ICTs FOR THE POOR : May 2004 Issue

Vol. II No. 5

May 2004

The first monthly magazine on ICT4D

Innovation and research in South Asia Information for development www.i4donline.net

ICTs at work in the hands of the poor

The case of mobile phones in Sitakund The potential of ICTs

ISSN 0972 - 804X

ICTs FOR THE POOR

Taking the local route

April 2004 | www.i4donline.net

1

Sub-Themes

Mapping and Geospatial Solutions

a

V OLUME II N UMBER

5,

M AY

2004

Contents

Information for development www.i4donline.net

Features ICTs At Work In The Hands Of The Poor

Innovation and research in South Asia ........................................................................................................................ 6 Don Slater and Jo Tacchi The Potential Of ICTs

The case of mobile phones in Sitakund .................................................................................................................. 14 Debobroto Chakraborty Nabanna

Empowering women ............................................................................................................................................................... 27 Jhulan Ghose and Jhumpa Ghosh Ray ICT For Development

Does culture play a role? ....................................................................................................................................................... 32 Brig. (Retd.) Y. R. Maindiratta and Renu Maindiratta

Columns Interview ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 12 Quiz ....................................................................................................................................................................................................... 18 News ...................................................................................................................................................................................................... 19 Insight

Taking the local route ............................................................................................................................................................. 36 Seema B. Nair Wireless Quiz Answers ........................................................................................................................................................... 40 What’s on .......................................................................................................................................................................................... 41 In Fact

The Haves & the Have-nots ............................................................................................................................................ 42 Acknowledgement: We would like to acknowledge the support of UNESCO, New Delhi in producing this issue. The issue features articles and pieces from UNESCO regional research and innovation programme looking at the potential of ICT for poverty reduction. ‘ICTs in the Hands of Poor’ is spread across a series of local initiatives in different parts of South Asia.

Disclaimer: The authors are responsible for the choice and the presentation of the facts contained in these articles and for the opinions expressed therein, which are not necessarily those of UNESCO and do not commit the Organisation.

The designations employed and the presentation of material throughout the publication do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of UNESCO concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area or of its authorities, or concerning its frontiers or boundaries.

Read magazine online at www.i4donline.net

Photo Credits Darjeeling: Karma Tshering Bhutia Baduria: Jhulan Ghose and Jhumpa Ghosh Ray Seelampur: Sarita Sharma, Datamation Foundation and Manoj, Leo Burnett Budikote: Seema Nair Sitakund: Debobroto Chakraborty

N

E

W

S

www.i4donline.net

i4d News

ng i m C o this up a r ! ye

i4d Editorial Calendar 2004 & 2005 Month

Theme

Submission of articles

The first

June

Local Content

May 31

July

Water/Agriculture

June 15

August

Community Radio

June 30

September

Tele-centers/Kiosks

July 31

October

daily news service on ICT4D Subscribe it at

FLOSS

August 31

November

Disaster Management

September 30

December

Land Records

October 31

January 2005

e-Governance

November 30

February 2005

e-Culture

December 31

We invite editorial contributions from our readers in the above mentioned fields.

While no guarantee is made or implied, we will make every effort to incorporate all views and experiences in the relevant issues so as to better serve the ICT4D community at large.

Please be sure to read and follow the Editorial Guidelines on page 39. Note that contributions may be edited for space and/or clarity. Unsolicited manuscripts and artwork will not be returned.

Send your articles to info@i4donline.net

www.i4donline.net 4

i4d | May 2004

Editorial Information for development

ICTs for the poor: Forever Pilot Syndrome?

www.i4donline.net

Advisory Board M P Narayanan, Chairman i4d Amitabha Pande Department of Science and Technology, Government of India Chin Saik Yoon Southbound Publications, Malaysia Ichiro Tambo OECD, France Karl Harmsen Centre for Space Science and Technology Education in Asia and the Pacific, India Kenneth Keniston Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA Mohammed Yunus Grameen Bank, Bangladesh Nagy Hanna

The South Asian region has many success stories in ICTs for development, and focused on the poor. Many of them have relevance to the poor, but have been largely demonstration projects or innovative efforts by NGOs and CSOs with support from donors. How to make these projects sustainable and upscalable?

India’s 6,25,000 villages, not all of them electrified, pose a big challenge, and the reach of ICTs for the poor seems still quite far away.

Two important challenges continue to face us. One is the issue of affordability and relevance to the poor communities and how can ICT facilities create livelihoods opportunities. The other is the usefulness of the Internet content for the poor and how do they, with their varied language and educational barriers, use the current English- dominated content?

Information Solutions Group, World Bank, USA Walter Fust Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, Switzerland Wijayananda Jayaweera UNESCO, France

Editorial Board Akhtar Badshah, Digital Partners Fredrick Noronha, Bytesforall Madan Mohan Rao, Consultant Editor Ravi Gupta Editorial Consultant Jayalakshmi Chittoor Senior Research Associate Manish Kumar Research Associate Anuradha Dhar, Research Associate Gautam Navin

Group Directors Maneesh Prasad, Sanjay Kumar i4d G-4 Sector 39, NOIDA, UP, 201 301, India.

Phone +91 120 250 2180-87 Fax +91 120 250 0060 Email info@i4donline.net Web www.i4donline.net Contact us in Singapore 25 International Business Park, #4-103F, German Centre, Singapore - 609916 Phone +65-65627983 Fax +65-656227984

NGOs are well placed to overcome these challenges from the social perspectives. A socially and financially sound ICT project has to become a policy and programme taken up by the Government or Internet Service Providers, in tune with the Universal Access Policy guidelines of International Telecommunication Union.

It is clear that when the projects are useful, even the poor are willing to pay for services. So a combination of grants and cost recovery for delivery of services can lead to more sustainable projects. Entrepreneurs and private sector must come hand in hand with innovators and NGOs. NGOs often have to deal with the dilemma of fulfilling the objectives of bridging the digital divide with relevant and valuable (to the poor) projects on the one hand and balance it with the financial sustainability of projects on the other (as per most donors’ expectations).

UNESCO has been a far-sighted agency in identifying and supporting innovative ethnographic action research programmes and creating new paradigms of learning in South Asia. Their projects range from local radio broadcasting through cable; ICT enabled livelihoods generation; enabling socially relevant ICT infrastructure services; to gendered empowerment. In the past two years nine very exciting projects have been initiated. We covered four of the experiences in detail for the readers of i4d.

The current i4d issue, we hope, will trigger the minds of other ICT innovators to share their perspectives. Is the whole plethora of ICT projects for the poor doomed to be lost in the myriad of pilot projects or see hope in policy perspectives incorporating their innovations and learning, with due recognition of the absolutely critical role that the NGOs play?

Printed at Yashi Media Works Pvt. Ltd. New Delhi, India Designed by TSA GraphicFX www.tsafx.com 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. © Centre2004 for Spatial Database Management February | www.i4donline.net and Solutions, 2003

Ravi Gupta Ravi.Gupta@i4donline.net

5

ICT S

AT WORK IN THE HANDS OF THE POOR

Innovation and research in South Asia This paper provides an understanding of the effective use of ICT for development and poverty reduction

Don Slater Reader in Sociology, London School of Economics, UK. d.slater@lse.ac.uk

Jo Tacchi Senior Research Fellow CIRAC, QUT Australia j.tacchi@qut.edu.au

6

Introduction In 2002, UNESCO initiated a programme to innovate and research social and technological strategies to explore the potential of ICTs to contribute to poverty reduction.

Spread across nine sites in five countries in South Asia, the programme is working with a range of poor individuals and communities and a variety of technology mixes. Each one is trying to develop social and technological access models that address both the fundamental poverty issues and key barriers to ICT usage by the poor.

The programme was designed to integrate research at the beginning of the implementation process as a strategy for both innovative project development and building a wider understanding of the role of ICTs in poverty reduction. The programme’s ethnographic action research approach is based on combining two research methodologies: ethnography and action research.

Ethnography is a research approach that has traditionally been used to understand different cultures. Action research is used to inform and adapt strategies through the ongoing process of reflection, planning and action. We use ethnography to guide the research process and we use action research to link the research back to individual initiatives’ planning and implementation. Ethnographic action research aims to integrate broadly qualitative research methods within specific project development.

Each initiative employs a full-time, onsite researcher who is involved on a daily basis with the work of the project, generally combining both project development and research responsibilities. The researchers are trained and supported through workshops, on-line facilities (a shared website, chat and email), and field visits from the research team.

Researchers were trained to use the normal repertoire of ethnographic research that are

(interviews, participant observation, diaries, surveys) to address the structures of both poverty and media use in their locality. Researchers seek to understand how poverty is experienced and managed by their target groups rather than to approach it through measurement or indicators. They are also encouraged to look and work within at the complete ‘communicative ecology’ of their area, that is to investigate the full range of means of communication that are employed and the local social networks through which information and communication flow. This gave them the detailed understanding necessary to see how ICT interventions fit into local poverty and communications, and how these interventions might be more effective.

Understanding poverty, reduction and role of ICTs Poverty and ICT use is extraordinarily diverse and mediated through local circumstances and social networks. Rather than trying to isolate specific and direct impacts of ICTs on poverty, we look at the broader processes and conditions in which they are operating and make comparisons across sites.

The analysis has been shaped by the important themes that emerged from a preliminary look at the data. Some of the themes are empowerment, learning and education and social networks.

What is poverty?

Researchers work to develop detailed pictures of how poverty is understood, experienced and lived in their locality. They do this by investigating the question ‘What is poverty?’ throughout their research, using methods such as interviews and conversations, observations, diaries, mind mapping and PRA (participatory rural appraisal) exercises. The focus is on how people expressed their own understanding and experience of i4d | May 2004

poverty. Many local understanding of poverty are contentious, either for participants or project workers or both. For example, in numerous cases poverty is identified as having too many daughters and not enough sons, thus incurring dowry costs and forfeiting income. Project workers, whose centres represented a direct intervention in such social norms, are implicitly contesting these views of poverty. In this context, local definitions of poverty are not uncontested truths; they become part of the learning processes around the ICT centres through group discussions, research, changes that arise from centre activities, training and general social interaction.

It is also important to recognize that poverty is always relative poverty. The programme was remitted to explore ICTs and poverty reduction among the very poorest communities but participants themselves drew many distinctions between different kinds and degrees of poverty. Moreover, poverty changes over time, and insecurity is itself a crucial aspect of poverty. Different kinds of poverty cannot always meaningfully be ranked quantitatively into poorest and less poor, while official poverty classifications and people’s declarations of poverty are not a reliable guide to who is and isn’t poor.

Finally, people at different levels or kinds of poverty do not generally live in different worlds – they lead interconnected lives.

Poverty and participation In order to achieve participation, local ICT initiatives, be they centres, studios, networks or any other variation, have to understand and deal with certain basic structures of poverty that materially prevent people from accessing ICTs or that prevent them from seeing the relevance of ICTs in improving their conditions. It is the poorest and most marginalized people who most clearly articulate these themes though confronted, at many different levels of poverty.

• Restriction to daily needs and daily labour: Women frequently

pointed to lack of time to participate in centres after attending to household work; many people say they cannot forego any potential earnings in order to participate in a centre: “I did not have lunch today as I have only small quantity of food hence I did not eat. I kept it for my children. They can’t tolerate hunger.”

Under this situation I feel it is difficult for Mrs. Natesan to learn computer. She is working as a servant maid and earning USD 4 per month and her husband is doing laundry work. He is earning USD 300 month which is not sufficient to run the family. If she is to learn computer she feels it would be difficult to make ends meet.

(Fieldnotes from Tamil Nadu) • Mobility: Participation of the rural poor may involve enormous costs in time and transport. Women are often dealing with restrictions on their mobility: in Seelampur and Sitakund, for example, Muslim women cannot travel or use public spaces without socially acceptable reasons. Hindu fishing communities in Sitakund are amongst the poorest and most marginalized within the programme. They are geographically remote, with poor transport; the level of poverty made travel prohibitively expensive and only justified if there was direct monetary benefit; inhabitants have the lowest caste status within the Hindu population and are ostracized and exploited by surrounding Muslim villages. The idea of participating in an ICT centre was almost inconceivable, though some of the young men expressed interest.

• Marginalization: The poorest often fear that ICTs and ICT centres are not places for people like them: the very factors that structured their poverty – caste, illiteracy, gender – also seemed to exclude them by definition from prestigious modern technologies. People often assume that both ICTs and ICT centres are

Emerging aspects of poverty • Extreme poverty is often identified in terms of a hand to mouth existence in which meeting basic needs (food, clothing, shelter) on a daily basis excludes people from other activities and aspirations.

• Material deprivation is identified differently in different places: e.g., in terms of significant local issues (e.g., alcoholism in Darjeeling; access to water in Budikote; specific gender issues in Seelampur and Tamil Nadu); or local views as to what is good housing (owned rather than rented in one community; concrete in another).

• Insecurity is emphasised as much as deprivation: insecure employment, uncertainty about meeting needs tomorrow, the fear of having to deal with any crisis by incurring unmanageable debt.

• Illiteracy and lack of education are usually considered the main reason for poverty; greater education and knowledge, as well as educational qualifications, are usually put forward as the main solutions to poverty, both personally and socially. People will frequently describe themselves as poor entirely on the basis that they cannot afford to support their children’s education.

• Inability to maintain social status or social participation: e.g., inability to pay dowry, buy jewels, offer hospitality.

• Lack of capital to fund ventures, and lack of access to loans to meet crises or to make major domestic investments (e.g., build a house, or travel abroad for work). Poverty is not just being unable to meet daily needs, but also inability to build and maintain a life over the longer term.

• Poverty is frequently defined in terms of the development of the individual: it means restricted choice and opportunity, the inability to develop one’s talent, potential and aspirations • Health information and facilities are out of the reach of poor people, while illness brings catastrophe through unemployment and debt.

• Lack of freedom and oppressive social structures: women talk about the restrictions on the mobility, education, work and social life that both arise from and reproduce poverty; people closely associate their poverty with domestic discord and violence, including dealing with alcoholic, violent or absent husbands.

May 2004 | www.i4donline.net

7

only for educated people; illiterate people frequently asked if they were only open to the literate. Moreover, the design of the centres themselves could suggest that it was not for them: People used to fear entering the ICT centre. Not only the centre is equipped with computers but the outlook of the centre must have given an expression that the centre is meant for some one better than themselves. The centres are well furnished with marble flooring… (Darjeeling fieldnotes) • Relevance and practical outcomes: given these problems of access, particularly for the poorest and most marginalized, the relevance of ICTs to their conditions is harder to demonstrate, and has to be demonstrated in terms of direct practical outcomes.

While the Darjeeling site researcher was interviewing in a remote Himalayan village, one participant Vijay stormed off angrily and said: “[With full of action - angry man]. What will poor people do by learning computers? If we go to learn computers who will feed our stomach? Poor peoples spend their life as a labourer. None of us here has time for computer. Will starve if we don’t work for a day. Anyway what is the use of learning computers? Hey Nima lets go for work, why do we need to waste our time here? We are not going to benefit anything out of it. It’s the same old thing, they simply document, nothing will happen practically...”

Hopes, aspirations and change The very idea of ‘poverty reduction’ depends on understanding how people formulate and act upon aspirations, concepts of social change and images of the possibilities open to them. These themes are also crucial for understanding how people relate to ICT centres and skills. For most participants, access to ICTs represents real or symbolic access to modernity, the future, education and knowledge, and therefore ICT centres constitute a space into which people can project and develop a sense of change and possibility.

The following four local initiatives have been discussed in detail in this issueYouth-Led Digital Opportunities (Sitakund, Chittagong District, Bangladesh) has a rural ICT centre and linked it to a grassroots youth development network that works to address root causes of poverty and key areas of social and economic development.

Nabanna: Networking Rural Women and Knowledge (Baduria, North 24 Parganas District, West Bengal, India) uses grassroots processes to build information-sharing networks among lowincome, rural women through face-to-face regular meetings as well as web- and print-based media.

ICT Learning Centre for Women (Seelampur, New Delhi, India) is an open learning centre for girls and women located at a madrasa (Islamic school) in a high-density, low-income area of east Delhi.

Namma Dhwani Local ICT Network (Budikote, Kolar District, Karnataka, India) combines a radio studio, an audio cable network that delivers radio to local households, and a telecentre with computers, Internet connectivity and other multimedia tools.

8

However, there is a considerable gap between these aspirations and people’s knowledge of this ‘modern world’ in which they want their children to establish themselves. Both parents and children have little direct experience of offices, professions and the range of modern work. In general, young people are literate but their parents (or mothers) are not, and have no personal understanding of the kinds of skills they believe to be necessary. They, therefore, find it difficult to articulate precisely how education or information translates into improvement or jobs, or to assess the quality of education and to make informed choices over their very considerable investments in education.

Young people feel they are growing up in a world where they expect to be literate, to be knowledgeable and educated, to move beyond restrictive family and community norms in order to lead more autonomous lives, and to have a higher status within their communities. ICT centres fit these aspirations particularly closely, both because of the modern and prestige associations of new technologies and skills and because the ICT centres themselves tend to be perceived as free spaces in which people can develop autonomy and confidence.

ICT centres are intervening in diverse structures of poverty as well as wide ranging conceptions of poverty and poverty reduction within poor communities. Members of the community themselves draw widely different connections between poverty and ICTs, which also change over time and as they become involved with ICTs and ICT centres. Moreover, different ICTs and combinations of ICTs are connected to poverty in different ways. The central lesson learned from the programme is that it is counterproductive to look for direct impacts of specific ICTs on specific poverty conditions.

The most promising poverty reduction processes often arose from combinations of different media and channels of communication; and these processes are often indirect and subtle, mediated through different social networks, organizations and attitudes. Moreover, the shift from direct impacts to media mixes and mediated processes parallels the experience of many participants in ICT centres: they often start by looking for direct material benefits but found themselves engaged in processes of innovation and exploration whose benefits were more subtle and long term.

Direct and indirect ‘impacts’ For some people, particularly amongst the poorest, the relevance of ICTs is judged almost entirely in terms of their capacity to generate income or employment in the short term. Those with a longer term view connect ICTs to poverty reduction in terms of education: securing ICT skills is a route to better jobs in the future, directly or by continuing into higher education. As a wall poster for a private computer school in rural Tamil Nadu put it, ‘Computer education: boon for middle class’: ICT skills and certificates are seen as (a necessary) part of a broader and long term strategy for social advancement.

All the local initiatives are careful not to feed the inflated promises of ICTs by making it clear to participants that computer skills do not guarantee jobs, though it was often difficult to counter these expectations. In fact, the more direct connections between ICTs and income generation are often the least promising. In the case of computers, for example, mastering basic computer literacy plus i4d | May 2004

Microsoft Word, and learning to type curriculum vitae (CVs) and letters, is increasingly seen as essential for future employment for the next generation. It is central to aspirations to white collar jobs, and some young people reported failing to get jobs because of lack of computer skills. However, this has little relevance to the very poor and agricultural population who do not see this route as realistically open to them.

