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
