Internet for Indian Villages-Where does the solution lie?

One possible answer is that we have to encourage community participation rather than purely top down supply side big schemes. We have had little success with the former as for example the Common Service Centre scheme of Department of IT. 

My previous post "Wi Fi Internet for Indian Village Local Government Offices-Going Around in Circles?" has already suggested that USOF's proposed project for wi-fi and internet at panchayat offices may not necessarily meet with success as far as bringing internet to ordinary rural folk goes. I believe we have to allow big schemes to include the end users and NGOs into the design is we are to succeed. 

A good example of such a project has been documented in an article titled "Let NGOs provide rural net services" It describes a success story wherein involving and training locals in villages to provide services where big operators are not interested with the help of NGOs has enabled even illiterate villagers to benefit from online content (such as audio-visual content).

Such schemes require far more effort and time as was the case of USOF's Sanchar Shakti. However they are worth it in terms of outcomes.

 Einstein had famously said insanity is repeating the same thing again and again and expecting different results. Time to change our approach? 

Wi Fi Internet for Indian Village Local Government Offices-Going Around in Circles?

A news item in the Times of India (November 30, 2013)  titled "Govt clears internet wi-fi plan for rural India" states that a proposal to provde wi-fi hotspots and internet connections to India's Gram Panchayats has recently been approved. Slated to cost Rs 37.5 billion and targeted to be completed by 2016, the project will be funded by Indian USOF and will ride on NOFN infrastructure, 

This may be an excellent idea with two caveats. 

One is that past experience has shown that telecom services in Panchayats tend to be used only by the rural elite and are unavailable to the common people. During USOF inspections I have seen private public calling offices doing roaring business whereas the USO funded village public telephone located in the village panchayat (local self government office) bang opposite, on the other side of the village mud track was being exclusively used by the local elite. Villagers were in fact unaware of this state funded facility. Thus, given the social and economic set up of Indian villages such facilities could encourage better data keeping and connectivity within the government set up but are likely to percolate to rural society at large. The village school may have been a better venue for such a facility if empowering the common people is the aim, but then more effort would be involved in managing, maintaining and manning the facility. I have written before about the need to look at various other facets of the demand side eco-system. You need applications and trainers/facilitators in rural India. This requires a multi-stakeholder approach to project design. A good and successful example is USOF's Sanchar Shakti.

My second concern is who is providing the last mile service. I hope it is not NOFN. The entry of NOFN into access segment would in my view negate the very idea of Universal Service as a modern mechanism in a liberalized sector as being different from state owned monopoly service provision. Please see my previous articles in this regard under the same labels.

ICTs for Rural Healthcare

I had written recently about USA's refurbished rural healthcare programme and that Indian USOF could study the same for guidance on do's and dont's.

A very inspiring example of use of ICTs for rural healthcare, in this case maternity and neo natal healthcare is reported in an article "ASHA 2.0: Barmer block’s healing touch on tablets."

ASHA (Accredited Social Health Activist) workers in rural Rajasthan's Barmer district have been equipped with tablets which are helping them and the beneficiaries of the Governments's health benefits programme to better track maternal health while also generating interest in ICTs in rural women. Rajasthan is one of the  very conservative state of India.

My own experience with the Sanchar Shakti project was that rural women take  to ICTs  very rapidly with great benefits. One of the projects is being implemented in Ajmer district of Rajasthan  where rural women are keen as any other to improve their and their daughters' lot through information and ICT enabled  services. A full description of the implementation experience so far may be read at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2302471.

News about a USOF Mobile Handset Scheme

It has been reported that USOF India may fund a scheme wherein mobile handsets are given to female members of poor rural households who have completed 100 days of work under India's rural employment guarantee scheme-MNREGA. Eligible beneficiaries would be identified by the state administration and handsets bundled with connectivity and m-government content such as health records and entitlements transfers would be provided by the USP chosen either through bidding or on nomination basis. Present USOF Rules would require choice of USP by bidding.