Several of the local initiatives focus specifically on income generating activities and direct employment benefits from ICTs. The project workers have moved away from direct intervention in income generation in response to the ways the participants themselves are engaging with the ICTs. They only returned to an explicit focus on income generating activities later in the initiative, on the basis of the confidence, social and technical skills and freedom for autonomous activity that the young women have built up through their experiences at the centre. As in most centres, the most important impacts on women’s prospects of employment emerged from providing a space that acted as information exchange, and support network, and developed a range of interrelated social, technical and economic skills and experience.

Contrasts between more or less direct ICT impacts on poverty are evident in everyday use and content. This is particularly clear in the case of computing and Internet; the disjuncture was less clear in radio and video, and perhaps least of all where there is a clear mix of media.

All the centres involve some element of structured computer training which taught basic computer literacy as well as Microsoft Office and Internet functions. This is essential partly because it corresponded to people’s understandings of what ‘learning ICTs’ means and it can impact on their lives: it means learning the functions which are associated with getting jobs or advancing into higher education (word processing, including CV writing; and spreadsheets). This also includes the skills essential to feeling comfortable on a computer (mouse and keyboard skills, and ability to save and organize files, to understand the ‘topography’ of the computer – where things are). This is the basic sense of ‘using computers’ that is associated with getting certificates from computer schools or centres, and with possessing credentials that are accepted by employers. This approach to computing is also associated with learning other valuable and marketable skills, above all English and secretarial skills.

However, even within this kind of ICT use, people’s encounter with computers rapidly diversifies. Learning to use the mouse through drawing and games rapidly develops an excitement about multi-media possibilities and an exploration of visual skills and pleasures. Using PowerPoint in order to teach all of Office gets people involved in sequencing images and texts, which can develop into narratives and – in some sites – into giving presentations to the rest of the group. In the case of less literate people, seeing one’s name on the monitor is a primarily visual experience, more to do with drawing and self-expression than with office skills.

At the same time, the more creative uses of ICTs generate problems. They can require considerable technical skills on the part of staff and trainers, as well as time to develop structured programmes and support project work. It is clear that this approach was much better developed in the community radio and video projects, and May 2004 | www.i4donline.net

The remaining five of the nine local initiatives are: Empowering Resource Poor Women to Use ICTs (Chennai, Kancheepuram and Cuddalore, Tamil Nadu, India) has put computers with Internet connectivity into the homes of women’s self-help group (SHG) members.

Darjeeling Himalayan Internet Railway (Darjeeling, West Bengal, India) has community ICT centres with computer training and Internet access at stations along the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway (DHR).

Tansen Community Media Centre (Tansen, Palpa District, Nepal) works with local youth from poor families and marginalised groups, training them in TV production and the use of ICTs. Jakar Community Multimedia Centre (Jakar, Bhutan) is part of a remote Bhutan Broadcasting Service production station in Jakar. Local TV and radio production feeds into the national broadcast system, allowing for increased level of content from isolated rural areas.

Uva Community Media Network (Uva Province, Sri Lanka) uses a combination of radio and new ICTs as a way to facilitate responsive development and governance on a province-wide basis.

Please log on to www.ictpr.nic.in for more details on these local initiatives. needs to be extended to computing and Internet. This is particularly true where there were status differences of gender or education.

Interestingly, in Sitakund, participants are extremely vocal in criticizing staff who imposed their authority not only by their attitude but also by structuring classes too formally.

Finally, innovative use of ICTs can be challenging to the wider community. For instance, parents questioned why they were paying even nominal fees for their daughters to participate in frivolous activities like listening to CDs that seemed to have little to do with serious education.

Empowerment As the initiatives have developed, the notion of ‘empowerment’ has emerged as a useful term to describe the positive effects of the introduction of community multimedia centres. At the same time, it is a dangerously broad and over simplistic way to describe those same, often contradictory effects – particularly for women. Project staff and participants widely regarded this term as expressing the benefits of their interventions in the broadest and deepest form, and closest to the personal experiences of beneficiaries. It served as a useful way of collecting together data that indicated the ways in which communities or individuals became somehow ‘empowered’ to operate outside of their traditional spheres of activity, or to challenge restrictive social norms. In this respect, empowerment refers broadly to the challenging of social norms, shifts in power relations, an increase in perceived opportunity, and increases in ‘confidence’ (mainly of individuals) and the consequences that arise from this. We might define empowerment in this context as the confidence and capabilities to express oneself and to act effectively in the social world.

9

Yasmin narrated how different she feels today than when she had come from her village. She recalled the incident when she had come first time to the centre with her cousin and had cried when could not use mouse and this made her feel so depressed that she thought that her education till 10th has no relevance and use when she can not apply that for using something that everyone is using so confidently. She gained so much confidence and feels so motivated that, now, she is determined to acquire economic independence in 10 days time and has postponed her plans to go back to her village.

She said, “Now I have tested the test of confidence and chatting with other woman”.

Now she has been looking for a job. She will get back to her village only after she gets job. Also shared how frustrated she had felt in the beginning days when she was not able to use computer and how due to her shy nature, and lack of confidence she missed her college opportunity.

It would be difficult, and in fact misguided, to separate out the various technical and social bases of Yasmin’s confidence: mastering the mouse, chatting and being in the city: ICTs and spaces of sociability are closely interlinked in her’s story. Both her regrets about her past and her new aspirations arise from a sense of the expanded possibilities that she can now contemplate on the basis of developing herself in a supportive but challenging environment.

Similar stories come from an essay writing exercise amongst participants in the Sitakund site, “Changes in you after coming to the centre”. The researcher summarizes the confidence theme in the following way: None of the male users mentioned any change in them in terms of raised confidence while each and every female user has mentioned that one of their major changes have been this rise of confidence level. ‘But among these changes the most significant change in me has been that previously I used to feel some kind of a fear to get out of the house alone and I used to feel diffidence after coming to the centre. But now there is not a bit of that previous fear in me.

This is the biggest change in me.’

Thus, the repeated stories of overcoming fears in order to use the mouse or to organize the files narrate both literal and symbolic.

Finally, this engagement with new technologies has sometimes a dramatic impact on participants’ social standing in their homes or

10

community. Being seen to master prestigious new technologies changes participants’ relationships with others.

At ICT Centre Seelampur, there are a number of examples to conclusively show that the participants have gained self-confidence in many ways. Now they have a say in their family. Their parents, husbands, in-laws and of course their siblings feel proud as they uses the most sophisticated technical device. They are also admired because they are coming out of home to know good things and exchanging information with others. Some of them are now the part of the decision-making unit in their family. They realized that women have the right to speak. In the society they have a distinct position, as they know computer, they interact directly with outsiders like us as well as UNESCO visitors. (Seelampur site) We can not say that within a year of ICT use the social hierarchy in Baduria has changed, but all that we can repeat about the married women who had no right to say anything, now can give their opinion in a decision making. After coming to the centre and mixing with lot of women they have realized that they have the right to speak. (Baduria team) As discussed in the section on social networks, a key issue for poor communities is whether ICTs and ICT centres are ‘for them’; conversely, access to ICTs – as modern technologies for educated people - may mean a change in their perception of their own status.

In an interview from Tansen, a young man shares how he was excluded by both poverty and caste from ever watching television; the ICT centre designates it as ‘his’ technology for the first time:

Voice and information The general changes in confidence, status and self-expression translate unpredictably into direct impacts. The research experience has focused us on diverse processes rather than on specific pieces of information, accessed via ICTs, that had direct outcomes. For example, several of the Darjeeling centres gradually began to see themselves as spaces for information exchanges: people value them as places where ideas and information are accessed and exchanged through numerous channels – face to face interaction, print media, computers, public displays. The kind of information is equally diverse, including medical and educational facilities, HIV/AIDS awareness, training in stuffed-toy production and legal advice, or simply the possibility of sitting in a centre reading a newspaper or magazine. In terms of empowerment, the message is that people value the very idea of their right to free and transparent access to information and ideas.

Leela and her friend said that they have formed a SHG (self help group) after getting information from ICT centre. The SHG members originated because of the ICT centre. None of us knew each other before we actually met in the ICT centre. So the ICT centre has not only made us friends but has made us aware and given the ideas. The idea behind the SHG emerged within the users in the centre. We have also made a point that we have a meeting once a week in the ICT centre. The name of the SHG is the SAHAYATA, which they have associated with the ICT project. Deoki said, I have got more than what I expected from this centre. This centre has become an eye opener for not only the marginalized section of the community but even to the people who lacked information. (Darjeeling researcher notes) i4d | May 2004

Negotiating change Empowerment is a way of defining changes that embrace peoples’ sense of social agency, power relations within family and community, and the social norms that govern relationships and institutions.

They embrace shifts in gender, caste, class and age divisions. Although participants generally describe increases in their confidence and in their opportunities and aspirations, they also have to deal with considerable tensions.

Social networks Social exclusion is a major indicator of poverty and plays a central role in its reproduction as well. Inclusion in social networks provides vital access to information, social support, confidence and the ability to participate in collective life. Poorer people have fewer and narrower social connections, excluded by their conditions from the very social resources which might improve them.

Investigating social networks means studying ‘Who is connected to whom?’ What is the social and geographical range of people’s connections? At what points and for what reasons are people prevented from making connections with others? How do people use their connections? Social networks are also part of understanding the flow of communications within communities and therefore the ways in which ICT initiatives connect to the community: how is information circulated? How do initiatives relate to existing social networks and to what extent are they accepted within the community?

What has emerged most strongly from the research experience has been the effectiveness of the ICT centres in expanding users’ social networks. They do this in many ways.

• They provide legitimate spaces to socialise and work with different people, and in free and interesting situations.

• The centres act as ‘hubs’ where different social networks can intersect.

• Participation in ICT centres builds the confidence and skills to deal with new people and situations.

• Centres are connected to larger organizations, and attract visitors, giving a sense that the locale is connected to a wider world.

This exclusion from social and commercial networks, on the basis of gender restrictions on mobility, is repeated in many of the sites, in both Muslim and non-Muslim households. For example, in both Budikote and Tamil Nadu sites there is a clear distinction between women who were in SHGs and those who were not. Outside of SHGs, women are generally restricted to the immediate family, a few neighbours and some extended family, living and working in considerable isolation. Joining a SHG, and in these cases, by extension, an ICT initiative immediately expands the social networks to which they are connected not only to other members but also to committees and gatherings of other SHGs, to bank and government offices with which they have to deal and sometimes to the partner organizations that the SHGs and ICT initiatives are connected to.

Restricted social networks reflect social norms that narrow peoples’ mobility, access to information and resources, and their ability to interact with others to gain support and to organize collectively.

Conversely, interventions that expand social networks challenge the social norms – such as gender roles and caste exclusions - that restrict people’s mobility and social connections.

May 2004 | www.i4donline.net

• ICT centres are social centres: whatever else they do in the way of resource and skills access, the are places where people can meet, interact, work together and exchange information.

• While much literature has focused on how ICTs expand mediated information access and communication, much of the initiative’s experience points in the opposite direction: ICT access produced increased face-to-face communication within local social networks.

Sustaining and embedding ICT initiatives in communities Much of the research has focused on how ICT initiatives as organizations are connected to their communities. How can ICTs and ICT initiatives be made part of their communities? How can local groups and networks develop and sustain ICT use and ICT initiatives? How can they best organize in order to integrate local groups and networks, to develop a sense of community ownership and involvement?

These are really questions about developing initiatives that are sustainable in the widest sense of the term, not simply financially sustainable but also socially and technically sustainable: they need to be valued and integrated within the community so they can survive as social organizations; and they need local skills and motivation to keep them functioning.

In fact, the different aspects of sustainability are closely interrelated. For example, financial sustainability presumes that the initiative and its resources are socially valued so that people want to fund them; technical sustainability requires both financial support and social motivation.

Concluding observations Last one year’s research brings out briefly some significant findings on the impact of ICT interventions with respect to poverty, empowerment and social networks. It points to the role played by people’s own understanding and perceptions about their situations and how they would want to change it. This is particularly so in relation to their experience of poverty. This has important lessons for ICT interventions that may be developed in the future in this region.

11

Interview

“Our role is to innovate” In an interview with i4d, Prof. Mohsen Tawfik, the Director and UNESCO representative to India, Sri Lanka, Bhutan and the Maldieves, reflects on UNESCO’s ICT for development initiatives in South Asia work in these fields. In this, there is a very strong need for long term cooperation not only with governments and their agencies, but also with civil society and NGOs. Prof. Mohsen Tawfik

Why UNESCO finds ICT4D activities as of so important?

There is no doubt that ICTs are very powerful tools. They are the key to the whole idea of information and knowledge societies. The impact of new ICTs is hard to overestimate. They have changed the world in so many ways.

So… how can we use these tools to contribute to the MDGs? There must be a way that these very powerful tools can be used by the poor, can be used to eradicate poverty. That is what is behind so much of our work and why we place a priority on innovation and research, developing models and sharing results and experience, putting it out there in the public domain.

Although we often focus on information, communication has a great deal to contribute to the Millennium Development Goals in bridging not only the so called digital divide but more importantly the social and economic gaps of which the former is only a symptom. Some of the significant issues in relation to ICT4D are: capacity building for the development of communication on all levels, policy and strategy formulation, content development, and knowledge sharing between professionals and networking and thus, UNESCO would continue its

12

Please briefly describe the ICT4D initiatives taken up by UNESCO in Asia and India in particular.

UNESCO’s vision is to promote the free flow of ideas by word and image and to maintain, increase and spread knowledge.

This is essential for economic development, good governance and democracy.

It also includes creating knowledge societies that respect • Universality, indivisibility and interdependence of human rights, including freedom of expression; • Right to education for all; • Right to information for all; • Diversity of cultures and identities These are the four key principles that guide UNESCO in its participation in World Summit on Information Society (WSIS 2003 and 2005) ICT is an important tool in meeting all these objectives.

UNESCO promotes an integrated approach to ICTs and development.

• Multimedia: combining new and traditional Communication and Information technologies • Multipurpose: ICT is a tool for education, science, culture, poverty eradication, etc.

UNESCO has a number of different ICT4D programmes and platforms: • Reaching the Unreached, UNESCO’s

flagship programme in the region, works to include marginalized groups such as the rural and urban poor, the illiterate and the disabled in future knowledge societies. The programme is developing sustainable models to facilitate access to information and communication resources and tools.

• To meet the parallel needs of innovation and research in applying ICTs for poverty eradication, UNESCO has created a South Asian network to support both ICT innovation and research. The network brings together researchers and local sites through a range of networking tools, including an interactive website which has a constantly growing archive of research data. Working with a wide range of partners, a series of initiatives have been established that are developing new or adapted models for ICT access by the poor, especially those people living in extreme poverty. A number of these are in India, one is Bangladesh and one is in Nepal. All these ‘sites’ use an ‘ethnographic action research’ approach that informs and feeds both local project development as well as a regional synthesis.

• Multipurpose Community Telecentres can offer basic telecommunication and office administration services such as telephone, fax, e-mail, Internet access, word processing and photocopy, along with all needed user support and training.

They can facilitate access to library and information services, portals in support i4d | May 2004

of literacy campaigns, e-learning, government programmes, and other public service activity. MCTs can link to “traditional” rural media for outreach activities, and may, for example, provide access to radio and television production the so called “Community Multimedia Centers” (CMCs).

• Gaining from its experiences in community radio it moved forward with the concept of community multimedia centers.

UNESCO’s International Initiative for Community Multimedia Centres (CMCs) promotes community empowerment and addresses the digital divide by combining community broadcasting with the Internet and related technologies. The CMC programme offers a strategy for addressing the digital divide in poor communities.

The concept of Community Multimedia really developed out of our work with community radio, a medium that for a variety of reasons has a special place in UNESCO’s programmes. Community multimedia centres and networks combine traditional and new ICTs. For example, radio and Internet were combined in an innovative fashion in the Radio Browsing format. The main idea is that these media are stronger in combination – they have highly complementary strengths. Our work with Community Multimedia is mostly in Bhutan, Nepal and Sri Lanka (Kothmale was the pilot), but it has already taken root in India and we are hoping to support new initiatives in Bangladesh, Pakistan, the Philippines and East Timor.

• Strategic ICT solutions are also very important. We need to starting thinking and doing more about developing ICT applications that work for specific groups of professionals and end-users. Good examples of how UNESCO has identified needs and facilitated partnerships to develop solutions are Greenstone and eNRICH. We are also thinking of some new ideas – an easy system for content packaging and new applications for handhelds and devices like the Simputer.

UNESCO’s role is to innovate, to develop pilots and to catalyse new approaches.

Our work should stimulate new ideas, new explorations, discussion and debate.

May 2004 | www.i4donline.net

Are these initiatives in reply to the action plan formulated at WSIS 2003 to achieve Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)?

Yes. To some extent all of our work is geared towards the MDGs. The key MDG is halving poverty by 2015 and many of our community based initiatives work towards this. The fundamental means for this is through the focus of our initiatives on the least developed countries and extremely poor sections of these.

Many of these programmes were ongoing before WSIS. However, we have studied carefully the WSIS Declaration and action plan and will make sure that our new programmes will contribute to the set goals.

What changes do you expect (in the areas where you have launched ICT4D projects like reaching the unreached) by 2005? (from UNESCO’s perspective) The most fundamental and long-standing change would come from our focus on the unreached and the extremely poor. Creating access for them for various ICTs with language and content that is responsive to their needs would be of great value. This access will set of complex but definitive processes towards poverty alleviation and overall development of disprivileged communities.

ICTs are tools. People will use them to help build their own development, whatever that may be. It might relate to governance. We have seen some interesting examples of this (Budikote, Uva). It might have to do with education or marketing or income generation.

The work we have been involved with in ICT4D has empowered people at the grassroots. We should see more skilled people, particularly women and youth. ICT4D is also a great enabler. We will see new ideas develop from the grassroots, new networks and new local solutions.

What role do you see for civil society organisations in UNESCO’s efforts for ICT4D? UNESCO has always worked with partners from various sectors – government, other UN agencies and forums, non-governmental organizations and civil society. Civil society organizations are key partners to UNESCO, notably in the field of Communication and Information. New partnerships are constantly being developed to ensure an effective implementation of UNESCO’s

objectives, as defined by its Member States.

It is important to identify convergence and complementation possibilities and coordinate as well as document such work among development communication agencies.

Particularly with respect to developing and sustaining need-based initiatives, promoting awareness and rights of citizens, civil society organizations would have a crucial role to play.

Is their any specific strategy, which UNESCO has to address the digital divide?

Firstly, the digital divide is only a symptom of a more fundamental divide and this is why all UNESCO’s sectors consider ICTs as a tool, for example, ICT is a strategic component of one of UNESCO’s most important priorities, Education for All. ICT is an increasingly important tool to build more equitable knowledge societies; more equitable access to ICT as a gateway to knowledge is one strategy in the eradication of poverty.

Specifically, we do this through our major programmes: • Developing sustainable models to ‘reach the unreached’ • Enabling innovation • Supporting and facilitating research • Catalysing public discussion and debate through publications and consultations • Supporting development of national information and communication policies with civil society participation Besides, we also have certain cross-cutting programmes: • Building strategic capacities, for example, education, library and media professionals to use ICT • Combining media and integrating social and technological networks has been a key strategy and area of exploration, especially in Asia • Understanding local communicative and information environments in a holistic manner • Working towards local information networks that make use of locally appropriate mixtures of technology, media and social elements.

