,000 BSNL centres in villages, which would be started by the mid of this year. The estimated expenditure is around INR 10 billion to be spent in the next six years, also includes setting up of 100,000 kiosks in rural India. ICT is proposed to be used by common service centres (CSCs) to reach out to six lakh villages across the country, which will also generate direct employment for over four lakh individuals, these CSCs will cover other services like financial services, education, etc.
i4d | April 2008
Taking banking to the rural women Women’s first rural bank Mann Deshi Mahila Sahakari Bank (Mann Deshi) is a regulated cooperative bank run by and for women. Founded in 1997 by Chetna Gala Sinha, an economist and a social activist, Mann Deshi is India’s first rural financial cooperative institution to receive a cooperative license from the Reserve Bank of India. The Mann Deshi bank headquarter is in Mhaswad, a village in the district of Satara, Maharastra, India. Bank branch of Mann Deshi is distributed in Mhaswad, Vaduj, Gondavale with an extension counter in Dahiwadi. Mann Deshi clients are poor women with annual incomes below INR18,000 ($430). The bank caters to the needs of the disadvantaged groups of the community and is is proud to have become the first bank in the country to have more than 11,040 clients from backwards castes. Mann Deshi’s experience has shown that when women control the household finances, more money is spent on children, education, healthcare and other important domestic items. They believe that the financial empowerment of women will hasten the growth and development of rural India, thereby creating a better life for future generations. To this end, Mann Deshi has encouraged hundreds of women to become confident, capable leaders in their families and local communities. They have trained hundreds of their women to lead Self Help Groups (SHGs), manage their accounts, and keep financial records. Through its services Mann Deshi aims to equip women with liquid assets which can be used in emergency situations; to support women in becoming entrepreneurs; and to build on women’s ability to plan and save for their family’s future.
The deshi services Mann Deshi offers many services to their clients including savings, pensions, loans April 2008 | www.i4donline.net
When women benefit, families prosper and insurance. The Bank requires all of its borrowers to open savings accounts (regular savings, term deposits and weekly and monthly deposits) and to save regularlydaily, weekly, or monthly. In addition, it has created a long-term savings account for those wishing to save for old age. Mann Deshi is the first microfinance institution with a pension scheme in Maharashtra. The amount saved from the Pension
Mann Deshi aims to equip women with liquid assets which can be used in emergency situations
Scheme is sent to UTI Mutual Fund. UTI Mutual Fund invests 60 percent of this money in government securities (fixed profit) and 40 percent in shares (ownership in a company: variable profit depending on market conditions). UTI offers a floating interest rate between 8 percent and 15 percent. Individuals can receive loans of less than INR 15,000 with the signatures of two other women, who serve as guarantors. For higher amounts they must put up some form of collateral. Mann Deshi provides Life Insurance for clients between the ages of 18 and 60 and will insure sums from INR 5,000 to INR 50,000, through TATA AIG. Mann Deshi is also working on a partnership with another organisation that will allow women to purchase health insurance for themselves and their families. Mann Deshi has also partnership with SIDBI which has offered grants in-kind of hardware and software, as well as support
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umbrellas provide shade to protect the vendors from intense heat exposure in the summer time.
Business school for rural women On December 2nd 2006 Mann Vikas in partnership with HSBC launched the Mann Deshi Udyogini Business School for Rural Women. The School provides more than just vocational training to women; its courses offer a unique blend of skills, financial literacy and confidence building, all of which are necessary to successfully open or expand a business. Designed for women without a formal education, the Business School fills a capacity gap in the microfinance community, catering not only to the needs of women but also responding to skills gaps in the market. In addition to the Business School, in 2007 the ‘Business School on Wheels’ was launched in partnership with the Deshpande Foundation and Ashoka Foundation in Karnataka. It reaches out to women in the remotest areas who are usually left behind because of financial and/or cultural constraints. The bus has been customised to transport the necessary equipment and provide training space. Courses offered in the Business School on Wheels cover vocational, literacy and agricultural topics.
for ISO Certification process and capacity building programmes. Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC) bank has formed a partnership with Mann Deshi to create the Business School For Rural Women. HSBC has also generously supported Microfinance and a Payment and Management (PCM) initiative to appoint Mann Deshi as a correspondent bank.
Partnership initiatives
Recent endeavours
Mann Deshi, in partnership with its sister NGO, Mann Vikas Samajik Sanstha, offers a number of innovative support programmes for women. In rural areas of India, over 50 percent of girls enrolled in primary schools drop out by 5th standard because transportation costs deters their family from sending girls to school. The Bicycles to Keep Girls in School Programme offers a solution to this problem. Through partnerships with Mann Deshi, Mann Vikas and Mann Deshi’s SHG Federation, ‘Freedom Ride’ provides bicycles to rural girls at a zero percent interest loan. The ‘Umbrella Programme’ has distributed as many as 350 umbrellas to female trade vendors at interest free loans. These
Currently, Mann Deshi and Mann Vikas are working on developing and implementing a ‘Business Incubator’ which ultimately will have multiple locations. The BI will act as a resource centre for entrepreneurs to help them start and run their businesses by teaching them how to market their products to compete more effectively. Mann Deshi is also trying to incorporate new and advanced forms of technologies and services to foster accessibility and coordination. On an overall basis, the bank is continuously striving to serve the underpriviledged sections mainly women who live in the fringes of community life. n
Inclusion: A farce or a reality In the midst of government initiatives and non-governmental concers to extend banking services to the unbanked community, there are farmers in many places of rural India who are committing suicide due to their inability to repay agricultural loans. To potray this exclusive event, a play named ‘Suicide’ was staged in the School of Arts and Aesthetics Building, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi on 15th March 2008. The play ‘Suicide’ is yet another innovative attempt of theatre group ‘Sehar’ to bring forth real issues and concerns of the underserved communities. The one hour 10 minutes play with 12 dynamic scenes was an endeavour of Sehar to depict the living conditions of the dying farmers of Vidharbha region in Maharastra, India. Mrityunjay Prabhakar, the director of the play added, “Suicide is about the current socio-political and economic conditions of the Indian farmers in the framework of current agricultural and farmers’ crisis in India”. Mrityunjay further added that the play was a sincere effort not only to underscore the dismal economic conditions of the farmers in rural India but also to prove that financial inclusion either through e-banking or through the extension of rural credit and microfinance schemes is more a farce than a reality.
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i4d | April 2008
e-Agriculture News
Information for development www.i4donline.net
Infosys empowers Indian farmers
bringing irrigation to 11,500 hectares of agricultural land. The project will also improve an existing irrigation network across another 10,000 hectares. The project will also increase supplies of water for domestic use to rural communities and small towns in Punjab provinces districts of Attock, Rawalpindi, Jhelum, and Chakwal. The project will provide a reliable water supply, which will increase crop and livestock productivity and therefore increase people’s incomes. The project will also increase households’ access to cleaner water, therefore reducing sickness and mortality rates caused by waterborne diseases.
UN-backed biomass gas project provides clean power for rural areas in India Infosys Technologies has partnered with ACDI/VOCA, a non-profit organisation, for providing an application to improve efficiency of the country’s agro supply chain. The application will minimise inventory requirement, reduce waste and facilitate better integration between retailers and farmers. The application will also manage the supply chain from the level of profiling of farmer clusters, to crop planning, scheduling, tracking and forecasting. It will also enable farmers to access technical information like data and images, access to region-specific weather updates and market information such as daily sales volumes and average prices. Currently, 1,700 small farmers are integrated into organised retail supply chains through this application. Over the next 5-8 years, the solution will give a organise retail sector access to a reliable small holder production base.
ADB grants $75M to Pakistan to help in farming The Asian Development bank (ADB) will provide $75 million loan to Pakistan to build several multipurpose dams, irrigation canals and drinking water supplies across the Potohar Plateau near Islamabad. The project will improve the livelihoods of about 22,000 farming households by April 2008 | www.i4donline.net
United Nations backed biomass gasifier, which converts wood or agricultural residues into a combustible gas mixture was inaugurated in Boregunte, a village in the state of Karnataka, India. The project will clean power for rural dwellers. The plant was funded by the UN’s Global Environment Facility, and supported by the Ministry of Environment and Forests of the Government of India, the Government of Karnataka, and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The project will facilitate better access of electricity in remotest parts of the state. It is the second plant commissioned under the project and has the capacity of delivering 250 kilowatts of electricity, with excess power to be sold to the Bangalore Electric Supply Company, according to UNDP. Soon the third plant would be commissioned in Seebirayanapalya and another in Chinnenahalli.
Farmers in 12 Phillipino communities now Internet addicts Marcelino Dizon, a 60 year old farmer from Barangay Rang-ayan (Philippines)
turned on a computer and started surfing the net to search for answers. Like this, hundreds of farmers in 12 cyber communities around the country have become expert at using the Internet as a tool for improving rice-farming techniques. Mariano’s village is 21 km from the provincial capital of Digos where the Internet backbone has been installed and beamed to their cyber community by wireless technology. The cyber community project is being undertaken by the Open Academy for Philippine Agriculture (OPAPA), an alliance of two international organisations, six state colleges and universities, and nine agencies of the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Science and Technology. OPAPA also offers other services like the mobile classroom for Internet technology and the texting centre. The texting centre provides opportunities for farmers and technicians to get answers to their problems on rice production through text messaging. The mobile classroom, equipped with computers and an audio-video system, introduces the use of computers and Internet in remote areas. OPAPA has also shown a new way to farmers to get updated on agriculture developments, particularly on rice farming. The farmers can also consult with experts online and access other relevant services that are available on the web. The academy has also put up a web portal providing e-Learning on various rice production technologies. e-Modules have also ben developed for disbursing knowledge and information about other important crops.
Anambra government to train youths in agriculture The Anambra Government of Nigeria has earmarked N45 million for the training of 6,000 youths in agriculture-related skills. The state government was concerned at the way youths abandoned agriculture in preference to trading. Hence, it urged the government
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The i4d News to train youth in aquaculture, horticulture, domestic science, poultry, ICT, and bakery, as a part of a pilot project. Once the pilot scheme succeeds, the young graduates would be encouraged to start their own ventures, and the training programme would become an annual event to upgrade their skills. Furthermore, the government has commenced the distribution of 22 brand new tractors acquired at N71.3 million to co-operative farming groups and local government councils within the food producing belt.
US Agricultural Marketing Service to launch redesigned web site
According to workshop coordinator and farm specialist Norman Tsai, practitioners are using Taiwan as a model because of its great successes in its agricultural development programme. The workshop is one of the series of assistance in the field of agriculture and livestock from Taiwan Government. The two-day workshop concluded with overview of farm management, choice of farm business, farm management practices, improvement of business efficiency, financial administration and analysis in a farm, the economic analysis of an investment plan in managing a farm, management of the recreational agriculture and fishery and provincial agriculture centre management in Solomon Islands.
Neglect of agriculture aggravates poverty
The U.S. Department of Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) will relaunch its website on April 4, 2008. Users will find the new site at the same Internet address as the current site http://www.ams.usda.gov. Although many of the Web addresses for popular AMS pages will remain the same, customers should be aware that some addresses will change. The new website will contain all the information of current site but with a more consistent and customerfriendly layout. AMS has attempted to launch the new site several months ago, but technical problems forced the agency to roll back to its current site. AMS provides the efficient, fair marketing of U.S. agricultural products, including food, fibre, and specialty crops.
27 Agriculture officers of Taiwan learn farm management More than 27 agriculture extension officers in Taiwan have received a training on farm management in two-day workshop, organised by the Taiwan Technical Mission in collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock. The main aim of the workshop is for the officers to learn new knowledge and concepts on better farm management practices.
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According to t h e Ec o n o m i c and Social Survey of Asia and the Pacific 2008, chronic neglect of the agricultural sector in Asia and the Pacific is condemning 218 million people to continuing extreme poverty, and widening the gap between the region’s rich and poor. The survey was released by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) on March 27, 2008 in multiple locations. According to survey, a third of the region’s poor live in rural areas and they could be lifted out of poverty by raising agricultural productivity. The survey also calls for a comprehensive liberalisation of global trade in agriculture, as this would take a further 48 million people out of poverty in the region. According to the study, agriculture provides jobs for 60 percent of the working population and generates about a quarter of the region’s gross domestic product. In South Asia, growth in agriculture dropped from 3.6 percent in the 1980s to three percent in 2002-2003. According to the 2007 Bhutan Living Standard Survey (BLSS), carried out by the National Statistical Bureau, 23.2 percent of the Bhutanese population was found to be poor, mainly among the rural populace in Zhemgang, Samtse, Mongar, Lhuentse,
and Samdrup Jongkhar dzongkhags. The Bhutan Living Standard Survey of 9,798 households put the number of people below the poverty line at 146,100 out of an extrapolated population figure of 630,000, based on the 2005’s National Housing and Population census. The survey states that Bhutan’s overall budget deficit, excluding income from grants, is quite large. The budget deficit, including income from grants, rose to 3.5 percent of GDP in 2007, from 0.8 percent in 2006.