While the focus on women and m-government is welcome, I am not sure that mobile handsets are needed to be subsidized. It is the connectivity and content that USOF could focus on instead. If these are available, handsets (even second/third hand) would be purchased in any case. It is however a fact today that rural women may not own handsets. This was noticed during the implementation of USOF's Sanchar Shakti scheme. 

USOF may have to think of adequate safeguards to prevent transfer of the phone to non beneficiaries and false claims by USPs as implementing such schemes can be  administratively very challenging.

USOF India's Unspent Balance under Criticism

In my previous post titled, "Questioning the Efficacy of Universal Service Funds: GSMA Calls for Re-evaluation and Reduction of the Universal Service Fund Levy,"  I had written that funding for Universal Access/ Universal Service is mostly from either the general budget or levies on operators. Given that it imposes a form of taxation and given that it is expected to meet certain legally, politically and ethically important targets, the subject of US in general and US funds (USFs)  in particular is always under scrutiny and debates on this issue range from questioning the need for US regulation in a competitive  market to arguing in favour/against inclusion of broadband  in its purview. Off late the balance seems to be tilting in favour of USF for funding national broadband plans and nation-wide OFC networks.  Thus discussions range from trashing the concept to seeing it as a vehicle for achieving state of art ICT services.

I had mentioned that the April 2013 GSMA Survey and Report available at GSMA Calls for Re-evaluation and Reduction of the Universal Service Fund Levy question the efficacy of USFs as means of  achieving the objectives of US.  As far as India is concerned there is praise for transparency in financial reporting and criticism for " inadequate or misguided articulation of USF objectives and strategy” that have encouraged urban rather than rural roll outs. (Please  also see my post on USOF India.). The findings of the survey including inter alia the large unspent balances point to the need for better institutional mechanisms that guarantee transparency, accountability and competitive neutrality while still being tailored to a country’s local context. Further we need to adopt a more innovative and flexible approach to US funding. We need to consider more bottom-up PPPs, more demand-driven projects and also projects that address demand side gaps to penetration of ICTs.

I have written earlier comparing the flexible bottom up multi-stakeholder approach of Sanchar Shakti programme that succeeded, with the more rigid, operator dependent approach taken in USOF's ICTs for PwDs project that did not. 

Traditionally, USFs have folowed a supply centric, top-down  approach wherein gaps are identified by the USF Administration and then projects are designed and bid out to select the Universal Service Providers (USPs). This approach may however not be flexible enough to meet the needs of various sections of the population and to address different reasons for the access gap.  Hence there is a need to consider a more flexible, consultative, collaboartive and multi-stakeholder approach to designing USOF programmes.

Again, USFs in many developing countries have problems of under-spending whereby funds continue to accumulate as not enough projects are initiated in comparison to collections.  This is partly on account of difficulties in conceiving appropriate projects meet diverse and ever evolving stakeholder requirements.  I believe that USFs set aside a percentage of available funds to be utilised for demand-driven projects emanating from the user community. Broad eligibility criteria could be pre-decided and placed in public domain along with transparent but mainly qualitative evaluation criteria and procedures. This would allow USF Administrations to maintain a shelf of projects that are useful and pertinent to end users. This is especially true for needs that are more application-centric such as projects for marginalised communities that may have a major content and capacity building component. This approach would lend a much needed dynamism to USF activities. It would also help USOF address demand side gaps in telecom penetration as opposed to supporting only supply side initiatives.

An article dated 28.7.2013 titled "Disconnect in India's rural telecom fund; $4.65 bn idling” highlights the unspent balances of USOF and comments of Administrator USOF thereof.It quotes Gabriel Solomon, the public policy head of Groupe Speciale Mobile Association (GSMA), the global association for mobile companies as having said that, 

"One  of the main reasons why such funds remain unused in many countries is that a competitive industry like telecom moves at a pace which these funds cannot keep up with," 

and that

"In a matter of a few years, the mobile industry in India has built huge infrastructure, connecting hundreds of millions of people. Why even consider a USOF (Universal Service Obligation Fund) now? If the private sector is appropriately incentivised it will always outperform the public sector."