For daily news on ICT4D log on to www.i4donline.net

13

T HE

POTENTIAL OF

ICT S

The case of mobile phones in Sitakund ... in Bangladesh, there is a worrying lack of evidence or analysis of the actual experience and effects of telecommunication system upon poor people’s livelihoods.

Debobroto Chakraborty Researcher, YPRDO Project Sitakund, Bangladesh debobrotochakraborty@yahoo.com

14

It is said that “Communication is a process, not a product”. But the mainstream communication process depends on products of modern technology. Telecommunication system is often stated to be the most thriving catalyst in the economic, social and political development of a country. Despite this, in Bangladesh, there is a worrying lack of evidence or analysis of the actual experience and effects of telecommunication system upon poor people’s livelihoods.

Young Power in Social Action (YPSA) supported by UNESCO runs an ICT resource centre in the Sitakund municipality of Sitakund sub district under Chittagong District of Bangladesh. The area is situated 37 kilometres away from Chittagong City flanked by hills and sea. Total population of the area is 274,903. The literacy rate of the area is 41.1% and proportion of employed men and women is 86% and 21% respectively. 85% of total villages and 65% of total households of the Upazilla (municipality) are under electricity coverage (source: 1991 population census). It has the biggest ecological park of Asia and the biggest Hindu pilgrimage of Bangladesh.

The majestic natural beauty and historical Hindu religious sights and structures offer enormous prospects of tourism that have never been explored. Community people consist of mostly Muslims, followed by Hindus and the Buddhists. Fisher folk live on the sea shore while the indigenous people on the hills.

The municipality area has a strong presence of various communication tools. Almost every house has television and radio.

Many have refrigerators, VCDs, CD systems and so on. Although not too many, but a reasonable number of TVs can also be found in the villages. Many village tea stalls have been using VCDs to show cinemas and attract more customers. Thus, all sorts of

technological applications are found here.

There are many calling centers offering landline and mobile calling facilities along with computer composing and printing.

Recently Sitakund’s telecom exchange was made digital. From November 2003 they have supplied around 500 digital phone connections in the municipality area and plan to increase this to 2000 connections. However, long before the introduction of digital phone, communication spread out even in the extreme remote village of Sitakund with the help of a modern telecommunication tool, the mobile phone.

Mobile phone has now become so common and people have become so accustomed to it that even the Dadima (aged grandmother) of the most far end village of Sitakund sub-district knows what it is, what it does and is likely to have used it.

The present ICT initiative in Sitakund has been promoting some digital tools to the local disadvantaged youths and adolescents as also monitoring their effects. These are the tools that include computers, digital camera, scanner, pocket PCs among others.

The ethnographic action research undertaken in the initiative has provided more in-depth knowledge about people’s responses to ICTs. Methods include field notes, in-depth interviews, group discussions, social maps and issue based participatory exercises. The findings revealed that the digital tool that is able to get the highest public enthusiasm in rural Sitakund was not any that our centre could offer. It is the mobile phone. In fact, mobile phones enabled the emergence of a new culture.

For the digitally less aware rural people the mobile technology has offered a brand new way for communicating and exchanging information. In various cases it has enabled and strengthened existing information networks and created new ones as well. i4d | May 2004

Mobiles phones: trends and impact Availability of mobile phones all around the locality (mainly in urban and suburban areas) has provided people with an opportunity for communication that is beyond imagination. Many people of Sitakund work and live abroad. Localities named as ‘London’i Para’ and ‘Dubai Para’ are occupied by kin of these emigrants. Families dependent on them often need to communicate with them.

People were earlier forced to travel a long distance and spend more money just to make a call because of non-availability of digital phone and poor analog connection. It was impossible for women to travel as mobility restrictions on them are quite severe. With available mobile phones, calling centers have now grown even inside the remote villages.

A number of the rural calling centers consist of just one mobile phone, a table and a bench. Mobile phones used commercially have certainly created a new self-employment opportunity for people. People invest by buying a mobile with some small loans from NGOs or other sources.

It has also enabled people to keep the communication system personal. Because in earlier times while making a call through landline at home and especially from shops, the phone set could not be moved and people could not talk personal matters over the phone without others hearing it. But now they can take the mobile set in their hand and move to a private distance and ‘do mobile’. This is the term that people often use here, ‘doing mobile’.

Majority of the people having mobile phones use prepaid phone.

It is because of the uncertain monthly phone bill and an expensive line charge. This costs them more than the postpaid facility. Often people call from shops even when they have their own mobile phone to save some money. With a pre-paid mobile one has to pay Taka 6.90 per minute. This high cost has gradually led towards a new trend that is often termed as ‘Miss Call culture’. People have found out the way of using missed calls so innovatively that it has almost turned to a culture. Through this means, communications carries on effectively and no cost at all.

Salim, a 34-year old teacher and owner of a private coaching centre beside YPSA office says, “…Me and Ahmed have an understanding between ourselves about communicating with mobile phones using miss calls. When either one of us gives a miss call that means ‘I am at home, where are you?’ If given two miss calls at one time it means ‘I’m at your house, where are you?’ If Ahmed gives three miss calls at a time that means “I am standing before the shop at the entrance of your street. Come out.’ and I won’t make mistake responding with a single miss call that means Right away!”

A 30-year old accountant, Sharif says he gives miss call to people close to him that means “I am thinking about you”. Before the digital phone came to our ICT centre I rarely made a mobile call directly to my Programme officer. We have an arrangement between ourselves that if I give a miss call from the accountant’s mobile he will call back. Even after numerous miss calls from someone else’s mobile, he won’t call back!”

The accountant had two miss calls from an unknown number in my presence. After screening the number he called back out of curiosity and when he called, the person at the other end simply denied having called. A 24-year-old college male student’s response to my query in this respect was “The trend is now to give miss calls May 2004 | www.i4donline.net

to unknown numbers in order to find a girl. Mostly young girls will call you back after repeated miss calls because young unmarried girls become embarrassed in the presence of their family on getting miscalls.

Many people say “Girls, who were not easily reached previously because of the distance and non-availability of landlines, can now be easily reached because the family has a mobile phone. Disturb the girl (or the person you hate) with as many missed calls as you want and it doesn’t cost a penny.”

“There has not been any incident in my life after acquiring a mobile phone. But there has been an incident in my friend’s life.

My friend talks to a friend of hers everyday. But she does not know who that person is. They got introduced to each other through

As a local researcher reports, people’s view on a person who has acquired a mobile phone recently [** Meaning of the term ‘society’ is different in rural Sitakund. Here a group of families united and controlled under one person’s leadership is called a society. The speciality of a society is coming forward in times of people’s needs and other such duties and rights.

Before Buying mobile Used to walk on the street by placing his hands in the pocket.

Before he used to come forward for some works of the society. ** Before he used to be at home most of the time Before he used to come home by foot.

After Buying Mobile Now he walks with the mobile in hand.

Now he has to be called to work for the society.

Now he is seldom found at home.

Now he comes home by Rickshaw

missed calls. They solve all their problems by discussing with each other. My friend had to go through many serious consequences in her family for talking to this friend yet their relationship continues…” says an 18 year old participant of the centre.

A young 28-year-old journalist of Dhaka, Aamir says “We, in

15

our friends group start miss call games among ourselves after mid night. The game is that the person who can give highest miss calls without getting caught wins. If the person receiving miss calls can catch the miss call, then he wins!”

At an early stage in the project, we would often wonder what may happen if the rural youths of Sitakund get internet access.

How it might result in new relations through chatting with unknown people and emails. But we never assumed that this is already in practice without any internet connection and with just the mobile phones.

Mobile phones often result in new types of relationships. The fact that the people communicating over the phone can remain unknown allows them to form new relationships with unknown people more easily. For instance, people feeling close and dependent on others whom they have never seen in their lives and do not know anything about except their names. On the other hand, the new behaviours emerging for new modes of communication may just strengthen existing values. For instance, girls may be criticized for talking to strange men or boys may not be given money for personal expenditure. It is interesting to note that more than its use the ‘face value’ of phone is very high almost making it a fetish.

“Mobile phone is a very important aspect in a person’s social status. The person who has a mobile has a much higher position in various gossip, occasions or games. Moreover, if the person’s phone set is more valuable his position is much higher.” Possession of this powerful digital tool can give people a sense of power as it is something not every person can afford in rural places. It can bring about changes in peoples’ personal and social behavior. The same way it can change behavior towards the people who own it.

Most people have a clear idea of what social and personal benefits can they avail from this tool. “…a man was often seen with a mobile in his hand in our village. He used to put the mobile to his ear and say something whenever he saw anyone coming. This scene took place everyday.

Suddenly one day, when he saw some of the villagers of our village passing by the road he held the mobile to his ear and was saying something. Seeing him some of the children began to say how can he afford to talk like this all the time. One of them said, let us go and find out. They approached him and after giving a salaam said, Bhai, please give a call to this number. That person then became uneasy

16

and said my mobile card is empty. Then they said, if there is no money in your mobile then how did you make calls. Then they all forcefully took away the mobile from him and saw that it is not a mobile, it’s actually a mobile shaped calculator.” As the local researcher adds this is because many people so strongly believe that having a mobile can change their social status.

Having the easy communication tool in hand and ability to communicate whenever they want with a vast number of people increases people’s wish to be in constant exchange of information and emotion.

Women’s inability to move around much physically is the reason for mobile phone having an impact on their lives more than the men. All of a sudden it has connected the women with the flow of information and communication they thought was not possible before. The fact that they can now communicate very easily has given them a new source of confidence.

A 22-year-old unemployed youth says, “When I make calls I do it from the shop. But when my mother calls the phone is brought home. This surely was not possible previously when there was no mobile phone available in the locality. Even in those families where the women are not allowed to come out of the house communication is not a big deal nowadays. Due to the highly competitive market many calling centers have started home service by bringing the mobile to people’s houses…”

Though the youth may have a different perception as one young man says, “There is no benefit of talking from home. On the contrary, there are lots of problems. At home friends can’t be talked to easily, we can’t call whenever we wish to…” Easy availability of commercial mobile phones allows more freedom for communication.

Localization of ICT tools allows people to use them more effectively and according to their needs. They would not be able to call from the calling centre at Sitakund and pay later and so would be unable to fulfill their communication need if they did not have money. But as the same tools have become very much locally available it has suited itself to the local needs. “…….A lot of people of our village live abroad, some live in Dhaka or Chittagong or other places for business or jobs. Their families need to send message or information to them at any hour of day and night. Earlier they had to travel to Sitakund spending 10 taka as rickshaw fare. After making the call they had to pay the bill immediately. But as there is an ISD mobile in our own village we can get information about home and abroad and we are not compelled to pay off the bill instantly.”

Lack of adequate technical knowledge to operate digital tools can also expose people to be deceived in many cases. Most of the people using mobile phones from calling centers have little knowledge of using the phone and/or of how calls are costed. It has become a very common way of profiteering by the calling centers.

As it is was revealed in a mapping exercise in Shekhpara village about the owner of one of the calling centres “Although he has a mobile, he has no pride. He stands beside people in times of their need. He comes to people’s house in the morning, daytime and even at late nights with the phone. We get many benefits from him at any time. He is of much help to the villagers. But he would always take call charge for two minutes instead of one minute lying about the call time and so takes 10 taka instead of 5 taka”. i4d | May 2004

The communication divide As often other literature points out there exists a divide between people who have access to means of communication and information and those who do not. From this perspective, the nations that do not have appropriate facility to get connected with the information superhighway through modern telecommunication system are information poor. The digital divide is not limited to computers only as it also includes other communication technologies. In the world 8% of the people have never made a phone call (Digital Dividends, 2001). In Bangladesh there are only 4 phone connections for every 1000 people. However, New York has more telephone connections than all of rural Asia.

To have communication facility is a citizen’s right in most of the countries. The spread of telecommunication facility widens the scope of information access and dissemination in society that in turn plays a vital role in social development. The powerful role of mobile phones in the Sitakund area exemplifies this. The right to have information is recognized by our constitution and Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But telecommunication is yet to be recognized as a condition of human right by the Government and non-government sectors of Bangladesh. Billions of dollars have been spent through both Government and non-government channels but poverty reduction has been less than 1% per annum. Also, till now neither the Government nor non-government sectors have introduced any programme considering telecommunication a citizen’s right. The present government has established telecommunication network in some sub-districts and a few unions level. Companies such as Grameen, Aktel, Citicell, Sheba and BRTA have begun cellular and fixed phone service.

Pacific Bangladesh Telecom Ltd. was first to introduce mobile phone service named ‘Citicell’ in 1991. They introduced in the market a total of 7500 cellular phones during 1991 to 1997. Then mobiles phones were sold for about hundred thousand taka as the company enjoyed a monopoly in the market. Mobile phones used to be solely in the hands of rich people as a symbol of status and power. The second phone company ‘Grameen’ broke this monopoly market of ‘Citicell’ in 1996. There came a momentum in the use of mobile phones after ‘Grameen’ was given the license to vend mobiles. The cellular phone costs became 5-6 thousand taka. The fashion and status consciousness of well-off people went astray and mobile phones found its place in the hands of middle class, lower middle class and even lower income class. At present 1.5 million mobile phones are there in Bangladesh. The other two mobile companies are Sheba and Aktel. On the other hand fixed telephones of BTTB, BRTA and Sheba range around 9 hundred thousand.

Yet a severe neglect of rural Bangladesh by both Government and non-government telecommunication services is due to the mobile telecommunication system being totally captured and controlled by the corporations where the priorities mainly relate to business and profit making. Although according to the International Telecommunication Union’s guidelines, 10% of the phones should be at village level but it is no way a reality here. But there are many plans to increase teledensity in cities.

There needs to be a move from looking at technology and asking, “What can we do with this?” to looking at peoples’ needs and asking, “Which technology might help here?”

May 2004 | www.i4donline.net

In this context it may be interesting to learn from other experiences. Mamun Goldar of Bhola district started his computer related business along with a printing press business in the year 2000. At the same time he also started his alternative telecommunication service among the telecom deprived people of Bhola. This alternative telecommunication system has now expanded to 500 growth centers of Bhola. As it expanded through antennas made of Bamboo they call it Bamboo telecommunication. At the beginning other entrepreneurs established this kind of telecentre with the help of Mamum Goldar. Afterwards, the entrepreneurs of village centers started providing teleservice at their own initiative. At the early stage one antenna would be at Bhola district and the other one at a distance of 30-35 kms. Two common machines would be set up at both ends. At present the connection has expanded from Bhola district Shodor to Borhanuddin and many other areas. The telemodel of Bhola is now spreading in other parts of the country.

Communication and means for communication are quite strongly intertwined with social life and social relationships in any society.

This also includes issues of social status. So when we talk about introducing new means of communication there is always a potential for many significant changes in practices and values – this is to some extent proved by the experience of mobile phones. When we talk about bridging the digital divide through projects then some kinds of telecommunication may be overlooked. The attention tends to be more on computers, radios and other hi-tech gadgets. But the approach should be integrated considering the socio-cultural implications the communication system with any of its aspects is able to create. There is always a temptation to address the digital divide through introducing new technologies and hoping that it would produce some positive result but the focus should be more concentrated to looking at people’s needs and finding out which technology may help in that particular geographic and social-cultural situation. This is particularly important when we view communication in the context of development and poverty alleviation.

Acknowledgements: Earnest thanks to Ms. Savithri Subramanian, Research Coordinator of UNESCO CCT project and Mr. A. H. M. Bazlur Rahman, Chief Executive of Bangladesh NGO Network for Radio Communication (BNNRC). Without their invaluable contribution this paper would not have happened.

17

Quiz

ICT for poor A number of not-for-profit and for-profit initiatives have been taken in India to bridge the digital divide and make the technology accessible to remote and rural areas. Let us check.

1. This is an Ahmedabad, Gujarat-based non-governmental organisation (NGO), What is SRISTI and what is the name of the well-known network with which is it associated?

2. What is TARAhaat?

3. If it helps people in the poorest and the most backward districts of India, what is PACS programme and where is it being implemented?

4. If it claims to be an organisational platform for developing information technology (IT)- enabled services to rural masses through a kiosk-based revenue model, called soochnalayas, what is Drishtee?.

5. If it claims to have already become the largest initiative among all Internet-based interventions in rural India, what is eChoupal?

6. If these are village information kiosks with a difference as most of these kiosks are located in the houses of farmers, what are Parry corners?

7. If lamps have been lit in Tamil Nadu to dispel the darkness of ignorance and bring the light of knowledge, what are n-Logue Chiraag kiosks?

8. If this programme offers Internet connectivity, among others, and is going to be implemented in 5,000 rural clusters in India in next five years, what is PURA programme?

9. If this small town in Maharashtra called Baramati has gained international prominence for its deliberations on the potential of ICT for development, what is Baramati initiative?

10. If the weavers of this state have been helped by two software products – Auto Tex 2000 and Auto Tex 5.6 – to almost double their carpet exports, what is the name of the state?

11. If this well-known NGO active in Gujarat since 1972 for empowerment of women will receive 400 computers free of charge for use by it and some schools in Gujarat, what are the names of the NGO and the organisation donating the computers?

12. If this Hyderabad-based NGO offers collateral-free credit to women at their doorsteps through handheld computers and smart cards, what is SKS? 13. If this well-publicised wired village project in Maharashtra is helping the sugarcane farmers in improving the efficiency of the sugarcane production through village information kiosks, what is the name of the project?

14. If this lab claims to be innovating for the next five billion, is

18

headquartered in Mumbai, and it has designed a software called Hisaab (meaning accounts in Hindi) for micro finance institutions (MFIs) in rural areas a la Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, what is the name of the lab?

15. If 14 mutually aided cooperative societies ( MACS) have gone online for the first time in Andhra Pradesh and have adopted the state-of-the-art Financial Accounting and Management Information System (FAMIS), who developed the FAMIS software?

16. If the Viswa Gram project was launched in Gujarat at Timbi Gram Panchayat of Umarala taluka of Bhavnagar district on January 18, 2004, who designed its software?

17. Who started the Information Village Research Project in village Villianur, Pondichery in 1998?

18. If this project is called the Gramdoot project, not to be confused with the Gyandoot project in Madhya Pradesh, which private company has launched it, and in which state has it been launched?

19. If this Working Group constituted by Government of India in May 2000 recommended launching of information technology (IT) yatras (journeys), what is the name of the Working Group?

20. If, the former Prime Minister of India, Atal Behari Vajpayee, inaugurated a toll-free call centre for Indian farmers on January 21, 2004, what number did he dial?

Here is an opportunity to prove your intellectual mettle!

Send your answers at the earliest to info@i4donline.net The first three all correct answers will receive exciting prizes.

The decision of the editorial team will be final.

The answers will be published and the winners will be announced in the May 2004 issue of i4d. Online readers can view the same issue on www.i4donline.net in May.