UK Government launches a new curriculum drive for agriculture The Government of UK is planning to teach agricultural skills in schools to 1419 year olds as part of a new reform. In its reform, the Government is planning to design a Diploma course in Environmental and Land-Based Studies by 2009 as a part of the national curriculum in some schools across England. However, the government is also hoping that by 2013 every young person in the country will have the opportunity to study the Diploma course within the curriculum. The new qualification will be available on three different levels, foundation, higher and advanced and will be equivalent to three and a half A-level course. On an overall basis, the Diploma course will offer both academic and vocational learning experiences to students.
Send in your announcements to i4d news Readers are invited to send briefings of international development news for coverage in the i4d magazine. The books, reports, studies, publications brought out by international development agencies that have a global bearing are welcome. We welcome feedback from our readers of the value of these pages. If you have suggestions of improving the readership value, please send an email to info@i4donline.net
Check out www.e-Agriculture.in for daily news updates i4d | April 2008
Parallel Tracks
29-31 July 2008 Pragati Maidan, New Delhi Organisers
Co-Organisers INDIA
knowledge for change
Supporting Partners
2008 INDIA
2008 INDIA
2008 INDIA
2008
www.eINDIA.net.in
Key Speakers 2007 Adrian Hall Director of Mobile Learning Steljes Ltd., UK
Kuldeep Nagi Asst. Director, e-Learning Assumption University Thailand
Asha Swarup Secretary, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting Government of India
Astrid Dufborg Executive Director, Global eSchools and Communities Initiatives (GeSCI), Dublin Ireland
K.S. Lasith Gunawardena Lecturer, University of Sri Jayewardenepura, Sri Lanka
Dr. Basheerahmed Shadrach Sr. Programme Officer telecentre.org/IDRC India
Buckley Dan Principal Consultant, Cambridge Education England, UK
Michael Clarke Head ICT4D, International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Canada
Isabel Guerrero Country Director – India World Bank
Cho Cheung Moon Director, Global Cooperation and Planning Team, Korea Agency for Digital Opportunity and Promotion (KADO) Korea
Mike Erlin Regional Vice President Blackboard, UK
Jainder Singh Secretary, Department of IT Ministry of Communications and Information Technology Government of India
Chris Thatcher Director, SE Asia Educational Development, Cambridge Education, Thailand
Nancy Knowlton CEO, SMART Technologies Canada
J Satyanarayanan CEO, National Institute for Smart Government (NISG) India
Gerolf Weigel Head - ICT4D, Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), Berne Switzerland
Shammema Parveen Knowledge Officer, Edutech Middle East
Dr. Maxine Olson UN Resident Coordinator and UNDP Resident Representative (India Head)
Harsha Liyanage Managing Director- Fusion Sarvodaya, Sri Lanka
Dr. Subarna Shakya Executive Director, National Information Technology Center, Ministry of Environment, Science & Technology, Govt. of Nepal
S Khuntia Joint Secretary, Department of Secondary Education and Literacy, Ministry of HRD Government of India
K.M.Taj-Biul Hasan Producer (TV & Radio) Media Centre, Bangladesh Open University, Bangladesh
Dr. Youn-Min Park Manager, KADO Korea
Dr. William Dar Director General, International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Topics (ICRISAT), India
eINDIA2008: Introduction Centre for Science, Development and Media Studies (CSDMS) announces and invites you to join the premier ICT4D (Information and Communication Technology for Development) event - ‘eINDIA2008’. The event aims to examine the myriad challenges, which appear in integrating Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) to different spheres of life, to share and work together, to analyze and assess, as well as to work towards realising a technology enabled knowledge society.
The eINDIA2007 Conference and Exhibition attracted more than 1200 participants from around 50 countries representing all continents, making it India’s largest ICT4D conference.
Programme Advisory Board
eINDIA2008 (http://www.eINDIA.net.in), fourth annual ICT4D forum in India will be convened at New Delhi, India from 29th to 31st July 2008. The three day forum aims to render active conferencing, networking and showcasing, while organising six seminal tracks- egov INDIA, Digital Learning INDIA, Telecentre Forum INDIA, eHealth INDIA, mServe INDIA, eAgriculture INDIA, and the i4d film festival As an international event, apart from the general public and the media, the eINDIA2008 Conference and Exhibition expects to bring together
Chair
Co-Chair
R Chandrashekhar
S Khuntia
Additional Secretary, DIT, Ministry of Communications and IT, Government of India
Joint Secretary, Department of Secondary Education and Literacy, Ministry of HRD, Government of India
discuss and exchange knowledge and ideas that will shape the future of global ICT development. The Conference offers a perfect platform for establishing and fostering high level networking contacts with leading representatives of the world’s ICT sector on both governmental and business levels.
Conference Objectives The conference aims to: •
The Venue: Pragati Maidan
eINDIA2007 featured the work of more than 300 speakers, addressing all forms of technology-enhanced knowledge needs, including a rich mix of themes, topics and a variety of session formats. 2000 high level representatives of the ICT industry, government, civil society, academia, and the private sector, from all across the globe to share the best practices and digital opportunities for development, to
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• •
Provide a collaborative forum to participants to share knowledge and ideas, enabling them to develop cross-sectoral contacts and partnerships, as well as to enhance their knowledge, expertise, and abilities; Give a reference framework for describing impact, and looking at approaches and methods currently used in the ICT4D sector, and their suitability; Highlight barriers of ICT integration in India and for other countries, and identify gaps in current research; Synthesise the main results of experience sharing and the progress made in recent years to provide a baseline for discussion with policy makers, and community of practitioners.
Exhibition
Organiser
The programme will feature an Exhibition and Demonstration area, where leading international ICT4D players, manufacturers, suppliers and service providers shall present their latest products and services. Participants will evaluate the exhibition as a critical meeting point for professional interaction within the conference.
C e n t r e f o r S c i e n c e, D e v e l o p m e n t a n d M e d i a S t u d i e s (www.csdms.in) is a leading Asian non-governmental institution engaged in advocacy, research and community building in eGovernment, ICT for Development, and knowledge management issues, through capacity building and media initiatives.
Exhibition Floor plan Hall No. 11 & 10 Pragati Maidan, New Delhi Important Links
Abstract Submission: www.eINDIA.net.in/abstract Registration: www.eINDIA.net.in/register
Contact
e-gov Gautam Navin +91-9818125257 Email: egov@eINDIA.net.in Digital Learning Siddharth Verma +91-9811561645 Email: DL@eINDIA.net.in eHealth Dipanjan Banerjee +91-9968251626 Email: eHealth@eINDIA.net.in mServe Siddharth Verma +91-9811561645 Email: mserve@eINDIA.net.in eAgriculture Rajat Bannerjee +91-9910573590 Email: eAgriculture@eINDIA.net.in Indian Telecentre Forum Vignesh S +91-9999654458 Email: ITF@eINDIA.net.in
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ICT potentials in agriculture This draft report is a summary of the online discussions and deliberations on eAgriculture.org. The online discussion forum has been conducted and sponsored by Kataylst, Bangladesh in coordination with Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), UN. The remaining part of this draft report will be published in our next issue. Outcome of the report will be put up before World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) follow-up Action meetings to be held in May 2008. The final report will be presented in the eAgriculture track of eINDIA 2008 event scheduled between 29th-31st July 2008 at New Delhi, India.
Background Noboby can gainsay the role of ICTs in modern agriculture and farming practices. To understand the present scenario and to explore further scopes, ‘e-Agriculture. org’ hosted a special online forum on the Role of Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) in Asia during 10-28 March 2008. The online discussion forum was sponsored by Katalyst, an NGO in Dhaka, Bangladesh in conjuction with Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO). The forum focused on PPPs role in making technology effectively work for agriculture and rural development in Asia-Pacific: initiatives such as Drishtee in India, Grameen Phone Community Information Centres (CIC) in Bangladesh, and Malaysian Tropical Fruit Information System (MTFIS) are examples of how PPP can contribute to food security, farm income and productivity, among others. There are many other examples in the region from which valuable lessons can be learnt. Discussions on challenges April 2008 | www.i4donline.net
and success stories, shared experiences and novel PPP approaches would eventually benefit ongoing interventions in the field of e-Agriculture and allow the stakeholders to design more yielding strategies and frame new interventions. The forum would also create the founding steps for practitioners and policy makers to design and implement successful eAgriculture schemes through PPP.
Summary of discussion: Week I The discussion of Week I that happened between March 10-15 2008, primarily focused on various Public-Private Partnership (PPP) models in e-Agriculture, how the public and private sector actors work together, lessons therein along with the challenges. The forum witnessed a healthy exchange of ideas from professionals and practitioners across continents.
The models The discussion cited a range of PPP models: from telecentres to call centres aimed at farmers; linking of academia and government; mobile phone operators setting up information centres, etc. Some examples discussed in the forum included
ITC e-Choupal, the LifeLines-India, Krishi Vigyan Kendra, Commonwealth of Learning supported ‘Lifelong Learning for Farmers’ Project, the Kisan Call Centres, Grameen Phone’s Community Information Centres, among others. The broad-based discussion provided a general picture of how PPP is working in the context of e-Agriculture. For example, in India, eChoupal, (run by ITC, a private sector entity) shows how mutual cooperation between ITC, rural entrepreneurs, state agricultural universities and the Indian government’s extension machinery has served to bolster the farmer’s expertise and day-to-day awareness of what needs to be done to cope with myriad agricultural needs. In Bangladesh, Grameen Phone in collaboration with WIN and a development project has established Community Information Centers (CICs) to disseminate agriculture-related information to farmers in their native language, Bengali.
Challenges In the course of the session, certain major challenges were identified by the discussants. Gauging the quantum of impact and incidence of PPP models on e-Agriculture was singled out as the major area of challenge. The other challenges identified by the discussants are related to inadequate infrastructure (electricity,
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connectivity) and support services such as maintenance; poor capacity to deliver appropriate services; awareness creation among the farmers; ownership of data, particularly the publicly generated information; content development and updates; authenticity of information; and lack of clarity in the public and private sector roles.
Making PPP models effective To make PPP models work and to reach at win-win situation for all, it is quintessential to understand the underlying incentives for the public and private sectors. For example, when developing content for farmers, one of the key sources of information is government though delivery channels may be best used through the private sector. The government, understanding fully that the private sector will disseminate vital agricultural information only by charging the user the cost of access in some cases or in other cases may choose to provide the information embedded with other basic services, should disburse relevant information on its own. Nonetheless, collaborative efforts between government, academic/research institutes, civil society and private organisations are essential for effective creation and dissemination of rich information content. According to the discussants, farmers must demand the services for the PPP initiatives to sustain and it is therefore important to create a ‘pull’ effect for the technologies from the target groups. The initiatives must focus on developing need-based services, delivering via appropriate channels and business models and monitoring through building in feedback loops in the business model. An innovative ICT application or a PPP model in agriculture will only be successful when it is adapted to the local context and is responsive to farmers’ needs. Critical and time dependent knowledge of farm input affecting crop productivity and profit of the farmers is the key differentiator to create value propositions. Awareness for agriculture services can be generated by understanding the local culture and networks where NGOs can play a role. Likewise, it is important to involve local authorities and opinion leaders. There are examples of taking information to the ‘last mile’: Bangladesh Rice Research Institute (BRRI) with International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) worked on information that could be downloaded and then provided by a service provider as a hard copy. This is essential where connectivity is an issue. Similarly, in Laos for the Northern Highlands IRRI did an exercise on who has computers and who has access to the Internet. The lack of computers and Internet access is a reason IRRI opted for a model that uses Internet, CD and hardcopy. The ‘last mile’ is clearly an area where more innovation is required. As ITC e-Choupal and Grameen Phone CICs show, entrepreneurship driven models are essential for sustainability of the PPP initiatives. Similarly, it is important to build on what exists and not to create new model for the sake of it or to bypass existing mechanisms or norms.