As per the same article, the USOF Administrator has clarified as follows

"Out of the Rs.27,949.91 crore left unused, some Rs.20,000 crore will be deployed for the national optic fibre network project and another Rs.3,046 crore for installing 2,199 mobile towers in the nine Left-wing extremism-affected states."

"The criticism is valid for the time being. But we are evolving. As the projects start rolling out, we will need more funds," he said, adding the projects include one to link each of India's 250,000 village councils with high-speed data cables."

USOF India has many good schemes to its credit.(Please see many previous posts USOF India). What is  perhaps needed is a more imaginative, flexible approach and assurance of a level playing field between private and public sector operators.

All Women BPOs in Conservative Indian States-ICTs for Women

The potential of ICTs to empower women inspired us in USOF to implement the highly successful Sanchar Shakti intiative. Sanchar Shakti  improves the target beneficiaries' confidence levels and financial independence by helping them with knowledge and market inputs related to their on going entrepreneurial activities. 

Rural Business Process Outsourcing (BPOs) is another example of the successful use of ICTs to empower rural women. While rural and semi urban BPOs in the Southern states of India do employ women, the engagement of women in ultra conservative Northern states like Haryana (HarVa) and Rajasthan (SFC)  is remarkable and demonstrates the power of ICTs to transform lives and societies. In both cases it was tough to get the women who had never even seen computers and whose activities outside their homes are strictly monitored by their men folk to even try out the initial training. However, the improvement in a family's financial  status while the women are still close to home, can be a powerful motive to allow the women to experience the empowering impact of working outside the home. ICTs can make this possible.

Stories in this regard can be seen at 

http://www.rediff.com/getahead/slide-show/slide-show-1-achievers-the-inspiring-story-of-a-bpo-in-rajasthan/20130718.htm#4

and 

http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2010-11-10/news/27587068_1_women-in-rural-areas-business-process-outsourcing-suman-devi

This makes a strong argument for an all out effort to promote universal access to broadband focusing especially on mainstreaming digitally excluded segments like women and the disabled.

M Education and the Demographic Dividend

Two interesting news items caught my attention and I though these are worth sharing and reading.

The first is "Mobilising  Education in India" which highlights the potential of mobile screens to impart education in developing countries. India is a young country with 54% of the population being under 25.  In fact India is often cited as an example of the demographic dividend whereby the larger relative share of working age population has the potential to progress the economy to higher rates of growth.

In the near future India will be the largest individual contributor to the global demographic transition. A 2011 International Monetary Fund Working Paper found that substantial portion of the growth experienced by India since the 1980s is attributable to the country’s age structure and changing demographics. The U.S. Census Bureau predicts that India will surpass China as the world’s largest country by 2025, with a large proportion of those in the working age category. Over the next two decades the continuing demographic dividend in India could add about two percentage points per annum to India’s per capita GDP growth.[ Extreme actions are needed to take care of future basic minimum living standards including food, water and energy. As per Population Reference Bureau India's population in 2050 is projected to be 1.692 billion people. (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_dividend)

Quality education is critical for this existing/potential labour force. With schools and teacher availability being below par and computer penetration being very poor (Only 80 million personal computers in a nation of 1.2 billion population), we can take advantage of the affordability and ubiquity of smart phones as a medium for delivery of text, voice and video based educational content. The affinity that youth has for ICT enabled information and entertainment is a major plus point. 

This brings to to the second news item of interest titled "Making the Most of Mobiles" This article points out that even in the absence of internet,(only 12% of the 38 million internet users in India can access internet on their mobiles), micro secure digital (SD) cards are used to a good amount of store music and video on second/third hand smart phones by even poor labourers. This indicates that large variety of content can be made available even offline and the is a huge market potential in this area.