D. C. Misra, Former Development Commissioner, Delhi, and Chairman of the Taskforce for IT Policy, NCT of Delhi, India dc_misra@hotmail.com © DC Misra, 2004

i4d | May 2004

Vol. II No. 5

The i4d News

May 2004

Information for development www.i4donline.net

Ugandan government promotes e-Governance

While speaking at a one-day workshop themed: Enabling e-Governance in Uganda at the International Conference Centre in Kampala, Dr Maggie Kigozi, the executive director of Uganda Investment Authority said that e-Governance is the most effective way of reducing costs in running public affairs from the lower levels of government to the central government. As there are only four districts in Uganda that have access to e-Governance; Kayunga, Mbarara, Mbale and Lira, “Expenditure on local government affairs can reduce by 10 percent if e-Governance is promoted in all the 56 districts,” she mentioned.

She asked government to speed up the process of e-Governance in every district and asked district leaders to embrace the system to cut cost and time. She added May 2004 | www.i4donline.net

that e-Governance would also lead to skill development on Information Communication Technology. Mr Reza Bardien, the Microsoft education programme manager for Africa and Middle East, said that most governments in Africa do not have budgets for ICT. “As such ICT development and usage is still very low and isolated in the continent because the initiatives being undertaken to develop ICTs in the entire continent of Africa are largely in the hands of NGOs and foreign missions,” Bardien said. Microsoft has made a budget of $250 million for human resource development worldwide in countries that have signed memorandum of understanding with Microsoft. The programme helps countries to put infrastructures like schools and training institutions for ICT. The Minister of

State for Communications, Mr Michael Werikhe said that government is to use online systems to promote e-Governance and computer use in the country through public-private partnerships.

“This partnership must start at the lower levels and through education for effective use of online e-Governance. An integration of labour market services enabling citizens to benefit from one stop center service,” he said. He said that government’s strategy in the promotion of e-Governance, based on Customer Resource Management strategy, will transform Uganda into a customer centric country that delivers services tailored specifically to the needs of its citizens and serve as the foundation on which e-Governance models will be based.

Source: www.allfrica.com

19

The i4d News

Technology Cyber forensic guidelines on the anvil Central Government is planning to formulate guidelines for search and seizure of digital information for being produced as evidence in a court of law with the help of The Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India.

The Technical Resource Centre for Cyber Forensics at C-DAC, Thiruvananthapuram, is one of the two projects initiated by the Department of Information Technology for developing as well as providing technical services to law enforcement agencies.

The objectives behind the projects are to develop indigenous forensic tools to follow up the implementation of the Information Technology Act, 2000, especially with respect to cyber crimes and carrying out technical forensic analysis, authentication and evidence presentation. It will also act as a resource centre for computer forensics and provide training on cyber forensic methods and practices.

Sources from C-DAC said that the centre has already developed an array of cyber forensic tools, which, after detailed valida-

tion procedures, will formally be released for use. These tools are in line with the procedures suggested by the Sardar Vallabbhai Patel National Police Academy, Hyderabad, for seizure, acquisition analysis and preservation of digital evidence. The tools include TrueBack V1.0 with essential features for disk imaging, CyberCheck V1.0 for data analysis and recovery, DataRec V1.0 for data recovery, Hasher V1. 0 for computing hashes and E-mail Tracer V1.0 for tracing mails.

As per the Sections 65, 66 and 67 of IT Act, 2000, in India lays down offences that are punishable under law. However, linking crime to a criminal is a major challenge in the cyber crime scenario. The evidence available is digital in nature and special techniques and methods are needed to be adopted for collecting evidence and presenting it to the court. This digital evidence is highly volatile and prone to modification by others.

The challenge before the information technology community lies in devising techniques to prepare evidence from cyber crimes so that it can be effectively presented before the court. This new area of crime analysis has come to be known as cyber forensics. It can be defined as the process of extracting information and data from computer storage media and guaranteeing its accuracy and reliability.

There are two distinct areas in cyber forensics: computer forensics and network forensics. The first deals with gathering evidence from computer media seized at the crime scene whereas, the second concerns itself primarily with in-depth analysis of computer network intrusion evidence. Currently available commercial intrusion analysis tools are inadequate to deal with today’s networked and distributed environments.

Source: Business Line

Internet speed record set

Passwords are old-fashioned. Welcome to the era of web cameras and fingerprint access. Easy-to-use cash dispensing machines that use these technologies will be available in a couple of months in rural areas.

Costing about 800 USD each, compared to ATMs available in the market for about 16,000 USD, the Gramateller INDI will do away with personal identification numbers.

Just a thumb impression is enough to get cash from the machine. A prototype of the machine is ready at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras and testing is taking place on network integration between the machine and a remote server, said Mr L. Kannan, Managing Director, Vortex Engineering, a city-based firm floated by IIT alumni.

While a magnetic-stripe card is used for cash dispensing in an ATM, in a Gramateller INDI a user only has to display a smart card and authenticate oneself through the fingerprint identification module. The machine would send this image through a personal computer that has a Web camera to a remote server of the bank.

When the server confirms the identity by comparing the images that are stored in the server, the person can use the keyboard of the PC or keypad on the machine to specify cash required. The machine then dispenses the cash. The smart card, issued by nLogue Communication, a TeNeT group company, can also be used for offline applications, including as proof of identity, driving licence and debit card.

For a kiosk operator, there is no investment except for the PC, peripherals and connectivity. The bank invests in the machine. Refilling cash in machines, is supposed to be a major issue, since everything is done through the web. nLogue is developing a business model around the movement of physical goods to and from remote rural areas.

The issue of cash movement was also being addressed as a part of this and some feasible solution is expected to come out very soon.

The record, announced at the Spring 2004 Internet2 member meeting in Arlington, Va., USA was for transmitting data over nearly 11,000 kilometers at an average speed of 6.25 gigabits per second. This is nearly 10,000 times faster than a typical home broadband connection. The network link used to set the record reaches from Los Angeles to Geneva, Switzerland.

Internet2 is a consortium of more than 200 universities working with industry and government to develop next-generation Internet technology. The Internet2’s contest, which began in 2000, is open and ongoing, and it tests researchers’ ability to build the highest-bandwidth, end-to-end Internet Protocol network.

The new record used IPv4, the current system for Internet addressing, and was set by members from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and Genevabased CERN. The same team had previously set a new mark of 4 gigabits per second over the same distance using IPv6, the next generation of Internet protocols.

While no one expects the average person to need this type of bandwidth anytime soon, the demonstration is important in the research community, where highcapacity links are needed to transfer large amounts of data. Many groups have already begun developing high-speed grids to connect research institutions and laboratories, so that scientists can more efficiently share large volumes of data.

CERN and its partners have already begun building such a network; it’s called the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) Computing Grid. Caltech is involved in building the TeraGrid supercomputing network, which connects the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, the San Diego Supercomputer Center, Argonne National Laboratory, the Caltech Center for Advanced Computing Research and the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center.

Source: Business Line

Source: ZDNet

ATMs for the rural India

20

i4d | May 2004

The i4d News

Even illiterates can go mobile A new mobile phone is set to come in the market, which may be aptly called as ‘illeteratefriendly’ - courtesy Reliance Infocomm. Ambani Group of company is launching speechbased applications for mobile phones. Quite simply, that means that an illiterate villager or urban dweller has merely to mention the name of the person he or she wants to talk to and, presto, the mobile phone will do the rest of the job—by scanning a Reliance phone directory. More to the point, an illiterate person can speak in any of several Indian languages and dialects.

So a villager in the Western Ghats of Maharashtra(who speaks a different Marathi dialect) can speak in his dialect into the phone, without pressing too many buttons. Nor does he have to buy a new mobile phone. Says Mahesh Prasad, President, applications and solutions group, Reliance Infocomm: “We are working on a network-based technology that is independent of handsets. This will mean that the current handsets can be used to recognise and transmit voice signals.” This service may launch in a few months. How do these voice-based commands work? The handset will recognise the command, translate it into text, retrieve the phone number of the person being telephoned from the data base, translate the data into voice and transmit it to the user’s handset.

Globally, much work has been done to recognising speech in English (in various dialects). However, the biggest challenge is to offer this in various Indian languages with several dialects, besides commercialising these services, says Prasad. Reliance Infocomm has already set up a dedicated team to look at the permutations and combinations of speech-based applications and products for customers.

According to the 2001 census, 34.62 per cent of India’s population is illiterate. Reliance’s current effort is clearly aimed at expanding the mobile services market Reliance is working on several “futuristic applications” for its R-World. It will soon be launching an application to make a mobile phone more accessible to the blind.

This application, for which Tandem Infotech received a Dhirubhai Ambani Developers Programme award, enables a visually impaired person to “hear” missed calls or an SMS (which is automatically read out to him) and dial back the number. Though the application is meant to directly benefit the blind, it is also expected to be a high utility tool for anyone using a mobile phone.

Source: Business Standard

Health Here comes The Salut!

To tackle the eating disorders menace worlwide and that too alarmingly among Europeans that risk both their physical and mental health, the conclusion of the Salut!, project has opened up a new world of solutions to these serious medical conditions.

Salut! is a project funded by the European Commission under the 5th Framework Programme, Applications relating to Health and by the Swiss Federal Office for Education and Science (OFES).

The programme has developed online tools for the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of eating disorders, including a selfhelp guide to treat sufferers of Bulimia, which affects up to 4 per cent of European women. Although self-treatment manuals have been developed in the past, the Salut! self-help guide is the first structured program available online and in multiple languages. This, the project believes, places Europe in the lead in the development of therapeutic tools to treat eating disorders.

“The application of new ICT technologies to the treatment of eating disorders is May 2004 | www.i4donline.net

something that has largely been overlooked until now,” explains project coordinator Tony Lam at NetUnion in Switzerland.

“What we did had integrated the knowledge and know-how of experts into a structured online program for Bulimia that I believe is currently the only one available in the world.” Clinical trials show that the online tools offer a variety of important benefits compared to traditional methods.

Most significantly they make treatment more accessible to a larger number of sufferers, overcoming fears and spurring selfmotivation while at the sametime reducing the burden on healthcare professionals.

“We wanted to provide better services to patients without increasing therapists’ workload,” Lam explains.

A survey among trial patients showed that 73 per cent favour the idea of treating themselves, a result that indicates how the online program helps overcome feelings of shame among sufferers and makes them feel empowered to solve their eating problems. Similarly, 42 per cent highlighted the convenience of the system, which requires only three face-to-face interviews with a therapist and makes treatment more accessible and immediate.

Lam sees these achievements as a first step toward the development of an

‘e-mental health’ service sector, a future in which the Salut! Methodology can be applied to other related health problems such as obesity, and other mental health problems, such as pathological gambling or stress and anxiety.

Source: Innovation Reports

Software-driven surgery Computer-aided surgery can help doctors perform procedures on the spine and knee with almost 100 per cent precision.

It’s a win-win deal for the patient and the doctor.

Spine disorder and knee replacement procedures have been on the rise in recent years. Patients are treated either conservatively or surgically, depending on the clinical presentation and neurological status.

Surgeries are performed to correct deformities and stabilise the unstable segment (of the spine) using screws and rods.

However, the danger of the screws damaging the spinal cord or the large blood vessels, although very small, is ever present.

The technique of biological percutaneous pedicle screw insertion and closed threading of rods is done, but cent percent precision has always been a question.

Joint replacement surgery, on the other hand, involves removal of the bone from

21

The i4d News

Towards rural healthcare Escorts Heart Institute and Research Centre (EHIRC) in New Delhi, India has tied up with California-based Polycom, a web conferencing and collaboration solutions major, to provide advanced healthcare to remote locations in India through video conferencing. Now heart patients in remote areas of the country need not have to rush to New Delhi for treatment in super speciality hospitals.

India, which is inevitably short of high-level health infrastructure and the geographical distribution of existing hospitals and health service, is limited to urban centres. This is where the beauty of telemedicine lies that has the ability to reach out to areas where medical assistance was unheard of.

On the occasion titled ’Bridging the Health Divide through Technology,’ Escorts’ doctors offered medical advice to patients in government hospitals in Kanpur, Nathdwara and Amritsar located in other provinces of India through Polycom’s video conferencing solutions. Initially, around six hospitals will be connected to EHIRC using Polycom’s video conferencing solutions.

EHIRC executive director Dr Naresh Trehan, while announcing the initiative at a media briefing in Delhi said that telemedicine is rapidly making strides due to new developments in telecommunications. Developing countries can use the available technology to fundamentally change people’s lives with respect to healthcare. We, at Escorts, through the telemedicine initiative, have treated and saved many lives.”

He said, “We have been using telecardiology which helps doctors and patients at remote places in India to connect to EHIRC for opinion and treatment. We focus on consultation over telephone, video conferencing, telesurgery through robotic assistance, etc.” “Telecardiology is a new frontier in medical care and Escorts has leveraged the power of information technology in enhancing patient care,” Dr. Trehan said.

Source: The Financial Express

either end of the joint and replacing it with an artificial joint. Here, the chances of an error of judgement on the centring, the degree to which the (artificial) joint can be moved for a perfect alignment is as per the physician’s perception - more appropriate than accurate.

“For that matter, even medical literature allows a known complication rate in every surgical procedure. But these rates are set to change for the better with computer-aided surgery. And the ultimate beneficiary of this technological advance is the patient,” says Dr Rajasekaran, Director and Chief Orthopaedic Surgeon of Ganga Ram Hospital, in New Delhi, India.

And for the first time, it is truly the computer that is directing the doctor’s moves in the course of the surgery. Until now, technology captured on the computer screen and the surgery was performed by a doctor, as the process unfolded in the operation theatre, be it bypass surgery or any other. So the images one saw were those of the doctor going about his task. But in

22

computer-aided surgery, the surgeon’s moves are actually guided, in real time, by the computer.

The machine’s navigation system allows instant navigation and does not require complicated and expensive pre-operative CT scans or additional treatment planning time. The surgical navigation relies on sensors that accurately measure the three-dimensional position of the bone to be operated on, as well as the surgical tools.

During surgery, a series of landmarks are collected to generate a 3-D model of the part and that is morphed to the patient’s individual anatomy.

Based on this intra-operatively acquired data, the software recommends a treatment plan that can be optimised according to the surgeon’s expertise. The movements of the surgeon’s instruments are guided with high precision and are visualised in real-time throughout the procedure, thus helping to achieve optimal implementation of the treatment plan. In computer-aided surgery, the computer decides the position

and size of the screws to achieve perfect placement of the screws.

The latest equipment available for knee replacement surgery can cut bone within 3 to 5 degrees of the desired range, and the error margin is brought down to a negligible zero to 0.5 degree, ensuring perfect alignment.

With the increasing number of joint replacement surgeries performed in this country, the need for revision replacements is also on the rise. Revision surgeries require greater skill, special instrumentation, and technique for cement removal. Cutting-edge-technology helps in maximising the life of the artificial joint.

Would robots eventually take over the surgical procedure considering the advances in technology? “Not really, remember you are performing surgery on human life. It is precious. The tool is only a guide, a supplement that helps us to be more precise,” says Dr Rajasekaran.

Source: Business Line

e-Commerce Need cash at 13,000 feet above sea level? — just visit the local ATM Comsat Max, an infocom solutions provider, has installed the highest VSAT (very small aperture terminal) antenna in India. This installation has been done for an ATM of UTI Bank in Thegu (Sikkim) at a height of 13,200 feet. Announcing this, Mr Joyjit Chatterjee, Vice-President, Comsat Max said that, the company has also installed a de-icing kit to prevent ice clogging on it, as the place remains covered with ice for long periods. The ATM will be a boon for the army men, who will now have access to financial transactions even at such heights.

Source: Business Line

e-Governance IBM India going for West Bengal e-Gov plans The Indian arm of International Business Machines (IBM) is going for the West Bengal government’s pilot networking project that will wire all gram panchayats ( village level governing body ) in a district, hence taking connectivity to the last stage of the administration. The first phase of the Rs i4d | May 2004

The i4d News USD 22.4m pilot project, to be financed by the Union government, will wire all the 256 gram panchayats in the state’s largest district, Burdwan.

Since the IT major is investing heavily in the state by expanding development centre and working closely with government projects like computer education in schools, state is favourably inclined towards IBM’s proposal as pointed by the senior official.The latest project, which is a part of the West Bengal State Wide Area Network (WBSWAN), will create a public network for the entire district from the district headquarters to panchayat adminstrative blocks. At present, WBSWAN has reached down to the headquarters of all the 17 districts and nine sub-divisional towns. Tata Infotech Ltd has implemented the first stage of the WBSWAN project, which was completed by mid-2002.

The government has sent the Burdwan proposal to the Union Ministry of Information Technology, taking the cue from the former Union IT minister Arun Shourie’s promise that it would support one district network project and is waiting for the green signal from the ministry.

IBM officials however declined to comment said that IBM will not be able to confirm the development, which is based on speculation. At present, the problem for the state government is to find the money

to expand the project to cover the gram panchayats. Though former Union government had extended its helping hand for only one district, for the next 16 districts, IBM can help the government find the funds needed to wire up the entire state.

The project is a chance for IBM to be involved with an e-Governance project. But as the Union government changed its, now became a matter of time to watch and see weather the new government will support this programme or not?

Source: The Financial Express

IBM for NISG project A Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) has been signed between Indian National Institute of Smart Government (NISG), a Government of India Institution and IBM India to promote e-Governance at the national level. IBM will provide NISG the technology and the services that will enable the government to better serve individuals or organisations, and to promote partnerships between the government and private enterprises in implementing e-Governance projects.

IBM will share with NISG its e-Governance Framework, which is based on platform independent, open source and open standards technologies including Linux.

The Framework, which IBM developed as a result of numerous engagements with gov-

ernments around the world, combines IBM’s services, offerings, researchs and experiences. This move will help India to develop different e-Government applications using open standards and IBM’s eGovernance Frameworks.

Source: Business Line

States expenditure on e-Gov in India to touch USD 3,000 million As per Nasscom (National Association of Software and Service Companies) study, State governments will spend close to a staggering USD 3,000 million on computing their operations over the next five years. The government sector accounted for nine per cent of the total IT spend in India in 2002, which is estimated to go up to 15 per cent of the total IT spend in the next five years, the study said.

Central government proposed a total outlay of $560 million for the national plan of e-Governance for the year 2003. While $297 million had been allocated for the Centre, $160 million was earmarked for financial institutions and $53 million for state governments, Nasscom said. According to Gartner estimates, the Indian government has spent around $1 billion on IT in 2002. This includes the expenditure of the state and central governments on hardware, software, telecom equipment and

Giving impetus to Social Networks Though clearly a bright and inventive personality, 24-year-old Leela is a young woman with few prospects for employment. Getting involved in the local information and communication centre in her town introduced her to other young people in similar situations. Now they work together to look for new and innovative opportunities for livelihood. Unemployment is one of the most serious problems for the youth in Darjeeling, a district in the West Bengal state of India famous for its tea and toy train. Leela belongs to Kurseong, part of one of the local initiatives undertaken by UNESCO for putting ICTs in the hands of the poor under the Cross-Cutting Themes initiative on poverty reduction.

The programme engages both in a rigorous and responsive intervention using ICTs in 9 varied locations spread over south Asia and an innovative research approach.