Links to models discussed: week I Viability and operational effectiveness of various models and projects were discussed in the initial week of the online discussion forum. To get a conmprehensive list of projects and models 28
applied and experimented by different agricultural institutes and civil society organisations, refer below to the links to various websites. • A griculture Marketing Information Network (AGMARKNET): www.agmarknet.nic.in • Agriculture Resources Information System (AgRIS), Haryana State: www.eindia.net.in/eagriculture/Fullpaper/ FullPaperGhanShyamBansal.pdf • Global Information and Early Warning System on food and agriculture (GIEWS): www.fao.org/GIEWS • Grameen Phone Community Information Centres: www. gpcic.org • ITC e-Choupal: www.echoupal.com • Kisan Call Centres: www.dacnet.nic.in/dwd/kisan_call_center. pdf • Krishi Vigyan Kendra: www.kvkbaramati.com; www. mitrakvk.org; www.kvk.pravara.com • LifeLines-India: www.btglobalservices.com/business/global/en/ docs/case_studies/lifelines_oneworld_india_case_study_en.pdf • MS Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF) and Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO): www.mssrfnva.org/publications/ISRO-MSSRF%20VRC-2004.pdf • V-Agri of ASHWINI Platform: www.byrrajufoundation. org
Summary of discussion: Week II Week II’s online discussion happened between 17-21 March 2008. The deliberations primarily were centered around cases of successful public-private partnerships in e-Agriculture. The aim of the deliberations were to identify and study cases which could be used as learning tools for practitioners and policy makers. Certain cases of agro-business and e-Farming initiatives were also discussed during the online session.
Case 1: IRRI Rice Knowledge Bank (RKB), Philippines IRRI’s RKB practice is in varying stages of in-country development in Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, the Philippines, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Nepal and Sri Lanka. The RKB concept is about producing reliable and robust information which can go on private as well as public servers. The development takes time and considerable project support, but is deemed a worthwhile investment for the public sector and donors. In Philippines, a vegetables seed company uses RKB information (mainly on Integrated Pest Management), publishes it and sells at a small cost to its extension and farmer community. IRRI follows the Creative Commons agreement: use and share the content with proper acknowledgement of the source generally for non-commercial purpose and with specific permission for commercial purpose as well. IRRI acknowledges that through various delivery channels (as the seed company and its extension), the material it produces can reach to the intended beneficiaries such as farmers and extension persons who may not otherwise access the requisite information. Both IRRI and the vegetables seed company were satisfied with the agreement. n To be continued in the next issue... i4d | April 2008
The magic of plastic cards Introduction According to the UK Financial Inclusion Taskforce, there are three main concerns in financial inclusion; access to banking, access to affordable credit and access to free face-to-face financial advice. The term ‘Financial Inclusion’ is defined as an extension of banking and financial services at an affordable cost to unbanked people of the community. Unlike financial inclusion, ‘Financial Exclusion’ signifies the lack of access (by the economically poor and unbanked people of society) to appropriate, low-cost, fair and safe financial products and services. Since the last couple of years, infusion of ICT in banking services has reversed traditional banking procedures and many branch banking services have been replaced by Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) and other technological platforms. In India, Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is working at tandem to operationalise banking services at the remotest corner of the country with the help of small hand held devices or mobile phones. The upcoming technologies like smartcard, virtual credit card and mobile phones provide expedient banking services at affordable cost.
Who are the excluded and why? Many people across the globe are excluded from mainstream banking. These ranges from people with low income to people with low information and accessibilty to people with no social security or insurance cover. The main reasons behind exclusion are: Lack of information: Lack of informationabout the role and function of banks, banking services and products, interest rates, etc. stop people from including themselves in mainstream banking. Insufficient documentation: Many April 2008 | www.i4donline.net
people (even in metropolis and urban areas) are unable to show their self identification documents during the opening of a bank account or during taking a loan. Lack of awareness: Many people are unaware of the banking terms and conditions laid down from time to time. High transaction charges: Various commercial banks across the globe levy transaction charges on credit or debit transactions, on overusage of banking services, on cheque book issuance etc Lack of access: Accessibility is a problem from all those people who live in geopolitically isolated regions. Moreover, as most of the commercial banks are located in the vicinity of cities, people in rural areas (mainly in developing countries) have a geographical barrier in accessing banks. Illiteracy: Because of illiteracy, a substantial number of people are unable to take recourse to banking services.
Technology to expedite financial-inclusion There are different forms of technologies and other possible inbuilt technology
solutions which reduces the cost of providing financial services. There are several hand-held devices which connect to the host computers through General Packet Radio Service (GPRS)/Global System for Mobile communications (GSM)/Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA)/Landline networks, etc. The devices also come in several forms like computers/simputers/ Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs), programmed mobiles, etc. Currently, there are three main technologies that are used globally. These are ATMs, Smart Card Technologies (SCTs) and Mobile Payment Systems (MPS). Here only SCTs and MPs are discussed: The Smartcard technology A smartcard, which is also known as integrated circuit or chip card is a pocket sized card with an embedded integrated circuit to process information. A smartcard can be either be a micro-controller with internal memory or a memory-chip alone. Smart-card stores data which can be either in the form of value or information or both. Smartcard enhanced systems are
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adoption, usage and application of smart card technology. Alliance membership includes over 150 US based organisations and international organisations covering a full spectrum of industry suppliers, integrators and end user groups. Banrisul, a state-owned bank in the Southern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul launched a chip based debit card in 2006. The card carries a digital certificate for online banking and identity verification. So far, the bank has issued 500,000 digital certificates of which 100,000 are stored on smart cards or USB tokens. With regard to mobile banking, there are also corporate initiatives in Brazil. Very recently, Visa has entered into an alliance with Companhia Brasileira de Meios de Pagamento (VisaNet do Brasil), in order to test mobile remote payments. This process, initiated through the mobile network, will enable customers to conduct payments (even while travelling) through mobile devices. The Government of Mexico has issued electronic gadgets starting from smart bank cards to contactless payment to government-issued healthcare smart cards. Around 30 percent of bank cards in Mexico are smart cards with the goal of full migration by 2008. Industry experts estimated that Latin American countries spent over US $200 million on card technologies in 2006, up 70 percent from the prior year. Asia: To expand the smartcard industry in the Asia Pacific region, the Asia Pacific Smart Card Association (APSCA) (www.apsca. org) was established in 1997. So far, APSCA has over 40 members including China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Australia and Pakistan. The Association is promoting the adoption of smart cards where relevant, under suitable standards, across all areas of the private and public sectors. In India, the State Government of Andhra Pradesh (GoAP) has also piloted project on routing social security payments to widows, handicapped, old and eligible weavers through the use of smart cards and business correspondents. Currently, the pilot project is covering 50,000 beneficiaries and it is expected to cover five million beneficiaries by August 2008. Other departments of government like the India Transport Department will soon provide smartcard loaded driving license to drivers. To empower the ‘smart card industry’ in India, the Finance Minister, P. Chidambaram announced that Haryana and the Union Territory of Chandigarh will introduce on a pilot basis a ‘smart card’ based system to deliver food grains under the Public Distribution System (PDS) at affordable prices. Under the new scheme, the smart cards will serve as ration cards. The card would also help in maintaining inventories at the Government’s end. In December 2006, State Bank of India (SBI) launched a project to provide banking facilities to presently excluded sections of population of Aizwal,
currently used in several key applications, including healthcare, banking, entertainment, transportation, telecommunications, secure identification and other applications. Apart from smartcard, biometric card is another technology, which uses automated method to verify the identity of a person based on a physiological or behavioural characteristics. Biometric authentication requires comparing a registered or enrolled biometric sample (biometric template or identifier) against a newly captured biometric sample (for example, a fingerprint captured during a login). Biometric-based authentication applications include workstation and network access, single sign-on, application logon, data protection, remote access to resources, transaction security and web security. Secure electronic banking, investing and other financial transactions, retail sales, law enforcement, and health and social services are some areas where biometric card technology is used. Mobile payment systems Mobile payments system or m-Commerce is the ability to buy and sell goods and services through wireless handheld devices like mobile phones, PDAs, etc. m-Commerce enables users to access the Internet without needing to find a place to plug-in. m-Commerce is based on the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) technology or Near Field Communications (NFC). NFC is short-range wireless technology that evolved from a combination of existing contactless identification and interconnection technologies.
Financial Inclusion: A global perspective Latin America: Due to factors like migration of mobile telecommunications operators to GSM, the financial migration to EMV (standard for interoperation of IC cards), the move to smart transmit fare cards and new government and commercial secure identification initiatives, the Government of Latin America has established Smart Card Alliance to accelerate the widespread
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Pithoragarh and Medak in the States of Mizoram, Uttarakhand and Andhra Pradesh respectively. In the first phase of the project, SBI has registered 2,400 customers of nine villages. In 2006, the Department of Motor Traffic, Sri Lanka introduced a novel driving license in the form of a smartcard. The Driving License Card project will also carry high-tech security features like an optically variable link, holograms, micro printing and guilloches. The card will also carry all biometric information such the photograph, digital signature and fingerprints. The Government of Sri-Lanka in collaboration with Face Technologies, a South Africa based firm, has initiated a US $ 30 million Build, Operate and Transfer (BOT) project spread over a period of seven years. Recently, National Development Bank (NDB) of Sri-Lanka has mobile payment solutions in partnership with mChek and Dialog Telekom. This is the first type of a Card Present mobile platform in the world. A government body of Singapore, ‘Spring Singapore’ introduced the use of smartcards in November 2007. The government body stated, in future, smartcards will be used to scan e-Passports and identification (ID) cards or devices based on smart card chip. Dubbed as the Singapore Standard for Smart Card ID (SSID) or SS 529 SSID, the standard is expected to facilitate interoperability between different chip-based ID cards and their readers, by specifying the data structure, security and access requirements contained in ID cards or devices based on a smart card chip. These devices include Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs), watches and mobile phones. So far, 40,000 smartcard readers are already deployed in government and private organisations in the islandstate. The Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore and the Port of Singapore Authority have also issued 70,000 ID cards and 100,000 ID cards to their staff respectively, primarily for identification and door access control. Africa:To provide financial services across the country, the Government of Kenya and Central Bank of Kenya have shown their interest in branchless banking. Last year, the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP), a global resource centre for microfinance, conducted a study in Kenya from February 22 to March 2 to analyse the policy, legal, and regulatory environment for branchless banking. As an extension to this, CGAP has launched the Safaricom’s M-PESA service as the first e-Money product. So far, M-PESA, a mobile phone-based payment service has 500,000 registered users. Like many developing countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America, Uganda’s banking system is also centered in the capital and big cities. More than 90 citizens are accessing banking system and financial services. In order to bring modern electronic banking services to millions of Ugandans, the Government of Uganda has teamed up with America based company to create at least 1000 savings and credit cooperatives in rural areas. Like other African countries, Nigeria established an independent club called Smart Card Society of Nigeria in 2001. The club was established to promote the adoption of smart cards where relevant, under suitable standards and learn about new April 2008 | www.i4donline.net
technologies, standards and applications. In 2007, SmartSwitch, the Nigerian subsidiary of Net1 Universal Electronic Payment System (UEPS) Technologies Inc., deployed the UEPS technology through several value added applications, including banking, government, health care, pensions, transport, microfinance and insurance across the country. According to the company reports, around 90 percent of the 140 million citizens of Nigeria are clearly underbanked or unbanked and they only transact in Cash. With Ghana’s banks trying to modify its electronic payment gateway system by infusing new techonogies and technologyenabled services, inclusion endeavours in Ghana has become manifest. ‘e-zwich’, a recent initiative floated by the Bank of Ghana in congruence with other banks will ensure effective transactions between banks both rural and urban. The iniatiative will also support all forms of e-Banking technologies including smart cards, credit/debit cards, mobile payment systems etc.
Conclusion From the recent initiatives undertaken by the different world governments to foster financial inclusion, one cannot undermine the need to include the economically underprivileged in the mainstream banking sector. The role of various ICT tools and associated technologies in providing financial solutions to the unbanked is also substantial. Rural ATMs, plastic cards (like smart cards, biometric cards, etc.) and mobile payment technologies do have the ability to engage the unbanked sections. n Ritu Srivastava, ritu@csdms.in
References • • • • •
http://cab.org.in/Control/ict_control/knowledgebank/Technological_ approach_to_Financial_Inclusion_21~12~2007~12~15~01.pdf http://www.apsca.org http://www.pfrc.bris.ac.uk http://www.mobileinfo.com/Mcommerce/payment_Systems.htm http://cab.org.in/flc/pdf/speeches/dg_ut_financial_inclusion_r.pdf
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Development News
Information for development www.i4donline.net
India: UNDP poverty alleviation plan for BIMARU States The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has chalked out a poverty alleviation plan for Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh (BIMARU) states of India. The five year plan will focus on empowerment of people and enable them to participate in decision making. The Country Director of UNDP, Dierdre Boyd, stated that these are the states that generally have the highest rate of poverty and low human development. UNDP wants to focus on how to strengthen the local people and make them involve in decision-making. Besides poverty alleviation, the UNDP plan will also incorporate HIV/AIDS awareness, financial inclusion and access to credit. Optimum utilisation of natural resources, environmental protection in the backdrop of climate change and preparedness to counter natural disasters would be another aspect of the plan. UNDP is also trying to support the Indian Government on the implementation of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme (NREGP).