The increasing trend of educational material from even top universities being available free of cost is an opportunity waiting to be tapped. In India's case, ensuring affordability of smart phones, better & affordable connectivity (and in the interim  availability of content offline) and translation of content to local languages would be key requirements for us to reap the benefits of M-education.This would also be true of many developing countries.

Another wonderful thing about mobile education in my view is that with a little effort it can be made accessible to persons with disabilities. In fact mobile content is a powerful tool of empowerment of PwDs as long as its accessibility is ensured. 

USFs across the developing world would do well to concentrate of creating an enabling environment for M-Education. India has made a start with Sanchar Shakti but we need to do more.

Mobile VAS as a means of Mpowerment

I have already written about Indian USOF’s Sanchar Shakti programme. This programme has been instrumental in bringing highly customized  knowledge inputs to rural women’s Self Help Groups through mobile VAS helping them improve their livelihoods, self confidence and social standing. The uniqueness of this programme lies in its ability to reach out to these women in situ i.e. in their villages and homes and in that the content being delivered to them is gender sensitive and in the local language. Sanchar Shakti includes many woman farmers in its purview. Its gender specificity makes it a very unique programme in a country which still does not give enough importance to  the fact that many small holdings are farmed by women, while the men folk seek jobs on construction sites/urban areas.

Other  recent  initiatives include the soon to be launched Kisan portal for framers in India wherein 'SMS advisories and alerts will enable farmers to take informed decisions relating to different aspects of farming including crop production and marketing, animal husbandry, dairying and fisheries.' It has also been stated that, 'Officers of various departments, experts and scientists in research institution and in the field will use this portal for disseminating information, giving topical and seasonal advisories to farmers in their local languages.'

A simple form of communication like mobile SMS can be a powerful tool for empowerment of two way communication between the government and  target beneficiaries in a country where mobile penetration is strong while fixed line and broadband penetration is abysmal especially in rural areas. mVAS can provide knowledge and market information in situations where access to both is difficult on account of poor infrastructure and facilities.

A  news item titled Mobile Phone-Medically Yours describes the innovative use of mobile phones by the Government to reduce maternal and infant mortality by training health workers and providing tools for data collection and knowledge dissemination. Like Sanchar Shakti, here too the content is in the local language. What is particularly noteworthy in the case of the mobile Kunji  programme described in this article is revenue sharing between the NGOs, Government and service providers demonstrating  the commercial viability of such beneficial applications. This is also one of the aims of the Sanchar Shakti programme

Special Initiatives-ICTs for Rural women

In my very first post I had mentioned that USFs need to devise schemes to meet needs of specially disadvantaged groups and address demand side gaps.  I had alluded to USOF, India's special initiatives by way of pilot programmes to bring the benefits of ICTs to rural  women and the disabled. Today I will cover the former.

We in USOF labelled our project for women Sanchar Shakti. This name signifies the synergies to be achieved by empowering  women with  communications while recognizing the inherent importance and power of women. This scheme  aims to provide a highly customized bundle of relevant information and mobile value added services (mVAS ) to the rural SHGs to suit their unique cultural and socio-economic context.

Given the capacity of telecommunications services to deliver valuable information, impart education, connect with markets and supply essential citizen services, while transcending economic, social, cultural, physical and literacy barriers it is apparent that ICTs can make a significant contribution to the lives of rural women. From the very beginning, we were clear about our objectives. We wanted our projects to empower rural women in a manner that would enrich their personal lives while bringing about a sustainable change in their economic position.  

Our early discussions with stakeholders made it clear that given the strength of the Self Help Group (SHG) based model for positive interventions; our efforts must focus on rural women’s SHGs in rural India. We strove to educate ourselves and our project applicants about the needs of our target beneficiaries and thus the correct design for our projects so as to best address their requirements. In this journey we were competently assisted by NGOs dealing with women’s SHGs, gender experts from U.N Women (now UNIFEM) and telecommunications service providers. They helped us decide the broad contours of the scheme which were later refined to a project application template. The scheme was however kept open and flexible allowing plenty of scope for innovation and customisation. We went through a very lengthy process of shortlisting and refining the project proposals we received in collaboration with stakeholders with USOF playing a patient, supportive role of active facilitation role.