This piece shares experiences from the Darjeeling intervention. An awareness workshop on ICT and Urban Youth Development was organised recently by the Kurseong ICT centre. Inspired by the workshop, Leela and her friends from the ICT centre decided to start a self-help group. Leela and her eleven co-founders believe that creating a resource of monthly savings that group members can draw upon as capital for small income generating activities, is a useful potential solution to their problem of shrinking employment opportunities. Each member of Leela’s group will save USD 0.5 per month. Over six months their investment will be doubled, through the local government’s scheme for self-help groups and can be borrowed by group members as capital to start up small businesses. Some of the ideas that have developed in the group’s weekly meetings at the ICT centre are a bill-payment service for villagers who spend considerably on transport for paying bills and vegetable selling in rural areas. The idea is to provide some basic services so that the community saves time and money and the group members are able to earn a small amount every month. The group is using the internet to investigate business ideas and the centre’s computers to manage their accounts. The ICT centre not only provides tools for the group to use in their new undertaking, but also gives them a place for their weekly meetings.

Karma Tshering Bhutia Action Researcher, Darjeeling Himalayan Internet Railway project karmatsheringb@yahoo.com May 2004 | www.i4donline.net

23

The i4d News services and it. With over 20 states and Union Territories already have an IT policy in place, e-Governance is still in infancy in India. In terms of basic computerisation, police departments, treasury, land records, irrigation, and justice are seen as having the maximum potential, mentioned by Nasscom. The initiatives taken towards egovernance projects has resulted in an increase in the overall IT budget of state governments, sometimes by an order of almost 100 per cent. Andhra Pradesh takes the lead, in terms of states’ progress in eGovernance.

Source: The Financial Express

Education e-Way, a new way for Non Residents Indian kids to learn Telugu Want to learn Telugu, contact e-Guru. An online guru for Telugus who do not know Telugu, and those who are interested in learning the language. http://www.teluguone.com, a one-stop site for information on ‘everything’ related to Telugu and Andhra Pradesh, a sister concern of the Hyderabad-based One Information Systems Limited (OISL) has come out with a link for teaching Telugu online.

The link has lessons right from basics to intensive language sessions, with anima-

tion and audio effects as well. Launched in the presence of prominent industrialist and World Telugu Federation president, V. L. Indira Dutt, noted cine scriptwriter, Paruchuri Gopalakrishna and producer M. S. Reddy among others at a colourful function.

The Telugu e-Learning link is aimed at non-resident Indians (NRIs) and according to OISL managing director K. Ravishankar, is the result of a long-pending demand from NRI parents.

Ravishankar said that with fixed monthly and yearly rates for the lessons, depending on the need, the link is one of the many ideas on the anvil for NRIs. Help in property related matters and medical facilities along with on-demand cinemas were also in the pipeline on the teluguone.com portal.Simultaneous releases on the Internet of movies of smalltime artistes, who do not have the same kind of opportunities as super-stars for international releases are also being planned. The aim of the portal is to become a bridge between non-resident Telugus and their motherland with necessary services and information, Mr. Ravishankar added.

The portal already offers music lessons apart from links for audio/television serials and their stories, everything about Telugu movies and daily on-the-location clippings, news, politics, social help, audio/video reviews and updates and DVD/gift shops.

Source: The Hindu

India a laggard in e-Biz ‘India Shining’ an election campaign by the central government of India is not quite a brilliant, web-savvy success story and it’s the merest blip on the e-ready radar screen of 64 of the world’s leading economies, which is triumphantly led by Denmark , followed closely by Britain and finished off by a Scandinavian smorgasbord of four other nations.

The dismissive ranking of India , in the bottom one-third of the e-Readiness league table, comes in a new white paper published by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) in association with IBM. e-Readiness is essentially a four-year-old measure developed by IBM to rank a country’s e-Business environment, its people’s attitude to the internet and its government’s technology initiatives, spokesman Richard Janes said. EIU admitted it’s e-Readiness rankings helped point the way to future investment locales. The white paper has been clear-sighted about India , which comes in at number 10 in even the regional Asia rankings.

Though remarking on its “famed IT-enabled service sector” and its off-shoring successes and gravely acknowledging that these make Asia the very “emblem of the borderless economy”, it relegates India to just ahead of Peru and Saudi Arabia .

At number 46 of the 64-country ranking, India is placed just behind Turkey. India has been at number 46 for the last two years, a fall of three places since 2002.

EIU’s analysts say India ‘s overall performance is encouraging. India and Brazil, which is 9 places better off, are examples of “digital divide”, which “is not so much a chasm between haves and have-nots” but a distinction between developed and developing markets. India and China are called “economic powerhouses” but “in these markets, e-Business and e-Enabled services are the exception rather than the rule.” it said.

Source: The Times of India

24

Mapping the Neighbourhood programme across the country On the occasion of Technology Day, 11th May 2004, the President of India, A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, during his address over AIR, outlined nine technological milestones reached in 2003-2004. The nine milestones included the successful development of the LCA, electricity generation from municipal waste, a synergy mission for environmental upgradation and a digital library in every panchayat (a village level governing body) and mapping the neighbourhood by children, among others.

In his speech he said, “In my many interactions with school children, parents, teachers and educationist, I have been told that our existing educational process tends to emphasize learning by memory rather than strengthening creativity.”

He further added, “An attempt in this direction has been made in a pilot programme called Mapping the Neighbourhood initiated by the Department of Science and Technology and implemented by CSDMS an NGO based in Noida, Uttar Pradesh. In Almora district in Uttaranchal children from 20 schools have been motivated to use mapping techniques to investigate and map basic socio-economic, environmental and ecological issues being faced by the neighbourhood community. Armed with the scientific and technological tools such as Global Positioning System, Geographic Information System, Space Imagery incorporated in the hand held computers, the children are creating maps with the neighbourhood details to improve their understanding of the immediate environment.

These maps will enable further the technological community to find solutions for the regeneration of fast disappearing natural sources of water, improving road connectivity, finding better locations for electricity and water distribution points, reducing traffic congestion and improved systems of garbage collection. The children propose to extend their understanding to issues of agriculture and irrigation, health and nutrition and so on”.

He believes that this method of learning restores the joy of discovery and invention and through this programme we can ignite the minds of the youth and take the country to new heights. He further expressed his views that the programme must be implemented in at least 30 thousand schools all over the country.

Source: The Times of India and http://presidentof india.nic.in/scripts/sllatest1.jsp?id=307

i4d | May 2004

The i4d News

Geo-Informatics GPS installed Radio taxis to ply in Delhi There will be more radio taxis on the city’s roads. The government of Delhi in India hopes these taxis will provide a reliable and safer alternative to the yellow and black cabs. The government has decided to promote these taxis and open the trade to big fleet owners. Air-conditioned cars, irrespective of the model, can ply as radio taxis.

These taxis will have all-India permits and won’t have to pay extra to operate in National Capital Region (NCR) areas.The contact number of companies running radio taxis will not be restricted to the present three — 1920, 1923 and 1929.

Delhi’s Transport Ministry is inviting bids from more companies to ensure competition and better service.Transport Commissioner Rajiv Talwar said that individuals would not be given permits for radio taxis.

Only bulk permits to companies would be issued.Each radio taxi driver will have to be verified by the police and all vehicles will be interconnected. Some vehicles installed with Global Positioning Systems will be monitered by the authority.

Source: The Hindustan Times

Employment ‘Kudumbashree IT Project’ of India Braving sweltering heat and rising humidity, a group of five women work on assembled desktops from a small room in the Municipal Building at Kaloor, Kochi. They are building a digital database of those who are below poverty line (BPL) in Kerela, a list in which these very women will figure.

No stock options, no hefty pay packets, and no backlash against their work anywhere, these women are happy to be the kind of IT entrepreneurs they are. Earning just about 40 USD a month. But they keep smiling and are proud to say that they have paid off three-fourth of their loan of about 3,000 USD. Meet a new bunch of IT entrepreneurs from Kerela, India: the ‘Kudumbashree’ IT units. They do data entry, DTP work and provide some computer training in the 61 Kudumbashree IT units functioning across Kerela. This entire network of IT centers is run by 600-odd women who decided to battle poverty and build a life by logging on to a computer. “We take home May 2004 | www.i4donline.net

e-Advantage for happy holiday There must be elders in every family who enjoy narrating travel yarns, talking of the extreme hardships they endured to reach their destinations, the seemingly unending days fraught with unseen dangers… And almost every story inevitably ends with “Things were not so easy then!” or words to that effect. After all, that was what travel entailed — delay, discomfort and danger. Plans had to be made well in advance, yet there was no certainty that one would get a train berth or suitable accommodation. Bookings and reservations were simply synonyms for a mad scramble for queues. But today we can not only travel on the spur of the moment but have everything arranged and supplied to us in a matter of minutes.

Ankur Bhatia, managing director of Amadeus India, a national marketing company for the Amadeus Computerised Reservation System, sums up the transition thus: “In the 1940s and 50s everything was manual, tickets were sold directly from the airlines. In the 1960s and 80s the Global Distribution System enabled travel agents to offer a plethora of services to travellers across diverse categories. Since the 1990s, there is an increased dependence on Internet technologies for travel – e-Commerce, travel websites. We are now looking at an era of paperless travel with electronic ticketing that implies the substitution of paper flight coupons with an electronic record stored in the airline’s database which is updated throughout the lifetime of the ticket.”

Amadeus has a record of 3,000 travel bookings per second, and that was several years back. Founded in 1987 by Air France, Iberia, Lufthansa and SAS, Amaedus has come to dominate the world market. With its headquarters in Madrid and a development centre in Nice, Amadeus functions on the strength of its giant data centre in Germany. With the largest civilian bureau in Europe, this database updates all kinds of information even remotely related to travel. Checkout www.amadeus.net for research, flight, hotel and car reservation. It helps smoothen out every little nagging worry like city guides, subway maps and weather reports.

Hooked “to over 5,000 agencies across over 72 cities of India (it’s 119 countries worldwide), 89.9 per cent of the world’s schedule flights, 200,000 hotel properties and almost all cruises”, Amadeus naturally expects a good response from India. “We had over 17.6 million bookings in India in 2003. Of this, more than 1.5 per cent came from the North-East region and five per cent from Kolkata”, says Bhatia.

Source: The Statesman

USD 50 a month after paying towards the loan, electricity charges, rent and phone bills,” says Nimmy, who runs one of these IT centres. She reveals that she also invests in their “Techno World IT Centre.”

They started with five computers, a laser printer and a scanner. Today, we have 10 machines, a dot-matrix printer and new Malayalam software running on all PCs. The Kudumbashree project of the Kerela Government prove that bridging the digital divide means eradicating poverty. Since June 1999, 61 such IT units are functioning in Kerela giving direct employment to over 600 women, who otherwise had no means of livelihood.

“I would have never worked with computers but for this project”, says Radhika who works another unit in

Ernakulam district. Her unit is bigger with 14 PCs and 10 members. This unit has managed to pay off its loan and now provides 50 USD per month to its members.

The work is the same: data entry, DTP work and training. The project was conceived by the State to empower women, especially from the weaker sections of society.

Source: Business Line

Local Content Kerala IT Mission in India launches Multi-media CDs The Kerala State Information Technology Mission will soon release a set of four multi-media CDs on education, health,

25

The i4d News

Information networks creating new prospects In a quiet wing of the Office of the Municipal Counsellors building in off-the-beatentrack Baduria, between Kolkata and India’s border with Bangladesh, a group of eight young women are watching their teacher use a strand of waxed thread to pluck eyebrow hairs off the face of one of the students. At the start of 2004, in this small town of West Bengal, Nilima Chaterjee started teaching eight women a beautician’s course, based on skills she had acquired earlier through a six-month programme supported by the local government. This course is one in a series of new opportunities for poor women, facilitated in this 134-year old Baduria municipality by a team called Change Initiatives under the name Nabanna- meaning a festival celebrating the autumnal harvest of rice.

Baduria is located in the West Bengal state of India.

Nabanna is one of the nine partnership initiatives under UNESCO’s cross cutting theme programme on ICTs for poverty eradication. Nabanna’s novel information network enables Baduria women with relatively few opportunities for income and independence to create new spaces, both physical and virtual in which to congregate and learn, as well as new social and technological networks, through which to share information and skills. Interesting things seem to be happening here.

The Nabanna network builds from a simple facility in the centre of town where computer training and networking workshops are conducted. Women participants come here to learn and practice using computers to build up skills they require to put their emerging network online. The idea behind Nabanna is to facilitate women using media and ICT tools to communicate. At the front line of the information network are the candidates; all ‘poor’ but with some education, a thorough grasp of the Nabanna concept, and now better ICT skills. Each candidate reaches out to ten or so women in her neighbourhood with whom she shares information and ideas emerging from her experience of the Nabanna process. This becomes her information group.

The women also maintain regular diaries, about their everyday lives as well as on topics fixed by the Change Initiatives team. Diaries have explored a huge range of topics and yielded a wide array of information. Information agents animate and take notes on discussions that take place in their information groups, simultaneously identifying topics and feeding information on a gamut of themes that affect Baduria and its women. What emerges from analysis of diaries and discussion forms the basis for planning and developing content and information modules. The information gets channelled through the network in information group meetings, though regular training and special workshops and events and via the Nabanna tabloid - a bi-monthly Bengali-language newspaper circulated in the community. The network is animated in part by a regular tabloid newspaper with local features and excerpts from the participant’s diaries. The women also make use of eNRICH to archive and share this information. Thus, offline and online media combine and interact in innovative ways.

For instance, it was an ad published gratis in the Nabanna tabloid, expressing Nilima’s interest in conducting a beautician course, that got her in touch with various interested women from the Baduria community and together they worked to initiate the course. Nilima is now a member of one of the information groups and is proactive in the network’s learning and communicating process. In this manner, her participation allows her to be involved in social networks and explore means for a livelihood. Of the 50 rupees she earns from each student, 5 rupees go back to Nabanna.

Though still in its early stages, the Nabanna network has created a visible impact in new ideas and initiatives such as Nilima’s beautician’s course, and in the high degree of ownership these women clearly have over their newfound resource.

Jhulan Ghose Research Coordinator, Change Initiatives, jhulanpompi@rediffmail.com

agriculture and acts and rules. These four CDs in Malayalam language have been developed under the aegis of the IT Mission’s ‘Akshaya’ initiative.

Despite the popularity of the Internet, there is a paucity of Malayalam content on the Net. This unique initiative will help in meeting the local information needs of ordinary people, delivered in their own language. These CDs, which contain over 25,000 pages of Malayalam content, have been developed with the guidance of experts from each domain.

The CDs will initially be available at the ‘Akshaya Centres’ in Malappuram district and as the Akshaya project is launched in other parts of the State, the CDs will be available at the Akshaya Centres in those areas as well. The IT Mission is also looking at putting the content from the CDs on to the Internet.

The project to create content in Malayalam is actually one aspect of the Akshaya project launched to “bridge the digital divide”, say IT Mission officials.

The CDs contain detailed information on the four themes - education, agriculture, health and acts and rules.

Similarly, the CD on education goes beyond education and highlights various employment options available to young people. The CD on agriculture contains all sorts of information that is likely to be of interest to an agriculturist.

Source: Business Line

Wireless Hi to the world of WiFi “We tied up with Tata Indicom for the services in March,” informed Manish Khanna, executive assistant manager, Holiday Inn, Mumbai, India, as the hotel launched its Wi-Fi services.

The service has been made available to its guests through scratch card at different rate packages; one, six, twelve and twenty four hours. Cost for the packages are priced downwards of the maximum of Rs 750 for the whole day.

The guest has to buy the coupon in which a user name and password is printed. He can then use it to access the Internet from wherever he is on the hotel premises.

The hotel has noticed a marked increase in the use of its Internet service since launching WiFi services. A true hi to the world of Wi-Fi. Source: The Financial Express

26

i4d | May 2004

N ABANNA

Empowering women This article is part of a profile series to be published by UNESCO on its ICT initiative to innovate and research the potential of ICT to contribute to poverty reduction strategies

Jhulan Ghose Research Coordinator jhulanpompi@rediffmail.com

Jhumpa Ghosh Ray Project Director suryatirtha@vsnl.com Change Initiatives Kolkata, India

May 2004 | www.i4donline.net

Background Conceived by Change Initiatives, a Kolkata based NGO in the state of West Bengal in India, Nabanna Information Network for Rural Women is an initiative developed with the support of UNESCO in 2002. In early 2003 after field visits and research among local women, the Baduria Municipality came on board as a partner. In-depth research fed into building and organising the network through group discussions, interviews, home visits, training and testing. A small ICT facility was established in April 2003; a second smaller facility in November 2003.

Two further centres are planned.

Concept Women in areas like Baduria do not have structured local communication networks that promote access to information or provide spaces for sharing information and knowledge. Nabanna is about building a community network.

It seeks to empower poor women through providing them with access to tools to help them achieve greater access to information and skills development. The network allows individual women with direct access to share their knowledge and skills with others who do not. By combining technological and social networks Nabanna is designed to reach a large number of women and provide effective local collection and diffusion of information and knowledge.

The network enables the women to plan and create content – trawled from the internet or locally created - discuss it and exchange it with other women through offline group and media activities and through an emerging online space. Nabanna is exploring new ways to use content management systems and databases, intranet portals and web-based partnerships in Bengali - the local language in Baduria.

Location Baduria is a 134-year old municipality situated around the river Icchamoti in North

24 Parganas district of West Bengal, India.

The centre of the municipality lies some fifty kilometres west of Kolkata. In an unusual configuration that has been significant in Nabanna’s work, the municipality is made up of four distinct areas, separated physically and structurally by panchayat (village) lands. Most parts of the municipality appear more ‘rural’ than ‘urban’ in character.

The municipality has been divided into 17 wards. Each ward in turn comprises up to 10 neighbourhoods. Thus it is a large area with a total population of 47,388.

Context Despite their close proximity, the four areas (Rudrapur, Arbelia, Taragunia and Punda) have developed distinct identities. Poor communication between these geographically distinct areas (in terms of transport, exchange networks, social relationships and so forth) was a notable feature that Nabanna recognized as a challenge. The goal of Nabanna was to encourage information and knowledge exchange amongst the women of the Municipality.

There were many reasons for Change Initiatives to choose Baduria as the pilot project for Nabanna. Among them were: • The geographical peculiarities and associated isolation and poor communication among the regions • Women are given education, but few opportunities exist for self advancement • Poverty is pervasive, with many people dependent on daily wage payment in the fields, construction sites or in brick kilns.

Project portrait Nabanna is a Bengali word literally meaning first rice. Rice is more than a staple in Bengal - it tends to symbolise agriculture and food.

‘Nabanna’ is also the name of the festival that occurs when rice is harvested in November. Like many resources, even rice is at times out of the reach of some people.

Nabanna’s vision is to energise the community in Baduria by empowering poor

27

women to organise and use – to ‘harvest’ - information. To do this, Change Initiatives has set up a local network that combines social and technological elements:

The social network Two to three women from each of the municipality’s 17 wards were identified as information agents. These women participate in ongoing information and communication training, forming the backbone of the network. Each information agent leads an information group, comprised of ten women who are recruited from their local neighbourhood. The information groups meet on a weekly basis.