UN launches initiative to improve Internet access in Asia-Pacific region The United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) has launched a new database to promote the development of telecentres and common community centres so that people in the economically backward and remotest areas, from farmers to students gain access
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to computers and the Internet. The Telecentre Online Database will cover more than 12000 telecentres in 16 countries. The online database will also provide statistical data and information on individual countries and specific projects, with information accessible by a keyword search. The project is a part of a larger initiative of the UN’s five regional commissions called ‘Knowledge networks through ICT access points for disadvantaged communities,’ which aims to empower poor and disadvantaged communities, particularly women by converting selected e-Centres into global knowledge hubs to bolster communities’ abilities to organise, share and disseminate knowledge.
UN releases e-Government readiness The United Nations (UN) has released a survey report on e-Government readiness around the world. The Un i t e d A r a b Emirates (UAE) has been the highest ranked country in the Middle East. By this, UAE has moved up to 32nd spot from 42nd in 2005. All the Gulf countries made major improvements reflecting the regional drive towards developing knowledge-based economies. The survey was based on the impact of the regional Information Technology (IT) industry. According to the UN report, UAE is among only a handful of countries that uses eMail and RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed system to interact with its citizens. It is among the top five countries in terms of enabling transactions between the government and citizens. The UAE’s Ministry of Labour website was highlighted as one of the few government sites anywhere with an electronic signature. According to the UN report, regional e-Government sites also came out as very progressive like Kuwait’s ministry of social welfare was noted for offering
online account creation, form submission and payment, while Jordan’s Ministry of Education was noted for allowing online payments as well as encouraging citizen participation. The Qatari government’s new web portal ‘Hukoomi’, which was unveiled in February 2008 also provides an impressive array of 275 services, 56 of which are specific e-Services.
UNICEF sends emergency education supplies to Zambia The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) is providing emergency support to flood affected Zambian schools. UNICEF has contributed in 58 ‘schoolsin-box’ from its supply division in Copenhagen. The Zambian Ministry of Education will provide the learning materials for all the flood affected children who wish to study. The highly portable materials are designed to provide teachers and students with everything they need to resume school, an extremely important activity especially for children whose families have been forced to flee their homes because of rising floodwaters or in areas where school buildings have been damaged or destroyed. Each schools-in-box contains enough supplies for 100 children, which will be distributed over 40 community and government schools in flood damaged areas of Southern, Lusaka, and Western Provinces. The kits contain learning material for students from standard 1-9 and include exercise books; slates, an inflatable globe, a student register; crayons, pencils, pencil sharpeners, ball-point pens and felt-tip pens; erasers; two chalkboards; chalk and chalk duster; chalkboard paint; a chalkboard compass and ruler; a clock; flipchart markers; scissors; tape; paint brushes; several educational posters; over 90 coloured wooden cubes; book bags; rulers; safety scissors; and a metal box for transport and storage. UNICEF Zambia will be providing $139,000 in emergency supplies to the Ministry of Education, including 36 large tents and 40 recreation kits which include volleyballs, netballs, footballs, nets, and whistles. i4d | April 2008
Rural financing and the role of ICT The need for microcredit Self-Help Group (SHG) movement in India constitutes one of the largest microfinance networks in the World. However, SHGs’ decentralised nature and theoretical independence from any one promoting agency preludes the ability to aggregate, analyse and monitor their data at a statewide, regional or national level. Current methods of evaluating SHG credit are ad hoc, consisting only of cursory reviews of ledgers and transaction statements. Controls on internal member accounts are non-existing in many cases. Further, performance monitoring of products and services on economic and social impact parametres is at most tertiary, hence disallowing critical input in improving services and products for better impacts. The main problem in rural financial services is the non-availability of accurate, timely and needed information for decision making at higher levels. In microfinance sector, due to the lack of information, the SHG members cannot ascertain the financial position (profitability) of their group, the documents required to apply for loans and repayment to portray their strengths.
The Ekgaon case Ekgaon technologies established on 1st October 2002, provides technology and management support for knowledge management, strategic decision-making and business development. It works towards increasing efficiency of value chain process, enabling access to financial services, technology and strategic consulting for primary producer communities across South Asia. Building upon its earlier work in Management Information Systems (MIS), Ekgaon Technologies works towards development of an integrated framework of field based monitoring, transacting and realtime interaction system for addressing April 2008 | www.i4donline.net
Self Help Groups the service gap for both SHGs and JLGs (Joint Liability Groups). Ekgaon’s work is centered around enabling support for rural enterprises building economies of Ekgaon’s unique business model, identifing its user group as customer for information based services, that are sometimes very crucial for business/ professional decision making and hence for sustainability of the business and livelihoods of the client. While creating cost effective technology systems, Ekgaon ensures that sustainability of services are beyond the system on which it has been built. Ekgaon’s thinking in this line has led them to believe in principles of open source and emerging technologies enabled through networked approach. Considering the current and expected growth of the microfinance market in India (and South Asia) the system targets
to reach a large number of existing SHG networks and JLGs being promoted by large number of NGOs/MFIs/Banks. Ekgaon is also making efforts to identify and extend service support to several other decentralised SHGs operating in the region with creative products identified to address their information service requirements.
Developing a self-sustaining communities Accountability of a system is important to achieve when an institutional access is lacking, like what we see in lack in banking services in rural areas. ‘Banking Correspondent’ mechanism which has now been encouraged by Reserve Bank of India is an aim to enable financial inclusion. SHG model which preceded ‘Banking Correspondent’ model has its own inherent institutional strength as a micro-banking
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institution at village level. A technological solution which aims at strengthening the financial service delivery allowing ‘financial independence’ of the SHG-Federations would in a long way help in developing self sustaining communities. Community owned and managed financial institutions allows greater control in the financial behaviour of the microfinance institutions to be able to serve the ‘real’ need of the communities. Technologies and systems as Ekgaon has developed and implemented across Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, aim at enabling institutional access of community owned financial institutions with formal financial institutions such as banks, venture capital funds and other financial institutions.
first Stockholm Challenge – GKP Award 2007 in the ‘economic development’ category. The Stockholm Challenge - GKP Award recognises initiatives that leverage Information Communication Technology (ICT) to improve living conditions and increase economic growth in all parts of the world. The award is a new Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) prize promoted by Global Knowledge Partnership (GKP), Malaysia and the Stockholm Challenge, Sweden. It focuses on social inclusion world-wide and champions ICT projects that show clear benefits to people and their communities, wide impact and sustainable business models. Out of 119 entries in the award from across the globe, nine finalists were chosen by the jury; three in the Education category and two in each of Culture, Economic Development and Public Administration. The award was received by Vijay Pratap Singh Aditya, CEO, Ekgaon from Dr. M S Swaminathan, the eminent Indian Scientist and father of India’s Green Revolution. The jury commented that the project demonstrated use of ‘Accessible tools that facilitate the self management of communities, an excellent application of technology.’ The ceremony included Lim Keng Yaik, Minister for Energy, Water and Communications, Malaysia, Rinalia Abdul Rahim, Executive Director, Global Knowledge Partnership, Malaysia, Walter Fust, Chair of the GKP Executive Committee and Director-General for the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, Switzerland besides over 1750 delegates from 135 countries of the world. Earlier in the year Ekgaon’s co-founder and Director, Tapan S Parikh was awarded 2007 Humanitarian of the Year Award by Technology Review 2007 Young Innovator Award (under 35), USA. The prestigious award shared by leading technology innovator all cross the world recognised Parikh’s work in new technology development for enabling access to services using mobiles phones. Commenting on the increasing amounts of recognition received by Ekgaon, Vijay Pratap Singh Aditya said, ‘ekgaon intends to bridge the rural-urban divide through innovative use of technology for providing services’. He further added, ‘We are glad that CAM technology has created platform for banking inclusion for rural population of the world. We are encouraged by wide acceptance of our mobile phone based financial inclusion platform for enabling microfinance access’. Aditya outlined Ekgaon’s vision to work towards development of communities in emerging economies such as South Asia and building communication and information systems for increasing efficiency of business enterprises and value chain process. He stated that Ekgaon is dedicated to provide appropriate and affordable solutions.
The CAM model The ‘CAM - Mobile Enabled SHG Microfinance Management System’ is an innovative development made for the collection of rural SHGs financial information and portrays them on online server to enable the stakeholders to access and retrieve the required financial information, at anytime and anywhere. This enables the rural women to utilise the various services like financial services, banking services, etc. at their doorstep.
CAM enabled mobile Service framework for microfinance is a three-tier document-based architecture for providing remote rural information services for SHGs in Microfinance. The user tier consists of a set of paper forms that people use to record information, perform queries and conduct transactions. The server is a standard web application server, which can reside locally, in a nearby town, or virtually in the Internet ether. The middleware resides on the mobile phone, which plays the role of scanner, user interface, network, cache and pre-processor in the system. The system creates a decentralised management information system, increases efficiency of fund management and reduces credit journey cycle. Since the data is captured using a mobile phone and sent to the online server, the field staff monitoring the SHGs would supply the computer printed reports to the SHG’s which help them to overcome all sorts of difficulties in terms of reports, book-keeping and portfolio management. This also enables the other stakeholders like SHG federations, banks, NGOs, SHPI, MFIs to track their loan repayment online and arrive at the decisions on time.
Conclusion Ekgaon technologies’ initiatives pertaining to microfinance, rural credit and mobile service framework is enabling financial inclusion at different levels of community engagement and resource coordination. While outlining Ekgaon’s expansion of services, Mr. Rohit Magotra, COO, Ekgaon explained that the company is interested to expand its technology implementation across South Asia, particularly in Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bangladesh besides India.n
Ekgaon’s success stories Ekgaon’s project ‘Enabling financial inclusion and increasing efficiency of Self Help Groups Microcredit Federations’ won the
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n TELECENTRE TALKS
Does policy provide practice or vice versa? Udo Richard Averweg IT Research Analyst, Information Services, eThekwini Municipality and University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa averwegu@durban.gov.za
Introduction Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have profoundly changed the public sphere, even in countries in which only a minority of the population has a personal computer and a modem in their home. In Latin America two basic models can be distinguished: the Internet cafés (small or medium-sized enterprises with commercial goals) and the so-called ‘telecentros’ typically non-profit-making and organised as a Non Governmental Organisation (NGO) or as part of communal structures (Hoffmann, 2005). The continent’s most successful telecentros project is the cabinas públicas de Internet (‘Peruvian telecentres’) which shows how smooth the transition between the two types may turn out to be and how much they can complement each other (Herzog cited in Hoffmann, 2005). The leading force behind this successful initiative is the Red Científica Peruana (Peruvian Science Network, RCP) an NGO network which connects approximately 50 academic institutions and social organisations. In developing countries there is a plethora of government white papers, mission statements, strategic plans and policies which indicate a striving effort towards bringing coherence in development policies. In the development policy market arena, Edwards (1999) suggests that the orientation is always ‘future positive’. Mosse (2003) indicates that significant energy is devoted to generating the right policy April 2008 | www.i4donline.net
models and the practices and events that they are expected to generate or legitimise in particular contexts. Getting the theory right is key to facilitating successful practice. A question is thus posed: What occurs if government policy instead of providing practice, practices produce policy? In this article, this question is discussed with specific focus on the successful cabinas públicas in the developing country of Peru, Latin America.