It is felt that the huge amount of time and effort that we put into multiple rounds of meetings and thorough proof of concept (PoC) roll outs has eventually resulted in four genuinely valuable projects that will have a positive and permanent impact on the gender equity and ICTs scenario in the covered rural areas. The four projects cover about 10,000 SHG members in 10 districts in the states of Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand and Andhra Pradesh Other projects may follow. These four projects focus on breaking the dependence on intermediaries when it comes to access to input and final product markets for SHGs engaged in cottage industries. The SHGs themselves are engaged in multifarious activities ranging from  handicrafts to agricultural/livestock rearing. Information on weather, crop/livestock diseases, markets and market prices, training courses, raw material /inputs etc. are covered in these mobile VAS bundles. Also covered are inputs on literacy, child and maternal health, pertinent government programmes, social issues such as domestic violence, child marriage, dowry etc. It is hoped that our initiatives will encourage the greater use of mVAS/ICTs in the delivery women-specific government services and influence the private sector to look beyond voice services for rural India. 

What has been truly heartening is the tremendous increase in self-confidence of the beneficiaries as observed during the three to six month period that they were in touch with USOF during the Proof of Concept stage. There is no doubt that these women are truly hard working and contribute greatly to family income and well-being through their dedicated hard work including entrepreneurial activities. The Sanchar Shakti project gave them a source of information, a voice with which to express their aspirations and a hope to enhance their knowledge, contribution and self-worth as earning members of society. They quickly mastered the use of the mobile device and interacted enthusiastically with USOF, NGOs and Service Providers to demand the particular information and services that they needed. They demonstrated an amazing capacity to use data and knowledge to enhance their skills and incomes even in the short span of a month in which the projects were test run to prove concept.

The approach adopted for the Sanchar Shakti Scheme is very different from the usual competitive bidding model of PPPs. The legal framework of USOF allows pilot projects to be exempt from the mandatory bidding process for selection of service providers. This proved to be important in the case of Sanchar Shakti as it enabled USOF to allow diverse stakeholders  much needed time to find each other to partner in these projects. In fact USOF Administration played an important role by transparently placing information on interested parties on their website to allow mVAS providers, Equipment Manufacturers, Service Providers and NGOs to approach each other. In particular NGOs dealing with rural SHGs and the former three stakeholders are not natural partners and without USOF intervention it is doubtful if they would have found each other. As mentioned earlier, each project went through a lengthy design phase wherein USOF and U.N Women assisted the  private partners in development of gender appropriately VAS packages to deliver content identified by NGO partners in consultation with SHG members. Given that Sanchar Shakti’s consultative and iterative methodology was very different from traditional bidding, due care was taken to maintain complete transparency by placing details of all meetings and stages of consultation/project formulation on the USOF website. In the absence of the same it may have been difficult to pass muster as far as the government’s legal and financial vetting and approval processes are concerned. 

It is felt that for delivery of public services aimed at disadvantaged groups such as rural women, the consultative, collaborative, bottom up PPP approach of Sanchar Shakti is very valuable. It is not possible to carry out such schemes in a rigid, structured top down manner. For one thing the stakeholders involved are multiple and diverse and for another such programmes demand intensive customization and localisation. Sanchar Shakti’s success can be emulated for similar efforts towards other segments of society such as the disabled in rural India. In fact a USOF attempt to follow bidding for schemes for disabled did not meet with much success for exactly these reasons. 

It is added that Sanchar Shakti is subject to systematic reporting and monitoring & evaluation requirements as in case of other USOF OBA projects.

Details of the Scheme can be seen at  http://www.usof.gov.in/usof-cms/gender.htm