The 60 odd information agents are largely either students or housewives (homemakers) reaching about 600 women in the region. The average age of the students is 23, while for the housewives it is 35. The average income of the families of this group is about USD 30 per month, which is barely enough for subsistence.

The information groups consist mostly of housewives, whose average age is 45. The average income of the families in this group is the same as that of the information agents. Some of the information group members are skilled in knitting and weaving. Bidi Binding, which is often an income generating activity that the whole family participates in, is very prominent in Baduria. Other family oriented work includes weaving.

Whether they work independently or as part of the family, women do not have direct access to the markets to sell their products. In most cases they sell it via an agency or other middleman. Our research with participants has revealed that the everyday lives of women in Baduria tend to be income centric, and their most commonly expressed concern is the betterment of their children. About 10-12 information agents use the training center each day and devote about two hours a week for training. They learn the basics of using

a computer and simple software applications like MS Paint that help them to understand the language and layout of the computer and gain the skills they require in order to use other solutions like the eNRICH (a local web-based browser developed by UNESCO and NIC) content management system.

The women also maintain regular diaries, about their everyday lives as well as on topics fixed by the Change Initiatives team.

Diaries have explored a huge range of topics and yielded a wide array of information. Information agents animate and take notes on discussions that take place in their information groups, simultaneously identifying topics and feeding information on a gamut of themes, which affect Baduria and its women. What emerges from analysis of diaries and discussion forms the basis for planning and developing content and information modules. The information gets channeled through the network in information group meetings, through regular training and special workshops and events and via the Nabanna tabloid.

Offline strategies are building up to the creation of online systems that animate and archive information and knowledge resources from local and non-local sources. The range of themes includes livelihood, health and education.

Change Initiatives has a small field team, known locally as the computer didis (sisters). The local team consists of a manager at Baduria ICT centre and four research assistants: all trained local women. There are also a number of local community volunteers who have been motivated and encouraged to get more involved in the network.

Alongside continuing her training, one of the information agents is now managing the ICT facility in Arbelia (her neighbourhood).

Four to six women come each day to the Arbelia center. Poor women learn computers in batches of four.

Users profile Noorjehan

x Unlike many local Muslim families Noorjehan’s family is not especially conservative, so when the computer center was set up within the municipality building, Noorjehan was one of the first to apply. She took to computers like a fish to water and was soon able to master the basics of bits and bytes. Noorjehan has learnt computer skills well enough that she now teaches others. She grasped the Nabanna vision and mission including the ideas behind the research and is also working as one of Nabanna’s local researchers.

When eNRICH was introduced as part of Nabanna’s information network, Noorjehan was the first to upload information about her tailoring work and charges into the eNRICH local database. As her prices are considerably lower than market rates, many women in the network have placed orders with her. It was the first time that Noorjehan received orders from outside her neighbourhood.

Saswati Das Forty years old Saswati Das lives with her husband and her three daughters in Taragunia. She completed a homeopathy programme from Kolkata and practiced in Taragunia for some time, but was forced to stop due to pressure from her in-laws. Two of her daughters are mentally challenged. Though she has some work as part of government scheme, she spends more time with her cattle than in her job. It is not out of love for the animals, but more out of compulsion. She says, “As I am treated like the cattle, so it is best that I stay with them.” She started learning computers as part of the first group of trainees. Saswati is not brilliant in her handling of the PC, but she has become quite proficient in MS Word and Paintbrush and most importantly, she never gives up. When asked why she is a learning computer, she says: “I thought I had finished myself. Coming here I realised I still had a lot of potential. If I had the will, I could have gone places. Nabanna has given me the opportunity to learn computers, so in this era of vast progress in science and technology, I have rediscovered myself. I am thus always eager to come to the computer centre and wish my learning will be of use to the people.”

28

i4d | May 2004

Nabanna has made it possible for women to come together in an organised, non-partisan way and to create spaces in which to share and learn, use new tools and try out new ideas. The activities of the network allow them to reflect more deeply about their lives, situations and opportunities. The Nabanna women are now involved in researching and understanding the role of information and communication at the local level and they are starting to explore new strategies, tools and channels.

The technical network Media mix The ICT centres with basic facilities (1-2 computers, printer) that provide the basic infrastructure, while eNRICH software solution is used for local content management. Nabanna, a tabloid-style monthly eight pages newsletter reaches about 1000 families, as an important offline resource for sharing and learning.

Approach To facilitate information generation and sharing and information at local level, ICT facilities are planned in each of the four areas. The first ICT Centre was set up in two rooms in the municipality building. One room contains the computers while the other is used as a meeting and discussion space. This centre is the main hub for the network where much of the organising and all of the training has taken place to date. The centre has two desktops, one printer/scanner unit and dial-up Internet connectivity. The other three facilities will be nodal points for women who live in those areas. The smaller centres will each have one desktop and a dot matrix printer. The first of these ‘nodal’ centres has been established in the Arbelia area in a small room in an unused part of the local school.

Centres in the network are linked through different elements, both social and technical. The information agents themselves are the main link, and they use small portable hard drives with enough capacity to transfer up to 500 MB of information to share information and materials between centres. Another vehicle linking the network is the Nabanna tabloid newsletter. It is used to disseminate information about the network. Feedback suggests that one of the reasons for its local popularity is that it is explicitly for women.

Women now pay two cents per copy. The cover price was introduced in an effort to cover some of the printing and production costs, but also to see how valuable women consider the tabloid to be. So far the tabloid has not seen any significant drop in circulation due to the cover price.

Building local capacity and contact Nabanna has taken a learning-by-doing approach in which the women learn new skills in order to contribute to the development of the network and to create content. The main focus of skills training to date has been on computer literacy. Many women in Baduria are motivated to learn computer skills as they see it as a skill that will assist in gaining employment. It is also prestigious so that it is generally well perceived by the women’s families who might otherwise seek to restrict their education - in favour of marriage for younger women, and in favour of family and household chores and responsibilities for married women.

May 2004 | www.i4donline.net

The information agents learn basic computer skills relating to word processing and desktop publishing applications. They learn how to input information data and how to search for content on the eNRICH system. Training begins with the basics: starting up and shutting down, how to handle the mouse and navigate around the computer’s system. Participants practice and develop basic skills using Paint brush, an easy, visual software tool that allows trainees to gain confidence with the equipment and to create something personal and tangible. To encourage trainees and build the sense of a community network, the project includes exercises like a competition to design birthday cards in which winners receive prizes.

Trainees then learn MS Word Pad, graduating later to Word.

With perseverance most of the information agents have learned many of the nuances of MS Word. They appear to get maximum satisfaction in preparing their bio-data, using different fonts and colours. They create their own folders and keep their own files. The trainees have been excited by the calculation powers of MS Excel, amused and intrigued when they saw how easily accounting systems can be constructed using this sort of software tool. Information agents have also learned to use the I-Leap Bengali language font; the software allows users to type in Bengali using a special keycharacter layout as well as phonetically using the Roman alphabet and the standard keyboard layout. Although formal skills training has been largely in the domain of computer and software skills, the network has also fostered new skills in writing and information literacy, understanding what information is, how it flows within a given environment, and how it can be tapped for benefits.

Partners Change Initiatives is partnering with the Baduria Municipality and UNESCO to use a dynamic participatory research process and the vision of developing a community networks through ICTs. Research Nabanna has used the ethnographic action research methodology to inform their strategies for using ICTs to contribute to poverty reduction. Nabanna has responded and adapted to local needs based on their ongoing research. Initial broad research helped Nabanna to identify major themes for more targeted research: • Role of ICTs in the everyday lives of participants – Their views

29

of ICTs, expectations, use of centres, how stakeholders see themselves in the community, what else they want from Nabanna • Sources of information and information dissemination – Diaries (internal source); public/private sector (external), Newsletter, eNRICH – monitoring dissemination • Features of centre that affect relationships with communities and users (eg, location) observed, for example, through the setting up of new centres Main research methods used • Participant diaries • In-depth interviews with different groups in the network

• Participant observation and field notes • Mapping exercises Research snapshot Of all the research methods, the self-documenting diaries kept by the information agents have proved to be insightful and interesting. The information agents use diaries to jot down their thoughts, ideas and observations. In some instances they write on free topics and at other times they write on topics the Nabanna team suggests.

The diaries provide a window on the everyday lives and thoughts of women in Baduria. They demonstrate that the information agents have understood the importance of research; they use their diaries

FIELD NOTE (DATE-9-8-2003) Jhulan came to Baduria in the morning, Suryatirtha and myself, came in the afternoon. Our first stop was the ICT centre. We went to see the progress of the work. There we found Jhulan and Shabnam on one computer fighting with eNRICH. After spending a few more minutes in the center we went to our apartment. After keeping our luggage there we went towards the bus-terminus.

(Yesterday the officer of the information and cultural ministry had called me up to enquire about Srabani Ghosh and Kaushiki Chatterjee. She had read about their incapability to continue further studies in spite of doing well in the high school due to financial constraints, in our newsletters. She requested me to gather information about their present condition and inform her. If everything goes right then she would plead to the chief-minister to let go the fees of these two students. I was excited to hear this. I had planned that today itself I would first visit Srabani).

In the bus-terminus we met the head-clerk. After chatting with him we walked towards Anarpur. Srabani was sitting on the courtyard of her house. As soon as she caught my sight, she called ‘didi’. I was a bit confused about her house but as she called me, I was relieved out of tension. Her house comprises of two rooms made of mud and the roof made of tiles. As we went further we saw a plate full of rice on the floor. As soon as her father saw us he started to get busy about our sitting arrangements and snacks. After we made him understand that we won’t have anything he was pacified and said “ Then I will go and have my food. I have just returned and taken my bath. I go out early in the morning and come back at 6 in the evening. This is my daily routine. I am working real hard so that my children can study and make a decent living other than selling milk like me.”

We then went inside their house. I asked about her engineering plans. It was quiet vivid from her looks that she has completely thrown away that idea. She now plans to study chemistry honours in Barasat Government College. But the admission fee over there is Rs 2000, which is quiet a large amount for them. She is also tensed about the monthly fees. After knowing a bit more relevant information, which I have got to give to the officer, we came out of her house. As we were walking towards the bus stop we met Neelima, a stakeholder of that ward. After asking her to do a regular follow-up in this matter, I enquired that whether she will be able to take Srabani along with her to Bashirhat for a day if needed. She agreed quiet excitedly. We then came to the bazaar.

After waiting for a trekker and a bus for a few minutes, we took a van and went to Rudrapur, which is a 20 minutes journey. The surroundings have been engulfed in darkness, but the dim moonlight was giving the atmosphere a serene look. We were going to Rudrapur to take the in-depth interview of Sita Deb. We reached the spot at around seven. Sita was waiting there with her cousin Lata.

With the help of the torch we started to walk towards their house, (we were carrying our torch today). As we walked further we found in a verandah a few kids with their books sat encircling two to three lanterns. Lata then said that it is her grand ma’s house and she will now teach them. Lata left and we moved on. Then we reached her house after a few more minutes. Of all the houses we have visited, her one is the smallest. When we had first come for survey we were astonished to see such a house. Nobody is going to believe it until and unless you see it with your own eyes. They don’t have an electric connection, so we started to take the interview in the light of the lantern. As they have only one room her mother was sitting with us.

As we were about to come out of the interview we heard a strange and loud sound. She told us that it would rain. In a few seconds it did start. We had no options but to wait at her place. As the road is muddy and very narrow and top of it is raining, it is simply impossible to walk with a torch and an umbrella. We came out from there at around 8:30 PM. On the way back, we stopped for a few seconds to chat with those kids, but they reminded us that rain may come again and it will then be impossible for us to return. In spite of our wish to wait for a few more minutes we had no option but to return. We came to the bazaar where we wanted to meet the local councilor about the Rudrapur center but he was not available. So we took a trekker and went till Andhar Manik junction.

We went to Seema’s house to see what she did the whole day. We then came to the bus terminus on a van. And bought our dinner.

We then walked towards our apartment. We were really thrilled to see that power was still there. After keeping things in the apartment as we sat down to take rest, there was the power cut. We wrapped our day’s work.

30

i4d | May 2004

effectively by noting down important points when they get into informal discussions with community women. The diaries have been an important tool for identifying information needs and for generating content, feeding both the network’s information structure as well as the newsletter and the eNRICH database.

greater voice within their families. The project has led to solidarity among women who now share a free space for communicating, learning and innovating. The Baduria ICT centre is perceived as a place reserved for women. After acquiring computer skills, participants are now able to seek jobs with confidence.

Insights into impact on poverty

Organising

One of Nabanna’s biggest achievements is having instilled a sense of personal empowerment among the participants. From hardly being recognised in their immediate social environment, many of the women report that they have gained more respect in their local communities as a result of their ICT skills and creativity – not just because they are able to use a computer, but also because they are now recognized as people who can find and distribute information to local people. The younger women feel they are able to approach the job market with greater confidence.

There has also been an emergence of solidarity — for as the women learn computers together at the ICT centres, they also often discuss their problems, creating a sense of unity among them and also bringing forth inherent and latent leadership qualities. Trainees in the centres are taking their skills back to their local neighbourhoods and in turn becoming teachers there. For instance, one of the trainees at the main ICT centre has been chosen to manage the Arbelia centre where she will train other women in computing.

The diary contents have helped Change Initiatives develop modules for the information sharing groups. The groups meet once a week to discuss issues such as livelihood, education, health, agriculture and wisdom. Using eNRICH as a framework, Nabanna is creating a database of localised information and is trying to partner with many outside agencies such as educational institutions, government departments and corporate entities.

A continuous process of content creation has been evolved in which the group discussions and observations adds to the content and the database. The community newsletter provides an impetus to sharing the knowledge acquired from these multiple sources.

The orientation towards research and documentation has therefore been brought into the process at all levels.

As a result of Nabanna’s progress so far government organisations, corporations and educational institutes are showing an interest in building a web-based partnership with the women. The community has found that a more empowered, knowledgeable and confident women empowers her society by facilitating the process of collective decision-making at the family level and in the community. By gradually building capacity and basic infrastructure, Nabanna is enabling women to use information and communication tools to improve their quality of life.

The Nabanna network has supported the creation of new horizontal linkages. For example, connecting piecework embroiderers with bigger businesswomen across the community-at-large, facilitating new social connections and relationships. The network is perceived as a free, modern and innovative space, providing women with new opportunities and responsibilities.

Empowerment and expression With increased capacity to learn and new spaces for networking over which they feel a sense of ownership, the participating women report feeling empowered. Nabanna activities have also motivated and supported self-reflection, expression and creativity amongst the women. Both diary writing and tools like Paintbrush have been instrumental in this process of promoting voice. Women are finding that the community-at-large respects them for being knowledgeable on skills and issues, which in some cases has given them a May 2004 | www.i4donline.net

Information sharing Based on the needs and contributions of poor women, Nabanna is laying the foundations of an information network that recognises and promotes the value of local ‘indigenous’ information as well as those of external sources; participants are also the beneficiaries, therefore it can respond easily and effectively to local needs. Examples of information that gets networked include income generating opportunities, specifically who has what skills and who needs them; educational inputs, like what constitutes a correct answer in examinations and health like the availability of blood and beds in various hospitals in West Bengal. As the network develops further, more focused information on areas of greatest needs, for example income generating opportunities, microfinance, and specific education subjects, will be structured and fed into the network using eNRICH, the Nabanna newsletter and both online and offline training modules.

The road ahead: sustainability Nabanna is predicated on building a series of interconnected relationships: between digital resources and human intermediaries, between the information agents and their neighbourhood groups, and between the local Baduria network and other information providers and markets. The project will continue to use ethnographic action research to develop strategies to apply ICT for poverty reduction. The overall strategy is essentially to focus on some critical areas that will take Nabanna closer to its goal of empowering women to make an impact on poverty. There is potential for women in Baduria to link producers and markets and make productive information inputs to income generating ideas. For example, some women entrepreneurs in Baduria outsource embroidery work to other local women. However, this has not been publicised and so many women are unaware of these income generating opportunities.

Nabanna is introducing such information through the network using eNRICH in the ICT centres, and the information agents. In this way, information shared and cooperatively organised could lead to and support a good source of employment and income for women. Linking up with larger business at different levels of commerce and industry will be the next step. Change Initiatives is also looking at markets for desktop publishing work for women who with support can train themselves in these applications. Microcredit and agricultural information will also be incorporated into the network.

1USD = INR50

31

Permission was sought to start the ICT centre at the Madrasa and for this purpose space was also requested. The factor that played a positive and decisive role was not that the key people viewed ICTs as important but that they felt a strong need to create some opportunities for women in the area. Indeed, it was much later that they began to understand the utility of ICTs. The ICT center provides an open learning center for girls and women. They receive training on computers and Internet and also obtain information on varied topics. Interactive multimedia content is developed and used to support vocational and life-skills training and provide rights-based information on various areas to poor girls and women. The marginalised women use ICTs to learn marketable skills and build their awareness of health issues, their rights and livelihood opportunities. In contrast, the Madrasa has its own philosophy, where it seems to isolate itself from the outside world and the teachings have little influence of the outside, changing world. Movement of the students is restricted; there is no radio and no television.

For ICTs to establish their appropriateness, an overall evaluation is necessary. In an ideal world, universal access to information would create global information society yet the mode of interpretation will depend on the culture and traditions of the people and societies. A study (Ryckeghem 1995) shows how information technology and culture interact, wherein culture provides the condition for interpreting the utility of information technology. It is also believed that some ‘cultural beliefs’ are a hindrance to the adoption of ICTs though the reverse may be true in many cases. Computers are a product of industrialised civilisation not from this particular cultural context.

Yet the endeavour in community-based interventions has been to May 2004 | www.i4donline.net

be sensitive to cultural differences which was also the point of departure for the present initiative. The decision to set up the ICT centre in the annexe (one room) of the Madrasa gave it immediate legitimacy. Appreciating the socio-cultural scenario and the importance of the Masjid and Maulana in the lives of the community helped to harmonise that with the technological tools.

In today’s information age of globalisation, computerisation, Internet and virtual world, there are fears that the global media is fast promoting a global monoculture that denies diverse socio-cultural realities. It is felt that this process of globalisation may swamp the not so strong cultures. English is the predominant language of the information age. The majority of the material on the Internet is from the developed and industrialised countries. Thus, there are fears that the local cultures would be eroded so the tendency is to further isolate themselves.

The global village is not global for most of the world’s poor not simply because technology is not available to them but because with or without these technologies the poor are likely to remain marginalised from the benefits of society if they are excluded from the benefits of over-all development. Apart from this is the issue of language and content because of which even if computers may be physically available they may continue to be ‘out of reach’ in crucial ways.

Thus, the intervention was located within this fraught relationship between the modern-global and the traditional. There is an interesting contrast between the possibilities of globalised culture that the computer/Internet represents while being at a place that fiercely protects the local culture. What have been the experiences?

33

There are the traditional restrictions on mobility. Added to this is the fear of the “anti-social” elements that prohibits parents and husbands in Seelampur from sending women from their homes outside Seelampur.