Some perspectives on policy and practice In many countries, access to ICT remains hampered by government control of the telecommunications sector (Dorsey, 2006). To become full participants in the knowledge society, these countries will have to reform their existing policies and systems by ceding a greater role to the competitive private sector. Dorsey (2006) suggests that state monopolies have resisted giving up control of basic services which has slowed partially telecommunication reform efforts in some developing countries.
may be seen as problem-solving ie. directly shaping the way in which development is to be done in a country. In the opposing second case, there is a critical view that sees policy as a rationalising initiative which may conceal the hidden purposes of bureaucratic dominance or power. Mosse (2003) argues that neither of these view does justice to the complexity of policy making and its relationship to project practice. Whilst the Peruvian government is keen on achieving goals between the people and the government, the actual people are endeavouring to find new ways to conduct their business without little concern what should be the purposes of connectivity (Villanueva, 2005). Cabinas emerged as individual commercial initiatives without initial support from the government or private sector. However, due to their prevalent success, they are increasingly attracting the interest of both (Fernández-Maldonado, 2003b). However, Peruvian attitudes toward the Internet are somewhat distant from the
Peru there is a need for formulating “ Indevelopment policies in respect of its ‘cabinas’ and to adopt social practices that exist An important ICT sector driver in telecentre development is market and regulatory reform. Some governments from developing countries have made reforms in order to encourage rural telecommunications access quickly and ‘cheaply’. The relationship between policy and field practices has a disjuncture in that two opposing views on government development policy exists. In one case there is an instrumental view of policy which
intents of governmental officials – the latter attempting to synchronise their projects to an international agenda. Peru is a country with little connection between the government and the population as social agents and it is not surprising that there is a significant problem regarding the absence of a strong relationship between plans and actual needs (Villanueva, 2005). This may mean that while the Peruvian government may be seeking to align its
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communications initiatives to the international market, there appears to be little concern about how the Internet has created a set of established social practices in Peru. The cabinas públicas have indeed contributed to turning a significant part of the marginalised Peruvian population from urban as well as rural backgrounds into regular users of the Internet (Hoffmann, 2005). Villanueva (2005) indicates that the social practices created by the cabinas are defining the first step towards thinking how to propose any set of (government) policies that try to establish any kind of community or socially relevant use of the Internet. Clearly this raises the question whether existing social practices will influence or shape government policy.
policies in respect of cabinas to be formulated. Some possible government policy options for cabinas are now discussed.
Policy options In order to deal with the Peruvian Internet (ie. cabinas públicas) in terms of the Peruvian government’s development policy, Villanueva (2003) suggests three possible options: • to engage the cabinas, anchoring them in the communities, mostly through specific services, training and content; • to create a parallel access infrastructure, centred on community building when possible, or in government services, or a combination of both; and • leave things as they are now, letting the market work its magic. Appropriate regulatory frameworks establishing the ‘rules of the game’ for the cabinas are essential to ensure that they are designed and implemented most effectively to carry out their fundamental role as tools of development in Peru. Such a framework can also provide an environment that encourages private sector participation as well as cross-sectoral linkages. Thus there is a need for the Peruvian government to establish a clear national strategy which addresses concerned issues while developing its policy framework model parametres.
Cabinas públicas de Internet The first cabina was established in 1995 as an initiative of the Red Científica Peruana – the first Internet service provider in Peru. Since 1998, cabinas have spread quickly in low and middle-income districts in Lima (capital city of Peru) and in other towns (eg. Sante Mariá de Nieva). The subscription model in the Peruvian cabinas allowed lower middle class adults and many students access ICT when ownership was not possible. This was as a result of individual initiatives of thousands of local entrepreneurs providing a service that is in high demand among local customers: ‘cheap’ Internet access (Fernández-Maldonado, 2003b). Peru is among the leading nations regarding Internet access in Latin America (Hoffmann, 2005). Peruvians are proud of their cabanas - they are considered something ‘typically’ Peruvian. The literature indicates that governments have engaged in initiatives to establish telecentres in disadvantaged regions of both the developed and developing parts of the world. However, this has not been easy since such initiatives require significant investments of funds that developing countries cannot afford. The cabinas’ organisational model has evolved and adapted itself to different circumstances. The cyber café model is significantly different from government top-down initiatives (Fernández-Maldonado, 2003a). While cyber cafés have become an important means of providing ICT access to underserved people (particularly in urban areas), they are not designed with a developmental concept in mind nor have they been used by governments to help achieve universal access requirements. There is a need to approach the cabinas and turn them into agents working for their own benefit as well as for the common good (Villanueva, 2005). This may require appropriate government policies. For example, a national policy of rollout requirements for unserved and underserved areas in Peru could be considered. Cabinas have emerged as individual commercial initiatives without initial support from the government. The government approach to universal access in Peruvian cities has been basically regulating competition in the telecommunications sector (Fernández-Maldonado, 2003b). Only quite recently has the government begun to pay attention to cabinas because of the visible interest of the population in cabinas. The Peruvian government has approved legislation to regulate the functioning of cabinas. Some groups are demanding better services, facilities and a stronger leading role in the telecommunications sector from the side of the government (Fernández-Maldonado, 2003a). Policy is an end rather than a case; a result, often a fragile one, of social processes (Mosse, 2003). There is thus a need for development
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Some concluding remarks Mosse (2003) suggests that projects work because they sustain policy models offering a significant interpretation of events, not because they turn policy into reality. The gap between policy and practice is thus negotiated away. In the case of Peruvian cabinas, the balance is perhaps ambivalent. The Peruvian Internet has now become a substantial component of the public sphere in Peru. Given the knowledge society and cabinas’ existing social practices, these can provide meaningful input towards Peru’s national strategy policy for universal Internet service so that community needs are harmonised in the public sphere. Similarly these social practices can be used when producing the country’s development policies. Government policy makers have an important role in promoting ICTs in Peru’s national economic development. n References
Dorsey, S., 2006. Community Learning Centers. Digital Opportunities for Development, 13-41. Available at www.com.washington.edu/ict4d/upload/20060126_ 191400.pdf [Accessed 4 November 2007]. Edwards, M., 1999. Future positive: International Co-operation in the 21st century. Earthscan Publications, London. Fernández-Maldonado, A. M., 2003a. Satisfying the Demand for ICT Connectivity of Low-Income Groups, Akhtar Badshah, Sarbuland Khan, Maria Garrido (Eds), Connected for Development, United Nations Information and Communication Technologies Task Force, 57-60, November. Fernández-Maldonado, A. M., 2003b. Cabinas públicas de Internet, Akhtar Badshah, Sarbuland Khan, Maria Garrido (Eds), Connected for Development, United Nations Information and Communication Technologies Task Force, 213-220, November. Hoffmann, B., 2005. Downloading Democracy? Potential and Limitations of the Internet for Advancing Citizens’ Rights in Latin America. IPG 3/2005. Available at library.fes.de/pdf-files/id/ipg/02949.pdf [Accessed 4 November 2007]. Mosse, D., 2003. Good Policy Is Unimplementable? Reflections on the Ethnography of Aid Policy and Practice/ EIDOS Workshop on ‘Order and Disjuncture’ the Organization of Aid Development, SOAS, London, 26-28 September. Villanueva, E., 2005. A Preliminary Assessment of the Policy Consequences of Generalised Commercially-Based Access to the Internet: A Report on Two Cases in Peru. Proceedings of The 2nd annual conference of the Community Informatics Research Network (CIRN2005), ISBN 0‑620‑34769-4, 216-230, Cape Town, South Africa, 23-26 August.
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n RENDEZVOUS
ICT for communities Introduction
Commission delivered the keynote speech. In h i s s p e e c h , h e applauded the grassroots initiatives undertaken by VIIT and Intel in the health and education sector. He also highlighted the need to use appropriate technology to suit the local conditions in what he referred to as ‘Technology Osmosis.’ He cited availability of power and Internet connectivity as one of the major challenges ahead as we ahead on ICT for communities. The Conference Debate Speaking for Intel, Tom Burns, Director, Intel’s World Ahead Programme giving the valedictory address The delegates were challenged to consider John Davies, Vice the top issues facing ICT for development. President, Intel Corporation described and delivery of healthcare and education Discussions were wide-ranging and their activities as, “Technology can expand services. Wishing the conference a success, included all the ‘usual suspects’ plus what’s possible to create opportunities for Jainder Singh ended the keynote address some more thought-provoking issues. the people of India. Through the World with a call to the delegates to share and Many delegates spoke on their personal Ahead Program, we remain focused learn from the successful initiative of experience of working in rural areas and on accelerating access to technology, Baramati. the particular challenges, which they had improving education and increasing R Shivakumar, Managing Director faced. It was agreed that many of the Internet connectivity.” On the education (Marketing and Sales), South Asia, Intel issues identified also applied to different front, Intel will help equip about 100 added, “Under the World Ahead Program, countries. Delegates discussed a list of mobile computer labs in vans, five of which Intel is committed to work with governments issues to be ‘parked’ and considered further currently serve village schools in and around and the industry across the globe to facilitate for discussions in the conference. Baramati. Also, Intel Teach program helps better health and education through local educators integrate technology to technology. Conventions such as the Opening Presentations enhance classroom learning. It hopes to Baramati Initiative on ICT not only create Subhash Pani, Secretary, Planning train one million teachers (having trained awareness on global technology trends but nearly 40,000 educators also foster an environment for interaction in Maharashtra) and and collaboration between industry, Key issues discussed: help more than 30 government bodies, international experts, • Lack of financial requirements to scale up million students across university circles and World Ahead alliance, • Lack of trained human resources in the rural areas India by 2008. to help enrich the quality of technological • Acute shortage of Electricity J a i n d e r S i n g h , and intellectual human resource available • Certification for computer courses Secretary, Department of for the rapidly proliferating technology • Local language content Information Technology, economies.” • Increased amount of recurring costs Government of India • High cost of bandwidth was optimistic on the Successful models of digital • Lack of awareness about ICT use of technology as an communities (Pilot to Scale) • Lack of will to re-engineer government processes empowering tool for the M Moni, Deputy Director General, communities for access National Informatics Centre moderated Between 23 rd and 25 th March 2008, Baramati, a small town, located 99 Kms from Pune, Maharashtra, India, played host to international guests from all over the world. More than 150 participants followed the Vidya Pratishthan’s Institute of Information Technology (VIIT) and Intel’s invitation to attend the Eighth Annual Conference on Information and Communication Technologies for Development. The conference focused on scale and the economic benefits of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) on communities, exploring avenues through which governments, NGOs, development agencies and corporations can work, to successfully scale ICT initiatives to benefit the poor and marginalised.
April 2008 | www.i4donline.net
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the session. He introduced the theme of the session and asked the panelists to share, key challenges, examples of communities that implemented innovative usage models across education, healthcare, citizen services and farming communities, and recommendations. He emphasised that farming and small and medium enterprises has to play a critical role in achieving objective of faster and more inclusive growth. Hemantha Kumar Pamarthy, CEO, Hand in Hand Micro Finance Limited, shared with the participants the successful model of Citizen Service Enterprises. Hand in Hand have organised Self Help Groups (SHGs) and given charge of administering these centres. Dr Arjun Kalyanpur of Teleradiology said that two Yale physicians founded his organisation in 2002. Teleradiology enables the transfer of diagnostic images to another location for interpretation. It can facilitate the early diagnosis for better health It works on a low cost self sustaining model. Teleradiology started a pilot project with Ramakrishna Mission Hospital in Arunachal Pradesh. Dr Kevin Smith, Northern Ontario School of Medicine, Canada shared his experience on Kenya Telemedicine Project. Dr Sumanth C Raman of TATA Consultancy Services mentioned the various successful low-cost technology solutions namely, Disease Surveillance Systems, Telehealth Systems, Healthcare Management Systems, HIV/AIDS surveillance system for Tamil Nadu. He shared the key lessons learnt from these projects. He suggested linking the payment system with successful implementation of the project not for software development. Dr V. Shunmugam, Chief Economist from MCX shared the various ways of reaching out to rural customers. Prasad Dixit from Reliance raised the key challenges facing the scale-up namely: availability of power, connectivity, economic sustainability, and linguistic diversity. He said, “If the society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich”.
Finance, shared the vision and objectives of FINO. FINO’s objective is to provide financial services to the unbanked rural areas. It works with 25 million customers across 20 countries. It partners with ICICI, Union Bank of India, ICICI Lombard etc. FINO’s work concentrates on the 65 percent of population at the bottom of the pyramid. It offers the following services viz. credits, savings, remittance, insurance, loans, and social benefits through Conventional Teller Branch, Point of Sale, ATM, Internet, Mobile and Tele/Call. Some of the challenges to serve the rural community are, fool proof identity, illiterate populace, infrastructure, accessibility and reach, and information gap. FINO has a strong service level agreement with IBM for the robust technology architecture. R Guru Moorthy, Karishma solutions, Hyderabad spoke about the MARCH – Medical Access for Rural and Community Health which touches the life of three million people across eight countries. Dr Aruna Vedala of BigTech said that infectious diseases are the major cause of high mortality rate in Asia. The challenge of rural healthcare is unaffordable healthcare costs. Bigtech is one of the leading player in developing Handheld Point of Care devices and rapid, low cost, handheld PCR devices. It has developed handheld devices to identify Heptatis ‘B’ Virus and in the process of developing devices to idenftify Chikungunya, Dengue, etc. Maya Prabhu said that GE is striving to transform the delivery of healthcare in rural areas. The purpose is to Predict, diagnose, treat and monitor disease at the earlier stage. She mentioned that GE is developing a lowcost solution to address the rural healthcare needs. B V Raguram of Basix said that Basix has been using ICTs extensively among the rural community. It has piloted several innovative initiatives and learnt lessons from each of them and upscaled some of the successful initiatives. It works with rural communities to provide savings, sredits and insurance services. It also piloted the Kuppam iCommunity, in Andhra Pradesh with the support of Hewlett Packard. Besides these sessions, the conference also have seen discussions on ‘Measuring economic benefits of ICT on communities’, ‘Last mile implementation challenges for scale: Alternatives, options and examples from developing nations’, ‘Broadband policy for education, healthcare and shared access’, and ‘Synchronising teacher training, curriculum development with technology infrastructure deployment to realise optimum benefits from ICT in education’.
Scaling ICT implementations – role of development agencies and government Osama Manzar of Digital Empowerment Foundation moderated this session. Dr Kevin Smith shared what the government can do to scale up pilot projects. Darrell Owen, International Inforamtion and Communication Technology, USAID presented the dynamics of ICT in the last 10 years. They shared the strategy to reach out to the next four billion people and the challenges for the next 10 years. Dr Safurah Jaafar, Ministry of Health, Government of Malaysia presented the successful paper-less, Tele Primary Care (TPC) project. Jayalakshmi Chittoor, Programme Coordinator, CSDMS mentioned that the topic means different things to different people. She mentioned that if people see the value for technology, it is going to be adopted by people quickly. Some of the key challenges are: language barrier for content delivery, time period to scale-up, total cost of ownership. She said, though we agreed to universal access to information during WSIS but in reality not all information is available to all people.
Conclusion The two-day conference ended with a valedictory session. T R Raghunanthan, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Panchayati Raj, Government of India gave an interesting presentation on the role of ICTs in Panchayats. Tom Burns, Director, World Ahead Program, shared his views on ICTs for Development. n
Innovations/essential functionalities and need analysis for affordability
Vignesh Sornamohan, vignesh@csdms.in Jayalakshmi Chittoor, jchittoor@csdms.in Rachita Jha, rachita@csdms.in Aditi Pathak, aditi@csdms.in
Pradeep Joseph, from Emerging Markets Platforms Group, Intel Moderated the session. Raj Singh Khaira, Head – Micro
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Rural development: Issues and concerns In search of inclusive and sustainable growth Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), on 4-5 March 2008, hosted the Rural Development Summit on ‘Unlocking the Growth Potential of Rural India’ in partnership with the Ministry of Panchayati Raj, Government of India and International Finance Corporation (IFC). The conference was represented by key private players, senior government officials, industry experts and rural stakeholders. The summit that aimed at identifying the necessary logistics, mechanisms and structures required to foster rural growth and community participation, was an attempt to evaluate the amount and kind of inclusive and sustainable growth in rural India. The conference also tried to demarcate and isolate those areas (in the rural sector) that need special and immediate attention.
The inaugural note The meeting started with the inaugural note from Rakesh Bharti Mittal, Chairman CII and Vice-chairman Bharati enterprises. Rakesh focused on the needs to boost the private sector in order to ensure agrarian reforms. He also focused on the inclusion of new and innovative technologies in agriculture. Anil Sinha, General Manager- Advisory Services, IFC (South Asia), in his welcome note, deliberated upon the need of Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) in ensuring equitable rural growth and sustainable development. Shubhasish Gangopadhyay, advisor to the Finance Minister, Government of India, in his keynote address spoke on the effectiveness of the agrarian sector in creating alternate avenues of employment. He affirmed, “Companies should not just focus on selling their products to rural April 2008 | www.i4donline.net
masses but also should focus on generating income in rural India,”. Hossain Zillur Rahman, Advisor to the Caretaker Government, Commerce and Education, Government of Bangladesh, spoke on the need of effective training and operational skills to foster agricultural productivity. Rahman stressed on the entrepreneurial dimension of the small and big agricultural farmers. Subodh Kant Sahai, Honourable Minister of State for Food Processing Industries, reposing unflinching faith on the recent agricultural budget, confirmed that the government is working to make rural India more prosperous. He asked CII to collaborate with the state governments on different rural development missions. Sahai while speaking on farming initiatives said, “Contract farming is the need of the hour. It is here that the private sector can play a critical role. It is important to ensure that farmers produce and sell at their doorsteps. States need to change their mindset, bring about reforms and make farming rewarding”. As a concluding note of the welcome session, Rakesh Bharti Mittal stated: “Good politics can be good economics. The Budget’s thrust on the rural sector will make growth inclusive and sustainable. What IT has done to urban India, food processing industries can do to rural India”. He further added that states should officially lease out agricultural land to the private stakeholders to enhance rural productivity.
Rural-Industry partnership The first parallel session aimed at locating and evaluating pragmatic business models that can be instrumentally applied to different sectors of rural India. The session tried to understand the feasibility factors of building rural-industry partnerships. The session started with a formal note of introduction from Gokul Patnaik, Chairman, Global Agrisystem Pvt Ltd. This was followed by an ode from Ashish Karamchandani, Chief Executive Officer, Monitor Group. The first panelist in the discussion session was Subham Ray, Chief – Private Label, Foods Business, Pantaloon Retail India Limited. According to Ray, with rural India becoming more and more inclined towards using new industrial products and services, rural consumption will grow exponentially in the coming two decades. Ray also added that organised food retail can generate multiple avenues of employment in the rural sector. Nishchint Bhatia, Vice President, PepsiCo India Holdings Pvt. Ltd, discussed on the effectiveness of contract farming in potato cultivation. He further affirmed that his company is presently involved with the cultivation and marketing of citrous, corn, paddy and barley apart from potato. Tushar Pandey, Country Head, Strategic Initiatives
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and Advisory (Government) Group, Yes Bank Limited, stressed on the urgent need of rural development. While criticising the government’s rural development programmes, Pandey said that in order to reverse poverty, illiteracy and unemployment in the rural unorganised sectors, a new phase of PPPs should emerge. Pandey also proposed a new business model on the basis of social equity and partnership. He underscored the relevance of cooperatives in fostering financial management and performance improvement. P K kesavan, Director, Ministry of Panchayati Raj, Government of India, addressed the first parallel session with his keynote on the efficacy of Rural Business Hubs (RBHs). While deliberating upon RBHs, Keshavan stated that the RBH initiative can be realised with a 4 P model of Public-Private-Panchayat-Partnership and will eventually help in the generation of employment and income in the rural unorganised sector. Gokul Patnaik, concluded the session with a brief speech.
People’s Lives: An International Perspective on Large Scale Rural Skills Delivery Programmes”, said that ‘Prime Contracting’ model focuses on building sustainable partnerships including PPPs in the rural sector. The last discussant in the panel was Satish Chandra, Commissioner – Employment and Training, Government of Andhra Pradesh. Chandra stated, ‘There is increasing mechanisation of agriculture and hence there is scope and need to change the profile of rural people occupation from agriculture to other activities to make it more viable’. Chandra added that infrastructure development, irrigation development, communication development, education development, micro finance, capacity building for uneducated/schools drop outs are essential to the overall development of rural India. Chandra’s address was followed by a word of note from H A Keshava Murthy, Deputy Director General (Training), Directorate General of Employment and Training. Murthy was eloquent about the rising necessity to upgrade 500 Govt Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs) with domestic and World Bank assistance. Acknowleding the presence of a massive amount of human capital in rural India, Murthy specified the need of employment generation and skill development in the rural agricultural sector. Ravi Pillai concluded the second parallel session with his remarks and suggestions on skill enhancement and rural inclusiveness.
Developing skills and empowering people The second parallel session dealt mainly with key issues like rural training and employment, skill development, community participation, PPPs etc. The session was moderated by Ravi Pillai, Country Director, City and Guilds (South Asia) Pvt Ltd who started the second parallel session with a formal note of introduction. This was followed by a keynote address of Amar Singh, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Rural Development, Government of India. Singh argued that though rural India has grown consistently in the last couple of years, the growth has been uneven with more than 28.3% of the Indian population still reeling under the poverty line. He further added that the ‘Green Revolution’ has only affected the big farmers and the absolute number of rural poor has been more or less stagnant over the last four decades. Singh also opinionated that there is a severe shortage of skilled manpower mainly in the unorganised rural sector. The first panellist, R C M Reddy, CEO, IL&FS Cluster Development Initiative Limited, Ministry of Rural Development, Government of India, focused on the disparity between the have and have nots and said that poverty alleviation is possible only through skill enhancement. He stressed on a model called SPRING (Skills Programme for Inclusive Growth). Reddy further added that life skills and knowledge training programmes are essential to fight poverty and unemployment. He also mentioned about a pragmatic method of selection of trainees and their induction in different kinds of jobs after the training process. The second person to speak in the panel was S Natarajan, Joint General Manager & Head – Construction Skills Training Institute, L&T. Natarajan spoke about the construction industry and the role of construction industries like L&T in creating rural employment and rehabilitation. Natarajan however identified shortage of skilled manpower, low-end technologies etc as inherent problems in construction industry. He suggested that to make the construction industry more operational, the government should play the role of a facilitator in the disbursement of knowledge, education, skills and information. Natarajan was also optimistic about training economically weaker, socially backward and school dropouts for construction related trades and activities. The third discussant was Roy Newey, Group Borad Director, A4e. Newey while speaking on the topic ‘Prime Contracting’ and Improving
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‘Bharat Nirman’ revisited In the post-lunch session of day 1 of the ‘Rural Development Summit’, there was a two-hour plenary session. ‘Bharat Nirman’ (BN) a dream project outlayed by the Government of India in the late of 2005 was the main topic of discussion in the plenary. The plenary was moderated by Ratiranjan Mandal, CEO – Infrastructure Advisory Devision, SREI Infrastructure Finance Limited. All speakers in the plenary were quite convinced with the operational success of Bharat Nirman model. H K Srivastava, Director – National Rural Roads Development Agency, Ministry of Rural Development, Government of India, while speaking in the plenary said that BN has fostered rural connectivity and economic reforms. Srivastava referred to Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY) as a major rural road networking project. R. Gopalakrishnan, Joint Secretary, Prime Minister’s Office, Government of India, while deliberating on the architecture and plausibility of BN argued that BN project is highly successful in terms of rural roads, rural telephony and rural electrification; partially successful in terms of water supply, irrigation and rural housing. The main fallacy of the BN project, according to Gopalakrishnan, is its domain restriction. Gopalakrishnan says, ‘BN only encapsulates 3/5th of India and is restricted to a few number of states’. R K Arnold, Secretary, The Telecom regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), Government of India, while speaking in the plenary stated that with better telecom connectivity India’s rural hinterland will become more integrated. While depicting the achievement rate of BN project in terms of rural telephony, Arnold consequentially stated that rural telecom infrastructure is weak and rural teledensity is meager. Many rural households are debarred from using high-end technologies and technologyenabled services. Arnold also held that TRAI can work as a facilitator in expanding rural telecommunications because it is TRAI’s mission to create and nurture conditions for the growth of
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telecommunications including broadcasting and cable services in the country in a manner which will enable India to play a leading role in the emerging global information society. M Krishna Prasad, Senior Advisor – Corporate Affairs, Speck Systems Ltd, spoke on some pioneering efforts of Speck Systems Ltd to ensure rural prosperity. Krishna added that infrastructure, finance, commerce, knowledge, training and information expedites rural prosperity. While speaking on the recent initiatives undertaken by Speck Systems Ltd, he said that the objective of Speck Systems Ltd is to provide micro-level comprehensive information to the villagers about natural resources, site specific cropping pattern, input supply and yield increasing technology etc. Krishna was also vocal about the ‘single platform agricultural initiative’ of Speck in the form of ‘Grameen Vikas Rath’. ‘Grameen Vikas Rath’, he stated, ‘is an information vehicle that transmits agricultural messages and information on soil, water, climate cropping patterns, yield increasing technologies etc’. The first day of the summit concluded with the remarks and observation of Ratiranjan Mandal.