Cultural adaptations How the intervention has adapted to cultural values…

It was felt necessary to embed the project in the community taking into account the existing cultural values. Concrete actions are being taken to preserve the local oral culture and propagate the same. For culture to grow, it must be active, contextual and social. ICTs such as videos, TV and multi-media computer software that combine text, sound and colourful images, are used to provide media for expression acting as facilitator.

The ethnographic action research revealed that the women spend a considerable time at home watching soap operas and Hindi movies on television. Seeing the glamorous people on screen, they too are keen to dress well. They want to dance and sing like them.

They are also keen to act. The ICT Centre provided them a platform and an opportunity to express their talents. At the Madrasa, singing is taboo. So the girls sing ‘Naaths’ (odes to God), with their heads covered in reverence. These along with stories, comic skits and plays have been recorded at the ICT centre.

Technological skills have been acquired in the process of expressing talents. Digital photography, downloading on the computer, sound recording are some of the skills learnt in the process.

The elderly women are being encouraged to record old songs, lullabies, recipes and home-remedies for illnesses. This initiative is named ‘Seelampur Voice’. CD based programmes of this nature are cablecast for wider viewing by the community. The endeavour is not only to preserve the local culture by recording but also to encourage others to come forward to share their experiences, talent and learning acquired through their elders.

The learning of local art and handicraft is being encouraged in the process of learning computers. The girls bring local traditional designs and patterns of embroidery to the centre. These are computerised through the process of scanning or digital photography.

Then these pictures are modified, improved and more innovative designs are developed with various colour combinations. Some of the participants download various patterns from the Internet and then evolve their own designs using traditional and modern tools as base. It is the same with the application of intricate Mehendi

34

patterns traditionally made on the hands and feet of women.

Studies have shown that despite its criticality to the success of information technology projects, culture is the most difficult to isolate, define and measure. From the conclusions of their study, every country must have an information technology policy that recognises its culture and ensures that adoption of information technology does not destroy the cultural heritage. The problem arises when there is a difference between the ‘culture of an IT product and the culture of its users’. Hence, every possible effort has been taken to develop local content in Seelampur.

It was observed that the girls were keen to acquire certain vocational skills while learning to handle computers. To fulfil this need, CD based vocational skills learning packages were developed inhouse where the participants have been actively involved. The packages, with a voice-over option in both English and Hindi, include candle making, liquid soap and phenyl making, henna application and designs, making of soft toys and rag dolls, tailoring etc. also, based on their traditional skills (such as handicrafts) many new avenues are being explored to make these girls have a means for an independent income. Many of the girls eagerly desire to have an independent source of income after coming to the centre and also, to be able to support or help their families financially.

Internet in conjunction with eNRICH, a local web-based browser is being used imaginatively to record and showcase local talent and cultural heritage. At the same time the participants are getting an exposure to other cultures and ideas as well. Thus, computers and the Internet create the possibility for such mutual sharing and learning. E-mail has opened an avenue to have exchanges with people of the same religion, living in different countries. Images from Internet coupled with e-mail exchanges are making the participants aware about the cultural differences and similarities amongst the Muslims living in countries like Malaysia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, West-Asia and the West. Looking at cultural aspects with a sense of enquiry and respect has been a big gain from the ICTs. The centre also observes Fridays as a holiday, as it is a day (called ‘Jumma’; On this special day, Muslims make an extra effort to go to their local masjid to listen to the khutbah -community address - by the Imam -worship leader - and to perform the formal worship with their fellow Muslims.) devoted to offering special congregational prayers among the Muslims. The tutor at the centre is from the same community so the girls feel comfortable. Hindi and Urdu are used along with English to facilitate learning. Some computer based learning programs in the form of Vocational CDs have been developed with voice over and content in Hindi as well as English. This was done for easy comprehension and for the realisation of the importance of English as a link language (especially for using the internet). Above all there is an informality of atmosphere so that the staff and project team members are open to approach.

Sensitivity has also been shown to the fact that the girls from the community are not allowed to move unaccompanied especially outside the confines of Seelampur. Consequently, in any event such as the WSIS meeting or the Knowledge Fair at Global Development Network meet or for the trip to Agra city that adjoins Delhi, adequate travel arrangements were made and it was ensured that the girls were escorted to and fro. Thus, they were not denied the opportunity for the exposure because of these mobility restrictions. i4d | May 2004

How the community and the clergy have also adapted …

There are the traditional restrictions on mobility. Added to this is the fear of the “anti-social” elements that prohibits parents and husbands in Seelampur from sending women from their homes outside Seelampur. Sexual harassment of girls is quite common in the area and one hears of such cases frequently. The Community ICT Center has gradually emerged as a “nodal” point of social contact in Seelampur as this is perceived as a safe place. Many women state that they feel very happy coming here and want to stay here for longer periods. Some women have profusely thanked the team at the center for providing them an opportunity to “constructively” interact and socialise. Now, older women and men in these families also support them in this interest. Several opportunities have been created such as picnics and other visits to facilitate their mobility even outside the area.

The centre is on the first floor of the annex to the Madrasa with an independent entry from the lane. The second floor of the Madrasa and the annex are interconnected with a passage like an aerobridge over the lane. Generally someone stays at the ground floor of the annex. For some period, there was no one staying in the annex, thus for security reasons the Maulana was not keen to keep the independent entry open. Financial constraints did not allow hiring a security guard. He then allowed the girls to enter the Madrasa from a side entrance, go up to the second floor, transit through the dormitory being used by the boys and then cross over to the annex.

The girls were apprehensive of the arrangements; especially of going through the dormitory, but the arrangement worked. Though girls are not allowed into the Masjid they were permitted to transit through the exclusively boys’ zone in this instance.

And there is resistance …

There are occasions when traditional values are too strong and play a decisive role. In such situations, the women may raise a voice or submit to tradition. The centre was to be formally inaugurated by the Chief Minister of Delhi on 26 June, 2003. The girls were enthusiastic and so were guided to organise the centre, make arrangements to receive the honourable guest and present themselves appropriately. The Maulana was the chief co-ordinator. It had been planned that after the formal inauguration of the centre, the Chief Minister would be escorted to a hall that serves as the Madrasa as also the Masjid, where she was to be felicitated publicly. After that she was to address the gathering. Yet despite their efforts because of tradition the girls were not permitted entry into the hall.

Often within the kinship context also, age-old patriarchal values may reinforce themselves even if by taking new forms in the face of these changes. Traditionally, women are seen as having a role only within the house and thus, formal education of any kind may not be seen as valuable and may even be discouraged. Recently in Seelampur girls are being rejected in the process of spouse selection in arranged marriages on the ground that they know computers so

will not ‘adjust’ in their marital family. Similar instances have also come to light about the boy’s kin making greater demands for dowry from the girl’s family if she is computer literate..

Voices are raised in dissent…

The girls remain in awe of the Maulana because of his status and traditional standing. During the month of Ramadan, he wanted the centre to be closed down. All through the month of Ramadan devout Muslims keep strict fast. Only before sunrise and after sunset do they take food. Early morning as the call for prayer is heard from the mosques, the boys and men set off to offer Namaz (prayers).

Women stay at home and recite the Koran. Fasting during the days of Ramadan normally does not affect their daily routine and they go on with their daily chores. Thus the 29 or 30 days of the month of Ramadan pass and the sighting of the new moon brings glad tidings of Eid-ul- Fitr and the end of the month.

The girls were not happy with the decision that the centre be closed down for the month of Ramadan. They were enjoying the learning experience at the centre. They were encouraged by the project staff to go through the relevant web sites to understand the significance and meaning behind the rituals and why Ramadan is observed. Having understood they gathered courage and went to the Maulana to plead their case to keep the centre functioning.

They did that convincingly and successfully. The compromise arrived at was that the centre would close down at 4 p.m. instead of at the usual closing time of 5 p.m. Only a few months ago such a dialogue between the Maulana and the girls would have been unthinkable.

Concluding observations These small steps lead to changing relationships, practices, and adapting of old values to new situations. As we go along, these seemingly small changes may go on to impact the culture. Culture is how we view the events, how we think, how we perceive events, how we react and respond. Culture consists of social norms, group behaviour, respect and authority of decision-makers. This experience shows that while every effort is being made to respect the local culture, the project is also impinging on the participants and the stakeholders, making them think and act a little differently. Earlier there were doubts as to whether the space would continue to be provided by the Madrasa or the centre would have to shift soon.

The outcomes of the dynamics are very evident in the fact that now there is a commitment to give the space for the centre for many years to come and an extra room has also been provided for the centre.

The initiative has shown that ICTs can be utilised to understand, preserve, and share cultural heritage. Local culture can be shared with people of different cultures with mutual understanding and respect. The exposure builds confidence in the women due to which they are able to articulate their opinions better. The Seelampur Community ICT initiative has been an interesting learning experience for the community as also for the project team.

www.i4donline.net May 2004 | www.i4donline.net

35

I NSIGHT

Taking the local route Unable to broadcast legally on the public airwaves, Namma Dhwani is an attempt to demonstrate the viability of a locally owned and operated community radio and to explore the potential of cable FM as an alternative to broadcast FM

Seema B. Nair Coordinator/Researcher VOICES, Karnataka, India voices1@vsnl.net

36

Every now and then I sit out on the balcony of my house in Budikote, hear the radios crackling, the TV’s blaring and think about how we managed to pull off this technical idiosyncrasy. Radio through cable. One year later, there are precious lessons yet to be learned. Technologies don’t always work as consistently as you want them to. Like it or not, we have become cable experts and after all that hard work people don’t always want to listen to you. What strikes me harder is that on March 28th, 2004 a year had passed since Namma Dhwani started two hours of programming everyday, give or take hours lost courtesy the electricity department. That would mean, approximately seven hundred and thirty hours of programming. Forty three thousand and eight hundred minutes of music and spoken word. All churned out by the community of Budikote.

So what has Namma Dhwani done for this community? On a macro level what is it that community radio stations can do for their community? The same question was posed to the core staff team of Namma Dhwani at a recent staff retreat. They listed out a set of socio-economic cultural and political problems which included lack of transparency on Government levels, lack of education, superstitions, animal sacrifice, lack of marketing information and local outlets, use of low yielding crops for short term benefits and no local entertainment.

Information about these issues has a crucial role to play for the community. It cannot be accessed through mainstream media channels like big commercial newspapers or even All India Radio, but by local community media. However, local communication channels like community radio require an enabling regulatory environment which does not yet exist in India.

Over the last year in Budikote, some community members have gradually begun to recognize their information needs and now see the value addition that a community radio station brings to their lives.

Seethamma, 35, is a member of Deepa

Self Help Group and Management Committee of Namma Dhwani. I first met her, after she stormed into the studio during the cablecast asking the volunteers to stop playing ‘their cinema songs’. A few days later I visited her house and watched in wonder as she showed off the log book that she helps keep about every programme Namma Dhwani cablecasts. She said, “I am an illiterate and knew nothing before I attended the MYRADA trainings and have developed this much. Today I can write my name, calculate SHG accounts. It is this information which was provided that has helped us women to become what we are.

Just like that, I think Namma Dhwani is a way that all the people in the village can use to develop themselves. Why watch all those serials and listen to those cinema songs when we can listen to our own songs and programmes that will help poor people like us…”

Her husband, Ramesh is a small time politician, a poet and a horticulturist. He regularly writes stories, plays and poems for Namma Dhwani. Many of his works in a satirical fashion looks at different traditions and ways of village life. For artists like Ramesh, Namma Dhwani is the only channel which showcases their talent and offers a venue for creative and other types of expression.

These are some encouraging experiences. Yet, while trying to answer these questions it is also important to keep in mind the role and limitations that any media plays in its community. Community media to be specific can only aim and strive to provide people information and a medium that they can use to make informed choices. It cannot make the choice for them. Further still, there is also the debate about whether we can assume we know what is in the community’s best interests overlooking their own perceptions regarding this.

While India may be on the brink of major developments in the community media sector, it is important to be realistic about i4d | May 2004

our own expectations and not overload the already burdened rural communities. Prof John van Zyl, Managing Director, ABC Ulwazi, describes two dangers that community media should watch out for.

He says that it is best to avoid “the belief that individuals have the capacity to change their own circumstances once it has been pointed out to them what is in their own best interests. In other words, that there is a clear, linear relationship between knowledge and action.”

Budikote is now facing its fourth year of severe drought. In such a context, people despite having access to ICT’s like Namma Dhwani have not always been able to materialize knowledge to opportunities and actions due to the absence of financial resources.

Take Meena, 55, for example. During one of the meetings I asked her if she had ever listened to Namma Dhwani. She said no.

I told her about the kind of programmes that is made and how she could benefit from it. “I leave my house looking for coolie work, grazing others’ cows and come back only late in the evening. Once I come back, I have to cook and clean. Where do I have the time? If you really want to help me, give me some money to repair my broken roof ” she told me.

So what does Namma Dhwani then mean to the people of Budikote? One of the words that are often used by young and old, male and female to describe Namma Dhwani is ‘free’. “Our children can use the computers freely”, “I can be free and talk and interact with other people without being scared about what people will say”, “I can be free, listen and play music and make programmes.”

Namma Dhwani’s ‘access to all’ mantra has helped break not only fear of technology but also norms of caste and gender encouraging community members to be innovative in their use of the technology as well as the physical space that is otherwise not available in their village.

This unrestricted access to information and communication technologies, be it radio or computers definitely makes users confident about themselves and restores a dignity of knowledge that they are deprived of.

While writing the project document in August 2002, phrases like ‘poverty reduction through information and communication technologies’ were used. By providing information about employment, better farming techniques and health we hoped for new sustainable jobs opportunities, improved farming knowledge and healthier life. Namma Dhwani’s programming has done all this and more. The crucial question that we are asking ourselves now is “how have people used this information and medium?”

In many cases the ‘poorest of the poor’ worry less about the lack of important information and more about day to day needs. In interactions with the community we noticed that people would categorize lack of water, major illnesses, bad medical treatment or lack of education as prime reasons for poverty.

Very few viewed it as an issue which through information like in this case, alternative jobs, and relevant health information could be the first step towards arriving at a sustainable solution. Hence to create that awareness and demand for local and relevant information it is important to put in place access to systems of information and communication technologies like community radio.

The other side of the coin is of course establishing systems of reception. In Namma Dhwani’s case, the cable network in India has approximately 6 million cable operators reaching 35 million homes.

May 2004 | www.i4donline.net

Most of the cable operators are individuals who network with cable networks in bigger towns. In the absence of local community radio in India, cable audio is worth exploring as a viable option to reach people in their homes. Cable also opens up interesting possibilities for video and multimedia.

In Budikote, regular monthly feedback surveys have revealed that about 60% of the listeners prefer to listen to Namma Dhwani on their television sets even though they can tune in through their radio sets. Radios in their perception are largely mobile media units that they can carry out to their verandah or the fields.

That apart, there exists stiff competition that local stations like Namma Dhwani face from regional television channels. For women like Mohana, member of Mookambika Self Help Group who also is a supporter of Namma Dhwani, the lure of television and regional versions of soap operas like “kyunki saas bhi…” is very strong. “Watching TV is the only time that I can lose myself and forget everything else around me”. For community radio stations to not only reach but also be heard by communities, programming should be a mixture of the local and the global, of entertainment and information, of participation and ownership.

The assumption that the ‘consumption of contextualized information turns it to knowledge that will lead to empowerment’ is debatable. And any kind of dissemination and impact assessment has to take into account the socio-political and environmental contexts of the community. It is important to avoid the belief that a medium, because of communicational qualities unique to that medium, will be able to change the behaviour of, or impart knowledge to, its audience, irrespective of contextual factors.”

What Namma Dhwani has given the people is access to a medium and space that allows them to be empowered just by being producers of their own content. The catchword here being ‘local’.

Be it a series of programmes about dengue when it interrupted in Budikote, or cablecasting proceedings of panchayat meeting that made a few people go red in their face, or even discovering your next door neighbour’s hidden talent. It is all relevant to the people of Budikote because it is about and for them.

An assessment, in March 2004, of the 281 letters Namma Dhwani has received from its listeners in 10 months showed that 38% of the letters had suggestions, requests for repeat programmes and criticism of programming from community members. This kind of constant assessment of programming by the community

37

that consumes the information is the most valuable part of establishing sustainable information systems within poor communities.

To reinforce Namma Dhwani’s identity as ‘the local community media’ the programming team has over the past year experimented with various different formats of radio. In December 2003, the visit of about 20 Singapore exchange students prompted a children’s quiz competition. Announcements were made calling for application and the student team with the volunteers and staff got down to planning and executing preliminary rounds involving 64 students from Budikote and surrounding villages. The buzz got so loud, that students were seen visiting local libraries, buying general knowledge books preparing for the competition. For the finals, as an added bonus, the quiz was video taped and telecasted into all houses that had access to cable TV. On the walls of the studio were posters of the local bakery and transport provider, as sponsors of the show. That evening there were about 80 parents outside the Namma Dhwani studios watching television and cheering for their children.

Another innovative format of programming emerged with our struggles with maintaining volunteers. After months on end of training volunteers their involvement with the station was still inconsistent and wavering. During their Sunday meetings volunteers then began to play live Antakshari (a game based on local film music) on the radio. This inspired more involvement from them and more importantly gave boys and girls an opportunity to interact ‘freely’ breaking the tradition of strictly compartmentalized gender spaces.

Volunteers, initially shy, became not only confident about their technical skills but also about discussing ‘issues’, raising questions and benefit from being exposed to authorities and visitors.

Nagaraj, 26, an active volunteer of Namma Dhwani says: “I wanted to make a programme on the role of police in keeping a community safe, and the basic laws that people should be aware of.

I went to Kamasamudram to interview the Sub Inspector of Police and the respect and attention I got from him was very nice… he even cancelled his appointment to speak to me and dropped me back home. I would have never been able to do this if I were a common citizen.” As much as television has stolen the thunder from radio, the medium still has an intimacy that discards barriers of good looks and etiquette that television would demand. One good example is how Namma Dhwani has made programming related to family planning, reproductive child health, HIV/AIDS using local talents and overcoming the taboo of ‘talking about health and sex related problems openly’.

During my visits to SAG (self affinity group) meetings, I had noticed the tradition of having women sit isolated from others during menstruation. The female studio manager made a programme on how such a tradition came about and its logic and ill-effect.

Women, schoolgirls, and elders were interviewed. Schoolgirls expressed their isolation as disturbing and shameful. Later women, who were initially shy about speaking about their bodies on radio, admitted to the studio managers that they felt good, about having to discuss something so personal and share their opinion…

The feedback letter assessment shows that 13% of the listeners wrote to ask, appreciate or request a repeat of programmes related to health. In particular programmes about sex related diseases, diabetes,

38

stress induced and skin problems were appreciated. Community participation has been the essence of Namma Dhwani cable radio.

However not restricting community’s role only to participation and listnership, the Namma Dhwani management committee was formed in September 2001.

This committee comprises of 10 women and 2 men (latest entrants) who represent their SAG’s. Also included are representatives from VOICES and MYRADA (a non governmental organisation managing rural development programmes in several states of south India and particularly promotes the Self Help Affinity strategy and a partner in this project). The role of the committee is to manage administration, programming and feedback matters of the station. The growth of this committee most of who are semi literate farm workers, in their understanding and comprehension of the medium has been encouraging. However, there are society instilled and personal limitations to this group in terms of decision making.