Emerging market trends in rural India Rural India is indeed shifting focus to consumer durables and Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG). With the advent of new agricultural technologies and with the advancement of rural telecommunications, demand structures in rural India have been changing fast. The first parallel session of the second day of the summit focused on the emerging trends in both lifestyle and affordability in rural India. The session was moderated by Vivek Bharti, Executive Director, Agriculture & Corporate Affairs, PepsiCo India Holdings Pvt. Ltd. Vivek spoke on PepsiCo India recent ventures in rural India. The welcome note of Vivek was followed by an address of Suman K Bery, Director General, National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCEAR). Anjankumar Choudhari, President, Farm Equipment Sector & Member of the Group Management Board, Mahindra Group, L K Gupta, Chief Marketing Officer, LG Electronics Pvt Ltd and Vijay Sharma, Project shakti, Hindustan Unilever Limited, were the panelists in the discussion. Vijay spoke about Lifebuoy Swastha Chetna Program and its philanthropic goals to educate children about existence of germs and the importance of handwashing. After the second discussion, Ajay Shankar, secretary, Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion, Government of India specially addressed the house and spoke about the emerging retail trends in the rural sectors of the Indian economy. Vivek Bharti concluded the session with a sum up of the rural market trends.
Microcredit and financial inclusion The last parallel session of the summit was all about rural finance, microcredit and rural banking. In the session, banking and finance professionals tried to identify feasible financial solutions for the rural banking sector. The session was initiated, moderated and managed by K C Chakrabarty, Chairman & Managing Director, Punjab National Bank. V Chandrasekaran, Executive Director Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI) emphasised on the needs of extending finance to the rural unorganised sector through micro credit endeavours and through creation of micro enterprises. Chandrasekaran also highlighted on capacity building and consolidation of Self Help Groups (SHGs). J Mishra, CEO, April 2008 | www.i4donline.net
Khadi and Village Industries Commission (KVIC), addressed the second parallel session with a brief note on rural financing and microcredit. Mishra also stated a list of KVIC microenterprise products like handicrafts, leather shoes, cane and bamboo items. The three panelists in the discussion were Anil Sinha, General Manager, Advisory Services – South Asia, International Finance Corporation (IFC); M R Rao, COO, SKS Microfinance and Rishabh Bajpai, Chief Technology Officer, YES SAMPANN, The Microfinance Initiative, Yes Bank. Anil expressed his satisfaction over the increasing engagement of IFC in rural financing and infrastructure investment. He also emphasised on the need to develop a credit scoring system as per local suitability and requirements. Rishabh, while underscoring the efforts of YES Bank to financially include rural India, stated that YES Bank is not only trying to go beyond the level of microfinance it is also trying to build and enable a regulatory and policy framework.
The final session The final session was a plenary and focused on the development of business hubs in different parts of rural India and on the of agro-business opportunities in rural areas of North Eastern India. Anil Sinha, acting as a moderator of the session, stressed on the necessity to employ private sectors as well as the village panchayats to develop rural infrastructure in North East India. K K Gupta, General Manager, NABARD, while addressing the plenary, spoke on the effectiveness of rural partnerships in agro-processing and agro-business areas. He indicated that NABARD’s cluster development programme is worthwhile in providing local-based solutions. Sushant Kumar Pal, Business Development Officer, IFC-SEDF, elaborated on IFC’s business initiatives in the rural areas of the North East. He stated that there is an IFC agent in Guwahati, Assam to provide advisory services to the community stakeholders. Suryamani Roul, Vice President, Access Development Services, in his presentation, reflected on the instrumental need to develop a comprehensive business plan for developing and marketing some food products like ginger, pineapple etc in the North East. He further added that there should be credit linkages and all-round financial support from the investors and bankers to ensure proper productivity, storage and distribution. Manish Tyagi, CEO, Nuovatex Projects Co, prioritised the need of mapping of product opportunities (mainly handloom and handicrafts products) and potential thrust areas. During the fag end of the conference, certain observations and analyses by entrepreneurs and event managers were floated. Anirban Gupta, Executive Director, Dhriti, while deliberating upon ‘Arecanut Leaf Plate Manufacturing Cluster Development Project’ affirmed that the project will open new vistas of employment for the rural community. L B Sinate, Chairman & Facilitator, Passion Fruit Growers Association, Manipur & TUMTU Society opined that there is an urgency to explore means of processing, branding and marketing in rural North East. Pradip Brar, CEO, D1 Williamson Magor Bio Fuel Limited, underlined the making of bio-diesel and applying the same in contract farming. The summit concluded with a final note from Anil Sinha. The summit was an important event that opened many strategic alternatives and corporate solutions for rural India.n n
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Bytes for All... For more information on the conference and downloading registration form:
News/Events Bangladesh: Draft Right To Information (RTI) law A national committee, formed to formulate a draft on the Right to Information Ordinance 2008, has prepared a preliminary draft after reviewing the Law Commission report on Right to Information and the existing laws of the SAARC countries. The preliminary draft (in Bengali language) has been put on the information ministry website seeking public opinion on it.
www.chic.hu/gtaconference
New Op-Ed Challenges Telecoms Industry role in bridging digital divide. A new opinion piece from Murali Shanmugavelan, head of Panos London’s Information Society Programme, argues that market forces alone won’t lead to universal telecoms access – that is that everyone should be within ‘reasonable’ distance of a telephone. It highlights the role telecoms giants have played in maintaining expensive and irregular pricing systems and calls for effective regulation to ensure cheap telephony is within reach of the millions currently left out of the information revolution. This comment piece can be reproduced free of charge and is available online at:
www.moi.gov.bd
Grameenphone’s CellBazaar wins Mobile Phone Oscars Grameenphone’s CellBazaar, a company based in Bangladesh has won the prestigious 2008 GSMA Award at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. CellBazaar is a service that allows you to buy and sell any product through a Grameenphone mobile or any computer.
www.panos.org.uk/newsfeatures/featuredetails.asp?id=1356
www.cellbazaar.com
APC supports South African regulator on its stand favouring open access to the Internet The Association for Progressive Communications (APC), an international non-profit actor on Internet access worldwide, has stated its whole-hearted support of the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA) for the drafting of regulations prescribing a list of essential facilities for electronic communications. “The introduction of these regulations creates conditions of open access on a non-discriminatory basis to under sea based submarine cables,” says Natasha Primo, national policy manager at APC. The full statement from APC is available online:
Bangladesh has the lowest average monthly cost of using a mobile Bangladesh has the lowest average monthly cost of using a mobile at all levels of use, according to a recent study by LIRNEasia - a regional policy and research organisation. The study compares mobile tariffs in South Asia utilising OECD price baskets. The study report can be accessed here: http://www.lirneasia.net/2008/03/findings-from-mobile-benchmarks-south-asiamarch-2008-released/
http://www.apc.org/english/news/index.shtml?x=5530954
Net telephony stays free as law ministry rejects TRAI proposal The law ministry has rejected a Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) proposal that foreign Internet telephony firms be made to register in India, seek permission from the department of telecommunications (DoT) and host their websites in the country. TRAI’s proposal last year was aimed at bringing these companies in the ambit of the country’s licensing framework and monitoring their activities. These recommendations were guided by the fact that foreign Internet firms did not pay any licence fee to the government like the licensed Internet Service Providers (ISPs) do. http://www.financialexpress.com/printer/news/271538/
Mobile phones can substantially reduce agriculture transaction costs Emerging Asia Pacific think-tank on Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) policy and regulation LIRNEasia has come up with startling evidence on how transaction costs in agriculture could be reduced by simple mobile phone applications. The organisation’s Lead Economist, Dr. Harsha de Silva called for a multi-stakeholder action plan to implement a series of actions that would help poor farmers as well as consumers by reducing information costs in agricultural markets and value
Call for participation: Global Telecentre Alliance Conference, May 2008 in Hungary. Global Telecentre Alliance is organising a three-day conference between the 23rd and 25th of May in Százhalombatta, Hungary.
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Bytes for All... chains. He was speaking at a panel following a public lecture by Indian Institute of Management Professor, Subhash C. Bhatnagar, who spoke on the benefits of ICT applications to farmers, taking India as an example. http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/bytesforall_readers/message/11728
The WACC Photographic Competition 2008: Women and Communication This competition, in its fifth year, it is being run on Flickr for the third time! The theme this year is: ‘Women and Communication’. Photographs that capture women communicating; women’s communication rights in action; or photographs illustrating how women use communication to empower themselves. The closing date is 1 May 2008. The competition winners will be announced on World Communication Day, 8 May. A selection of entries will be exhibited in Toronto and will be used in the WACC publications such as the website and the journal ‘Media Development’. http://www.flickr.com/groups/wacc2008/
Projects/Resources Scholar 2 Scholar: How Web 2.0 is Changing scholarly communication Please join the wiki for Drexel University Libraries’ Scholarly Communication Symposium. (Click on ‘Join’ next to the ‘Guest’ option) http://scholar2scholar.wikispaces.com/
Announcements Asia-Pacific Regional Microcredit Summit The Microcredit Summit Campaign and Gema-PKM are pleased to announce the opening of registration for the Asia-Pacific Regional Microcredit Summit 2008 to be held from July 28-30, 2008. More than 1,000 delegates from over 40 countries are expected to gather in Bali, Indonesia to assess progress toward the Campaign’s 2015 goals and to discuss obstacles and solutions to achieving these objectives. Please visit www.inamicrocreditsummit.org to register online and for more information, or e-Mail info@microcreditsummit.org
Scholarships for ICT4D Masters in University of Manchester The one-year MSc ICTs for Development degree focuses on effective application of ICTs within poor communities. It aims to create ‘ICT4D champions’ who combine technical competencies in information systems and project management with an understanding of development context and practice. Applicants who have applied, received and accepted a formal offer by 30th June 2008 will be considered for two scholarship opportunities. One of these is a full scholarship of £21,000 available on a competitive basis for applicants from developing countries to any of IDPM’s Masters degrees. One is a partial fee-waiver scholarship worth £5,500, available exclusively for developing country applicants to the MSc ICT4D programme.
Mobiles for Social Impact: MobileActive08 MobileActive08, a three-day conference on mobile technology for social impact to take place in October 13-15 in Johannesburg, South Africa. The conference is intentionally designed to be cross-disciplinary as learnings and experiences span various disciplines in this emerging field. However, specific attention will be given to the role of mobile technology in health, human rights, economic development, advocacy, education, citizen journalism and democratic participation.
http://www.sed.manchester.ac.uk/postgraduate/taught/courses/06237/index.asp
http://mobileactive.org/announcing-mobileactive08-unlocking-potential-mobilessocial-impact
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/bytesforall_readers/message/11819
Transmission Asia-Pacific - Call for Applications EngageMedia and Ruangrupa would like to announce Transmission Asia-Pacific: a meeting of video activists and free software developers using online video distribution for social justice and media democracy at Sukabumi, Indonesia, May 19-25, 2008. http://transmission.cc/txap April 2008 | www.i4donline.net
The Soul Beat - issue 103 focus on telecentres This issue of The Soul Beat focuses on telecentres in Africa, delving into a growing body of literature related to telecentres and their role in development. This newsletter primarily features project descriptions and experiences and strategic thinking documents that highlight the development, use, and access to telecentres in Africa. It also includes links to a few fundamental support resources.
Bytes for All: www.bytesforall.org or www.bytesforall.net Bytes for All Readers Discussion: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ bytesforall_readers To subscribe: bytesforall_readers-subscribe@yahoogroups.com Bytes for All Discussion summary compiled by: Miraj Khaled, techiemik@yahoo.com,Bangladesh/Canada
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Books received Advocacy and Interventions: Readings in Communication and Development Author: Royal D. Colle Published by: Internet-First University Press Pages: 436 Strategic communication is an effective parameter for development. As the 21st century rolled out, communication in relation to development became more prominent in the international community. Efforts to reach the Millennium Development Goals sharpened our attention on communication with many asking how the new Information and Communication Technologies could accelerate progress toward the goals. This book addressing these issues is divided into two parts. Part 1, ‘Approaches to Communication and Development’ and part II, ‘Communication Strategy: Techniques and Tools’ consists of three chapters. The book is intended to be ‘practical’ and is replete with examples and case studies that illustrate the ways how carefully planned and implemented communication interventions have produced positive results. It shows how approaches such as social marketing, extension, participation, and entertainment have contributed to the development initiatives. Many of these have used media and the new Information and Communication Technologies. ‘Advocacy and Interventions’ includes ideas from people who have experienced the challenges of communicating effectively in development programmes. The book is also based on the author’s own insights from almost four decades of communication and development experience in countries ranging from Guatemala to Western Samoa, with many other stops in Asia, Africa and Latin America. ‘Advocacy and Interventions’ is especially suitable for policy makers, project planners and advanced courses in development communication or rural development.