Given the economic restriction of most of these women, they are unable to spend ideal amounts of time in the station, to understand dynamics of personnel and operations. While most of their decisions like selling the radios at subsidized rates have held Namma Dhwani in good stead in matters of larger magnitude their decisions are constrained. For example, after a camera loss at the station, one of the management committee members in the meeting admitted that her husband would not have permitted her to come for a meeting, if the police or other ‘men leaders’ were present.

What the management committee of Namma Dhwani however has done is that it has provided an inroad into social networks creating a shared culture between their groups and their radio station. With the aim of expanding Namma Dhwani’s reach, loudspeaker broadcasts using Namma Dhwani’s programming began in three other villages in January this year in collaboration with local resource centres. Namma Dhwani now on recommendations from these resource centres makes relevant programmes. This expansion has become a regular income generating activity for the centre.

Namma Dhwani has also produced programmes supporting development communication of projects like watershed development, polio awareness which in turn has generated some income for the station. However, if legislation had allowed for wider expansion sustainability for Namma Dhwani would have been an achievable target because of wider reach and possible local advertising and fundraising by the communities themselves.

Unfortunately there is still no policy framework for community radio in India. Although there have been changes to the radio scene in the past five years, specifically the auctioning of commercial FM licenses in 2001 and a call for applications for campus-based educational radio in 2003, grassroots set ups like Namma Dhwani are still not eligible for license. There are indications that this may change in the near future.

Recently, the former Home Minister of India, Sri L K Advani admitted in a public launch of a campus radio in Chennai, “India has lagged far behind in tapping the communication potential of radio… Radio has been in Government monopoly for longer than necessary. We ought to have begun reforms in this sector long ago.

But better late than never…”

Amen to that!

i4d | May 2004

Editorial guidelines

Support the ICT4D community

i4d contains articles and features on the theme of “ICT for development” and related issues. Authors are requested to follow the following guidelines while sending their articles to i4d. a. Articles sho uld not exceed 3,000 words. For book/ website/ conference reviews, the word limit is 1000. Longer articles will be considered in exceptional cases. b. Articles/ reviews can be sent through email as an attachment or through post, typed in Times New Roman, 12 point.

SUBSCRIBE TODAY!

Information for development www.i4donline.net

Duration Issues (Year)

News stand Price Rs.

Subscription Rs.

Saving

Subscription US$

1

12

1200

1080

10% (Rs. 120)

US$100

2

24

2400

2040

15% (Rs. 360)

US$160

3

36

3600

2520

30% (Rs. 1080)

US$200

I/We would like to subscribe for

1

2

3

years.

(circle as applicable)

c. Relevant figures/ tables/ photographs should be sent. Hard copies of submitted photographs should be of high quality in a recommended size of 5 inches by 7 inches. Soft copies of imagery should be scanned at 300dpi at a minimum width of 4 inches.

First name ............................................................................................

d. Passport size photographs and brief biodata of the author(s) must be enclosed with the article.

City ................................................. State ...........................................

e. For book reviews, please mention the title, name of the author/s, publisher/s, year of publication, price, number of pages and a photograph of the cover. Books on i4d related themes published from the year 2000 onwards are preferable.

Tel (o) ............................................. Tel (r) ..........................................

f. In case of conference/ workshop/ seminar reviews, please mention the theme, venue, date, and name of the organizer. Please send photographs of the conference/workshop/ seminar.

The conference held in the past two months of the forthcoming issue will be preferred. g. The Editor reserves the right to reject, edit and adjust articles in order to conform to the magazine’s format.

All correspondence should be addressed to: The Editor, i4d G-4, Sector-39, Noida, India Tel +91-120-2502180 to 87 Fax +91-120-2500060 Email info@i4donline.net May 2004 | www.i4donline.net

Last name ............................................................................................

Designation/profession ........................................................................

Organisation ........................................................................................

Mailing address ...................................................................................

Country .......................................... Postal code .................................

Fax ..................................................

Email .....................................................................................................

Website ................................................................................................

Payments for mailed subscriptions are only accepted vide cheque or demand draft. Cash payments may be made in person. (tick one and fill as applicable)

Please find enclosed my/our cheque/demand draft numbered dated ..................................... for Rs. .................................... in favour of CSDMS - i4d a/c payable at New Delhi.

I am submitting this form in person and paying by cash

Please use photocopies of this form as required. i4d G-4 Sector 39, Noida 201 301, India Tel +91 120 250 2180 to 87 Fax +91 120 250 0060 Email info@i4donline.net

39

Answer to Quiz in April issue 1. It is the high – speed wireless infrastructure that is installed at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It is reportedly largest of its type anywhere. It currently provides 10 Mbps and 100Mbps Ethernet connectivity. It was started as a research network in 1994. Carnegie Mellon has 10,000 wireless cards registered as on July 30, 2003. http://www.cmu.edu/computing/wireless/ aboutwireless.html.

2. (a) Direct- sequencing spread- spectrum. It uses a radio transmitter to spread data packets over a fixed range of frequency band, (b) Frequency – hopping spread – spectrum. It uses a technique in which the signal transmitted hops among several frequencies at a specific rate and sequence for avoiding interference, (c) Wireless – Fidelity, the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) 802.11b standard for wireless local area network (WLAN), (d) The next generation 5 – GHz technologies (IEEE 802.11a) expected to be available mid – 2002, and (e) A user computer with a wireless interface card.

3. High performance local area network. It is a wireless local area network (WLAN), standardised by European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) in 1996, which allows node mobility and infrastructure – based topologies. For details visit the Web site http://www.HiperLAN2.com /.

4. (a) Brain Area Network, (b) Cellular Area, (c) Earth Area Network, (d) Galactic Area Network, (e) Home Area Network, (f) Interplanetary Area Network, (g) Not a Network, and (h) Personal Area Network.

(Source: http://www.catdancers.com/webmags/ webrevu/swaine/2001/06_08_01.html).

5. A network of devices connected in an ad hoc manner using bluetooth technology. It can connect up to eight devices, each of which has three – bit address. It follows master – slave model, that is, one device acts as a master and the rest (remaining up to seven) as its slaves.

6. A project in the Department of Computer Science at Rice University, Houston, Texas addressing networking support for wireless and mobile hosts. Monarch is also considered as an acronym for “MObile Networking ARCHitectures.” http:// www.monarch.cs.rice.edu/.

7. After a tenth century Scandinavian king, Harald Bluetooth, who united several unruly kingdoms. The Bluetooth technology defines one worldwide specification.

(Source: Heidi Monson, http://.sysopt.earthwe.com).

8. (a) It is low –cost, low – power, short – range radio link for mobile devices and for WAN / LAN access points.

It operates in 2.4 GHz ISM (industrial, scientific, and medical) band and thus allows devices to communicate through walls, pockets, and briefcases.

The technology allows devices within 30 feet of each other to communicate without wires, and (b) It was developed at Ericsson, which formed a consortium in May 1998 with Intel, Nokia, Toshiba, and IBM. Now it is a nine – company promoter group that includes 3Com, Microsoft, Motorola, and Lucent. Visit the official Web site http://www.bluetooth.com/ for details.

9. Internet mode service of NTT’s DoCoMo in Japan.

This mobile Internet service was launched in 1999 and has around 8 million subscribers, (b) A play on the Japanese word for “anywhere”, (c) A standard developed for mobile wireless operating system by Symbian which has Psion, Nokia, Ericson, and Motorola as partners, (d) It is a product developed by a U.S. company – Aether Technology – that synchronises the data on the Web site for a mobile device, and (e) wireless - code division multiple access. CDMA is a method of concurrent transmission in which a packet of data is coded to differentiate it from other packets.

10. From $1.1 billion in 2000 to $5.2 billion in 2005, according to Cahners – Instat.

It is a new Microsoft technology that offers a wireless Internet connection. It allows people to access e–mail, digital photos stored in a personal computer (PC) and Web pages from the portable monitor that can be carried around the bedroom or den, anywhere in home within about 90 metres of personal computer. http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2002/ jan02/01-07FreestyleMiraPR.asp).

12. (a) It is the de facto open, global standard for the presentation and delivery of wireless information and telephony services on mobile phones and other wireless terminals, (b) 18 million, and (c) 50 million (As on May 2, 2001).

13. (a) 12,000 from over 100 countries, and (b) 7.8 million.

14. NTT DoCoMo’s i – Mode introduced in 1999 . The iMode provides a good number of user services like telebanking, airline reservations, stock transactions, e- mail, and access to the Internet. It has an estimated 5.6 million users. NTT DoCoMo is Japan’s leader in wireless technology.

15. I – Mode does not use the wireless application protocol (WAP). It uses a simplified version of hypertext markup language (HTML), compact wireless markup language (CWML) instead of WAP’s wireless markup language (WML).

16. UoSAT – 1 on October 6, 1981.

Anna University, Chennai. It will build a micro- satellite weighing 60 kg in three years. It will be launched, possibly between 2005 and 2006, by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO)’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle from Sriharikota. Micro–satellites help evaluate advanced technologies for future operational satellites.

18. Antrix Corporation Limited, Bangalore. It is the commercial arm of the Indian space programme. http:/ /www.isro.org/commercial.htm.

19. (a) DakNet is a store-and-forward wireless (IEEE 802.11b) network for affordable rural connectivity developed by Media Lab Asia (MLA). In the pilot project, DakNet will be used to update Bhoomi’s infokiosks located in Sasalu and Tubugere villages with the central database stored in the Doddaballapura Taluk headquarters in Karnataka.

(Source:http://www.medialabasia.org mlaShow.php? fileR=20030305195715&dir=2003/03/05&format= htm&typeId=6&subTypeId=5), and (b) Designed as an alternative to telecom systems in rural areas, the pilot project has set up a voice and data link between Saroha village, near Lucknow, and the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kanpur. With a connectivity of only 300 metres under 802.11 technologies, the researchers have pushed the connectivity to 20 kilometres. The research team has recently pushed the connectivity to 37 kilometres in a single hop.

(Source: http://www.medialabasia.org/mlaShow.php? fileR=20030108141715&dir=2003/01/08&format =htm&typeId=6&subTypeId=5).

20. Handset Sale (2003) (expected): 497 million units, and Global Handset Revenue (2003) (expected): $76 billion.

AN OFFICIAL PUBLICATION OF UN’S WORLD SUMMIT AWARD

E-CONTENT VOICES FROM THE GROUND

Published by Digital Empowerment Foundation, India World Summit Award, Austria Inomy.com, India Sponsored by Center for Development of Advance Computing, India

OSAMA MANZAR PETER A BRUCK E-content is supposed to be the final frontier of all the initiatives from all the world which are working hard to join the Information Society.

Co-sponsored by The Telecommunication and Computer Networks Group, India European Academy of Digital Media, The Netherlands Arekibo Communications, Ireland i4d, India Digital Partners, USA Mahiti Infotech, India

For more information and purchase of the book, please contact: Email: def@manzar.info Phone: +91-9810042862 Fax: +91-11-51829729 http://www.econtentworldwide.org

40

Digital Empowerment Foundation D-307, Sarvodaya Enclave, New Delhi, India

i4d | May 2004

What’s on

Uganda 28 May - 03 June, 2004 International Humanist Youth Conference Kampala http://iheu.org/youth

Argentina

New Zealand

22-27 August, 2004 World Library and Information Congress: 70th IFLA General Conference and Council Beunos Aires

04-08 July, 2004 3rd PAN Commonwealth Forum on Open Learning, Dunedin http://www.col.org/pcf3

http://www.ifla.org/IV/ifla70/index.htm

United Kingdom 07-10 July, 2004 Transform 2004 UMIST, Manchester http://www.transform2004.org

Portugal Australia 07-09 June, 2004 "Connecting Island Communities" Pacific Telecentres Workshop Brisbane

19-22 May, 2004 ICESD 2004 International Conference “Education for Sustainable Development — Preparing the UN Decade”, Braga

http://www.pacifictelecentres.net.ws/about.htm

http://low.takingitglobal.org/opps/ event.html?eventid=3112

Brunei

Sweden

17-20 May, 2004 Asia Pacific Forum on Telecommunication Policy and Regulation Darussalam

25-28 August, 2004 EuroScience Open Forum 2004 Stockholm

http://www.aptsec.org/seminar/meeting-2004/ PRF/default.htm

China 25-27 May, 2004 Scaling Up Poverty Reduction: A Global Learning Process, and Conference Shanghai http://www.worldbank.org/wbi/reducingpoverty/ about.html

Germany

http://www.esof2004.org/index.asp

Switzerland 24-26 June, 2004 2nd Phase WSIS Preparatory Meeting: Hammamet (Tunisia), Tunisia http://www.itu.int/wsis/preparatory2/hammamet/ index.html

Thailand 05 June - 05 August, 2004 Education ICT 2004, Bangkok http://www.reedtradex.com/edict

United States 17-22 May, 2004 The Thirteenth International World Wide Web Conference Manhattan http://cat.nyu.edu/www2004

23-26 May, 2004 15th Information Resources Management Association International Conference New Orleans, Louisiana http://www.irma-international.org

06-10 June, 2004 Sharing Indigenous Wisdom: An International Dialogue on Sustainable Development Wisconsin http://www.sharingindigenouswisdom.org/ default.asp

21- 23, June, 2004 NECC 2004 New Orleans, Louisiana http://center.uoregon.edu/conferences/ISTE/

01-04 June, 2004 International Conference for Renewable Energies Bonn

01-03 July, 2004 The 13th Annual AMIC conference, on Media, ICTs and Development, Bangkok

http://www.renewables2004.de/

http://www.amic.org.sg/conf2004.html

Greece 19-21 May, 2004 World Congress on IT 2004 (WCIT 2004) Athens

09-12 August, 2004 World Congress on Computers in Agriculture and Natural Resources Bangkok

21-25 July, 2004 International Conference on Education and Information Systems: Technologies and Applications EISTA 2004 Orlando, Florida

http://www.worldcongress2004.org

http://www.afitaandwcca2004.net

http://www.confinf.org/eista04

NECC2004

Get your event listed here. www.i4donline.net/events May 2004 | www.i4donline.net

41

I N F ACT

The Haves & the Have-nots • In 1960, the income gap between the wealthiest fifth was 30 to 1. By 1999, it was 74 to 1. In 1995, average per capita GDP in the richest 20 countries was 37 times the average in the poorest 20- a gap that has double in the past 40 years.

• In 2000, 59 developing countries paid an average 4.4 percent of their GDP on debt service, compared to aid disbursementreceived equivalent to 2.1 percent of GDP. • As many as 4 billion people – two third of the world’s population – live largely outside formal legal systems, mainly in developing and transition countries where poverty is most severe.

• Looking at global trends over the 1990s, a decline in poverty in China and some other East Asian countries significantly reduced both the proportion of the total numbers living on very low incomes.

India facts Total population: 1.037 b illion Rural population as a percentage of total population: 72% Key economic sectors: Agriculture, Industry, Services, IT Literacy in national language(s): 52% Literacy in English: 5% Computer ownership per 100 inhabitants: 0.6% Telephone lines per 100 inhibitants: 4.2 Internet hosts per 10,000 inhabitants: 0.35 Internet cafes/telecentres per 10,000 inhabitants: 0.1 Internet users per 100 inhabitants 0.33 subscribers, 1.65 users Cell phone subscribers per 100 inhabitants: 1 Number of websites in national language(s): 20,000 Number of websites in English and other language(s): 130,000 International bandwidth: 1,670.3 Mbps Source: Digital Review of Asia Pacific 2003/2004 India, Page 109

• Life expectancy at birth in least developed countries in under 50 years compared to 77 in developed countries. A total of 799 million people in developing countries and 41 million in developed and transition countries are undernourished. The risk of a women dying as a result of pregnancy is 50 to 100 times higher in the least developed world than in industrialized countries. Preventable diseases take the lives of 30,000 children per day in developing countries of the 115-million schoolage children not in school, 94 percent live in developing countries.

• About 20 percent of the world’s population –862 million people- is illiterate. Most live in low-income countries.

• Over 115 million school-age children, mainly in low-income countries, were not in school in 1999; 56 percent of them were girls.

• About 100 million young people enter the global workforce every year. With more than 1 billion of the world’s population today between 15 and 25 years of age, this trend is set to continue through to 2015 and beyond.

• The ILO estimates that around 74 million young women and men are unemployed persons throughout the world, accounting for 41 percent of all the 180 million unemployment persons globally.

• An estimated 59 million young people between 15 and 17 years of age.

• About 40 percent of people aged over 64 in Africa and about 25 percent in Asia are still in the labour force, mostly in the agricultural sector.

• The world’s labour force is increasing by about 50 million people each year, as the number of new entrants exceeds those who stop working; 97 percent of this increases is in developing, countries.

180 million people are unemployed worldwide, and almost half of them are young people aged under 24.

• Average per capita GDP of the 49 least developed countries (LDCs), using current exchange rates, for that year was US$288, or about 79 cents per day.

• During the second half of the 1990s developed countries received an average of 2.3 million migrants each year from less developed regions.

• Over 25 million workers are infected with HIV/AIDS, and million more affected by the pandemic.

Source: World Bank Poverty Report, 2003

42

i4d | May 2004

Introducing a full-featured yet easy to use GIS software that integrates image processing, digitization and analysis

•

Satellite image processing

•

Digital map data creation

•

Data analysis using maps

•

Statistical analysis

Jlets Technologies Pvt Ltd G17 Sector 39 Noida, UP 201303 India Email info@jtmaps.com Web www.jtmaps.com Phone +91 120 257 0715/716, 3092308 Fax +91 120 257 0715

Information for development www.i4donline.net

27-28 A UGUST 2004 I NTERNATIONAL C ONVENTION C ENTRE , B EIJING , C HINA

2nd i4d Seminar in conjunction with Map Asia 2004 Theme ICT for Development: Is Asia ready for the challenge?

The prime concern in most of the developing world is today on expanding the digital opportunities to bridge the digital divide. The promise of the information economy—of tremendous possibilities for human development, of rapidly growing economies, of empowered communities and responsive polities—is but a dream for the vast majority in the developing world.

There are several initiatives at the global, regional, national and the local levels all across the globe. But these efforts are proving to be much less than what is required to reach to downtrodden and the underserved people in the society.

The requirements, such as for the basic ICT infrastructure alone, are enormous.

The necessary resources will not flow automatically from the technology-rich countries to the technology-poor countries. Unless the global community responds to the challenge of the digital divide in a coordinated and determined manner, the developing world will wake up to the horrible reality of being left behind once again.

The seminar will be held in conjunction with Map Asia 2004, the largest conference and exhibition on Geographic Information Technologies in Asia.

Sub-themes: •

ICT’s Infrastructure policy and action plans

•

Legal and regulatory mechanisms

•

Capacity building

•

Applications

•

Building public-private partnership

Contacts Authors gautam@i4donline.net Registration niraj@i4donline.net

Venue : International Convention Centre, Beijing, China Supported by :

Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC)

Seminar Details info@i4donline.net www.i4donline.net www.mapasia.org

45