Empowering Marginal Communities with Information Networking Edited by: Hakikur Rahman Published by: Idea Group Inc (IGI), 2006 ISBN: 1591406994 Pages: 363 The book focuses on human capacity development and addresses the multiple levels of information flow and knowledge of networking skills. The book is divided into thirteen chapters. It tells how ICTs and newer technologies can help people to overcome their poverty by means of increasing productivity.
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The role of ICT in promoting indigenous people’s development is well investigated and examines the concept of digital divide with available data and shows that those with low incomes and those who are older have little access to technology. An exclusive overview is also provided on the problems of persons with mental illness and shows how ICT access and usage can be effectively harnessed in order to empower such a marginal population in both developed and developing countries. Use of ICTs to share information with people at grass roots as connecting first mile is also discussed. Ability of Internet as a fundraising tool for marginal communities in South Africa was also discussed besides looking into the challenges being faced by social justice organisations working in South African non profit sector in their attempt to harness new technologies to promote their causes. It defines accessibility and it focuses for capacity development initiatives for marginal communities to achieve MDGs in developing countries.
Villages in the Future: Crops, Jobs, and Livelihood Edited by: D Virchow, Joachim Von Braun Publisher: Springer, 2001 ISBN: 3540424679 Pages: 410 Technological interventions and penetration of communication tools have changed the lives of rural communities. The book is broadly categorised into four themes: (i) political and institutional frameworks to foster rural development; (ii) natural resources management; (iii) broadening the technological base of rural economies; and (iv) improved linkages between urban and rural areas. The book talks fairly on broadening the technological base of rural communities to the development of rural communities. ICTs do strengthen the cultural identities and economic viability of communities by helping to emerge as global villages. They enhance the opporunities of villagers to interact and learn about the outside world and tap markets virtually. Policies for the advancement of information society must be underpinned by a drive for universal and affordable accessibiliy. Without adequate IT diffusion, developing economies would not not be able to participate in the information society and economy. The book embodies and attachment (as a CD ROM) of a 30-minute video. n i4d | April 2008
What’s on
Thailand
Africa
Europe
http://www.serd.ait.ac.th/escc
22-24 April 2008 West Africa Biofuels Summit 2008 Abuja, Nigeria
26-29 July 2008 ICETE 2008 - International Joint Conference on e-Business and Telecommunications, Porto, Portugal
www.westafricabiofuels.net
12-15 May 2008 ITU Telecom Africa 2008 International Convention and Exhibition Centre (CICC), Cairo, Egypt www.un-gaid.org/en/node/1085
2-4 June 2008 The First International Conference on Security, Privacy and Confidentiality Issues in Cyberlaw, Cairo, Egypt www.crime-research.org/events
www.icete.org
8-9 May 2008 Proactive Rural Marketing Strategies Mumbai www.indiaradioforum.com
30 May 2008 India Radio Forum 2008 Mumbai, Maharashtra http://www.indiaradioforum.com
eINDIA 2008 29-31 July 2008
www.nope.or.ke
Australia 20-22 May 2008 Government@CeBIT Australia 2008 Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre, Sydney www.agimo.gov.au/practice/delivery/events/2008/ cebit2008
29 June 2008 The 2nd International Workshop on Web Mining for E-commerce and Eservices (WMEE2008), Melbourne www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/~derrick/WMEE2008
6-8 August 2008 Government Technology World 2008 Gold Coast www.terrapinn.com/2008/gtw%5Fau
20-25 March 2010 World Congress of Internal Medicine Melbourne, VIC http://www.wcim2010.com.au/
China 5-6 June 2008 Banking Tech Asia 2008 Beijing http://www.bankingtechasia.com April 2008 | www.i4donline.net
United Arab Emirates 10-11 November 2008 BankTech Middle East Congress Dubai http://www.banktechmideast.com
India
18-20 June 2008 3rd National Conference on Peer Education, HIV and AIDS Nairobi, Kenya
6 August 2008 Energy Security and Climate Change: Issues, Strategies, and Options (ESCC 2008) Bangkok
Pragati Maidan, New Delhi www.eindia.net.in
Malaysia 12-13 December 2008 2nd International Conference on Science and Technology (ICSTIE’O8) Permatang Pauh, Penang www.icstie.com
15-17 December 2008 International Conference on Environment 2008 (ICENV 2008) Penang http://chemical.eng.usm.my/ICENV2008
27-29 March 2008 The 2008 International Conference on e-Administration Bangkok www.e-case.org/e-Administration2008
United States of America 14-17 July 2008 The 2008 International Conference on e-Learning, e-Business, Enterprise Information Systems, and e-Government (EEE’08) Las Vegas, Nevada www.world-academy-of-science.org/sites/worldcomp08/ ws/conferences/sam08
24-26 October 2008 The University of Atlanta’s First International Symposium on Online Teaching and Learning , Georgia www.UofA.edu
United Kingdom 12-13, May 2008 International Climate Conference London www.campaigncc.org
25-27 June 2008 Governance of New Technologies: The Transformation of Medicine, IT and IP, Edinburgh
Pakistan
www.law.ed.ac.uk/ahrc/script-ed/conference.asp
10-11 September 2008 E-Learning and Distance Education Conference (ELDEC), Islamabad
12-13, May 2008 International Climate Conference London
www.vu.edu.pk/eldec2007
www.campaigncc.org
Poland 29-30 May 2008 Globalisation, Energy and Environment Warsaw
29-31 March 2009 Governance of New Technologies: The Transformation of Medicine, IT and IP Edinburgh
http://www.sgh.waw.pl/gee2008
www.law.ed.ac.uk/ahrc/script-ed/conference.asp
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In Fact
ICT applications in the banking sector The use of ICT is inevitable to improve the usage of existing branch infrastructure to expand its the outreach of the formal financial system to the rural poor. The following are some initiatives towards achieving financial inclusion: The International experience The Bangladesh Grameen Bank model: The micro finance programmes of Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) and ASA in Bangladesh have by now been widely studied. Similarly, the experience of Bank Rokyat Indonesia (BRI) Unit of Indonesia and micro finance experience of Philippines were path breaking efforts and ICT enabled innovations in their time. Banking Correspondents in Brazil: The Brazilian model is largely technology driven and uses kiosks or automated teller machines Another initiative in Brazil has been the use of the post offices network and post office staff to deliver banking services through Banco Postal. ACCION’s Service Company model of Latin America: ACCION International, a microfinance resource institution based in the USA and working in the American continents, has promoted the ‘Service Company Model’ to expand micro finance operations. The model has been successfully replicated by SOGE BANK/ SOGESOL in Haiti and Banco del Pichincha/ CREDIFE in Ecuador. Teba Bank of South Africa: Teba Bank engages agents who are given hand-held mobile Point of Sale (PoS) devices. This wireless device has a built-in GSM modem, card reader and micro printer. The customer can use their debit card at the terminal to deposit and withdraw cash, make balance enquiry and transfer funds. Jijenge Savings Account in Kenya: Equity Building Society in Kenya has developed the Jijenge Savings Account, a contractual savings product with an emergency loan facility. Micro payments using text messaging: In Kenya, Commercial Bank of Africa in conjunction with local mobile operator Safaricom is enabling mobile subscribers to make micro payments from mobile phones. The majority of the people in Kenya do not hold bank accounts but purchase prepaid mobile refill cards. The technology allows settlement of bills by building up credit balance on the mobile phone and sending text message to make payments.
The Indian experience Kisan Credit Card: The Kisan Credit Card, now popular all across India, is a financial product innovation of far reaching significance. The card enables the farmer to get loans over three to five year time frame as a revolving credit entitlement. Pigmy Deposit Schemes: The scheme, which involved daily/weekly collection of tiny deposits at the depositors’ doorstep by engaging local people as agents, was operated in the past. There is need to learn from this experience and devise adequate checks and balances and utilise IT tools to make any future initiatives less risky for banks. Mobile banking: Banks have experimented with mobile banking in rural areas by several modes, including the use of mobile cash counters. The location and time of operation are usually synchronised with market days so that larger numbers of people could transact business Local Area Banks: Local Area Banks (LABs) were another initiative that was attempted to mobilise rural savings by local institutions and make them available for investment locally. Krishna Bhima Samruddhi, a Local Area Bank promoted by Basix in Andhra Pradesh, is the only LAB which is into the business of micro-finance on a large scale and has achieved operational efficiency in terms of profits and a high credit deposit ratio. SHG-Bank Linkage: The SHG-Bank Linkage model is the indigenous model of micro credit evolved in India and has been widely acclaimed as a successful model with a fair coverage. Source: Innovations and experiments in bridging the gap, Chapter 2, http://rbidocs.rbi.org.in/rdocs/PublicationReport/Pdfs/65111.pdf
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i4d | April 2008
INDIA
2008 29 - 31 July 2008, Pragati Maidan, New Delhi
Since the Green Revolution, India has been growing steadily in terms of agricultural productivity and growth. Modern farming practices and inclusive technologies have been implemented in many parts of rural India to foster rural growth. Cellular technologies, wireless communication networks and GIS based agro-software technology are reaching rural India to disseminate vital information and updates on weather, farming technologies, fertilisers, livestock, commodity prices and stock markets. But, despite the usage of advanced ICT tools in many parts of rural India, there are several villages where advanced farming technologies and interactive communication networks haven't reached. To deliberate upon the unsolved issues, eINDIA2008 has incorporated eAgriculture track consecutively for the second time. eAgriculture track of the eINDIA2008 is designed to: • initiate inter-sectoral linkages • bring together development professionals, policy decision-makers, community stakeholders, entrepreneurs & financing professionals • provide more opportunities for partnership building, development re-organisation & capacity enhancement for the rural stakeholders • facilitate progressive decision-making, information sharing and performance improvement • aid the process of identification and vertical integration of diverse ICT tools that are employed in present day agricultural practices
Key Themes
Who will attend
• Re-identifying Policy Dimensions and Initiatives on e-Agriculture
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Key Government Officials and Experts
• Capacity Building Through PPP, Individual Initiatives and JVs
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CEOs/Management Cadre from Agri-Industry
• Role of ICT in Agri-Business and Agricultural Marketing
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Development Foundations and NGOs Working in the Sector
• GIS Mapping and Harvesting Trends
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Banking & Financial Institutions and Commodity Exchanges
• Role of ICTs in Mitigating Climate Change Hazards
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Agri-Marketing, Retail Sector and State Marketing Boards
• Precision Farming – Optimum use of Available Resources
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Agri-Extension Projects/Models and Extension Departments of Various States
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Central and State Agriculture Research and Education Institutions
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Researchers, Scholars and Agri- Entrepreneurs
• Role of ICT in Modern Agricultural Practices • Software Solutions for e-Farmers • Food Security and ICTs • Microfinance & Mircocredit in e-Agriculture
Call for Papers! The organisers invite papers on the above mentioned conference key themes. Abstracts should be submitted, in no longer than 400 words, at www.eINDIA.net.in/abstract. Last date for submissions is 30 April 2008
GLOBAL KNOWLEDGE PARTNERSHIP
GKP
A Global Knowledge Partnership Event - Making e-Agriculture Work through Public Private Partnership (PPP) in Asia: 10 - 28 March 2008 You are invited to join special online forum starting 10 March 2008. Participants from all over Asia representing government, private sector, NGOs, community outreach groups and others will be involved. The international community wants to hear your suggestions and solutions to overcome the challenges and focus on bringing practical solutions. The Forum is sponsored by Katalyst and FAO, and is moderated by Katalyst. This Forum is a lead up to the eAgriculture INDIA2008 Conference to be held in New Delhi, India 29-31 July 2008. To join special online forum, log on to www.e-agriculture.org
www.eINDIA.net.in/eagriculture Contact Person: Rajat Banerjee: Mobile No: +91-9910573590, Email: eAgriculture@eINDIA.net.in
4th
29 - 31 July 2008 Pragati Maidan, New Delhi eINDIA2008 Thematic Tracks
Organisers
knowledge for change
Co-organisers
Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Communications & IT Government of India
UN Global Alliance for ICT and Development
Supporting partners
速
The World Bank e-Development Thematic Group
eINDIA2008 Exhibitors
For Exhibition Enquires: sales@eINDIA.net.in For Opportunities and Information related to eINDIA2008, contact us at info@eINDIA.net.in
www.eINDIA.net.in