Information systems in Indian rural communities

INTRODUCTION

Information and communication have an impact on trade, development, peace of nations and also contribute to the construction of a society with strong democratic orientations, equal opportunities and social solidarity. However, the capacity of nations to generate knowledge through scientific research and cultural production, to transmit it by means of formal, informal, initial or continuing education and to share it through media and information systems varies considerably from one country to another. The disparities between rural and urban areas within the countries are striking. Only a small fraction of the 2.5 billion people living in rural and remote areas in developing countries has any access to telecommunications. Considering that this represents 40% of the world population, the very objective of the knowledge society that is based largely on access to the Internet and appropriate content has become a real challenge. In the new context of globalization, access to knowledge resources for all, level playing ground for economic activities and participation of all citizens as actors in civil society are increasingly becoming crucial.

NEED FOR INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES (ICTs)

The disparities between rural and urban areas combined with developmental gap are more likely to produce new forms of exclusion and marginalization. The difference of opportunities available to a country with a small population that is homogeneous, financially secure, educated, telecommunicated and computer literate and a country with a majority living in rural villages, most of whom are not even connected to electricity let alone the Internet and have an annual income barely $400 per capita, is apparent. In most developing countries, the Internet is available in metropolitan urban areas, where service providers have their markets. Although there are still problems of access to solve in urban centers, it is in the rural areas that the divide makes itself felt most acutely. Therefore, the critical issue is the provision and appropriation by local communities of ICTs as a development tool for rural areas. It is these communities, struggling at the margins of weak or emerging economies, who most need knowledge resources and economic opportunities. Therefore no government or a development agency could implement sensible rural development programs, without taking into consideration the potential of the ICT, in particular the Internet, has to offer through a new generation of development tools.

Factors Preventing Rural Communities from Reaping Benefits of ICTs

There are a number of important factors preventing rural communities in developing countries from reaping the benefits of ICTs. Without developing access models that can address these factors the rural masses will be left far behind the urban dwellers closer to digital opportunities. The constraints include:

* Lack of awareness about benefits of ICTs: Despite growing number of people who own a computer and have Internet access, most people in developing countries have little opportunity to connect to Internet and therefore are unaware of the socio-economic benefits and the stimulus to their lives that ICTs can bring. Also, among development partners there is still a great deal of skepticism toward ICTs as an appropriate means for development in regions where communities even lack the most basic services such as water supply and sanitation. Due to the quasi-absence of demonstration projects in some countries, very limited information is available to assess and to advocate the impact of ICTs for development.

* Lack of access facilities: Access facilities include computers and connectivity in the rural areas. The cost of computers is still beyond the purchasing power of majority of individuals in developing countries. The Internet is often far too expensive to be accessible to ordinary citizens, to most public service institutions and is often available only in urban centers, where most Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have their market.

* Language barriers in using the Internet: Language barriers prevent people from familiarizing themselves with the benefits of Internet based information resources that invariably require an ability to understand international languages, especially English. As a result, most people in developing countries cannot read and understand most of the Internet contents that are available. Another factor is the high illiteracy rate among the poor people.

* Lack of local language information products: There is a lack of suitable information products tailored to the needs and assimilation capacities of rural people in developing countries. In order to better adjust their investment decisions people need updated information on market prices, new agricultural technologies and methods to raise the quality of their products to adapt to changing climatic conditions or the demands of agricultural markets.

* Non-availability of government information online. The vital government information is not available online; most countries do not have pro-poor ICT policies and plans to reorient relevant government institutes as electronic service providers to boost rural development.

* Lack of motivation to use information over the Internet. In spite of connectivity, people will not use ICTs unless they are motivated to do so. The prevailing modality of Internet access requires a certain level of competence from the user that many individuals in developing countries do not have.

DEFINITION OF AN INFORMATION SYSTEM

Information can be defined as: (i) facts, data, or instructions in any medium or form; (ii) the meaning that a human assigns to data by means of the known conventions used in their representation (2); and (iii) in intelligence usage, unprocessed data of every description that may be used in the production of intelligence (12). An information system can be defined as: (i) a system, whether automated or manual that comprises people, machines, and/or methods organized to collect, process, transmit and disseminate data that represent user information; (ii) any telecommunications and/or computer related equipment or interconnected system or subsystems of equipment that is used in the acquisition, storage, manipulation, management, movement, control, display, switching, interchange, transmission, or reception of voice and/or data and includes software, firmware and hardware; (iii) the entire infrastructure, organization, personnel and components for the collection, processing, storage, transmission, display, dissemination and disposition of information (3); and (iv) the arrangement of people, data, processes, interfaces, network(s) and technology that interact to support and improve day-to-day operations in a business, support the problem-solving and decision-making needs of management (24).

INFORMATION SYSTEMS FOR SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT

Information fuels knowledge. Knowledge is widely recognized as the key resource for development. Traditional knowledge systems (TKS) are comprised of the knowledge, innovations and practices of indigenous and local communities around the world. These are developed from experience gained over the centuries, adapted to the community laws, local language, local culture, environment and transmitted orally from generation to generation. Traditional knowledge is mainly of a practical nature, as in agriculture (development of plant species and animal breeds), health (plant-based medicines and cosmetics), horticulture and forestry. These knowledge systems provided the necessary life security and popular coping mechanisms vis-a-vis the natural and socio-economic environment.

Over the years, TKS came under the heavy onslaught of rapidly expanding modernization and global market economy, threatening food security, biodiversity, culture, unprecedented levels of environmental degradation, destruction of poor people's livelihoods, etc. The decline of traditional water harvesting structures, traditional medicine, biodiversity, etc., is inextricably tied up with the decline in the traditional relations of social production. The inadequacy of many TKS has been that most of them have not been codified, limiting their access and reach, storage and retrieval, objectivity and unambiguous interpretation. They have been confined mostly to the realm of tacit knowledge, often subjective and inextricably tied up with and limited by indexical forms of communicative practices. Their modes of storage and transmission have been in the form of stories and proverbs, parables and prejudices, mores and lores, rituals and metaphors, folk arts and folk culture. However, for them to survive and sustain, to be rid of discriminatory access and to become effective means of empowerment of people, there has to be a dynamic process of interchange between subjective and objective, tacit and explicit and thus concomitant processes that equally emphasize objectification, codification and externalization.

Social development is a learning process model and people occupy the centre stage of development as agents of change. The external agents such as development organizations play a facilitating role in helping people analyze their experience, i.e., as catalysts in the socialization, externalization, internalization and reconstruction of social knowledge through alternative communicative practices, as facilitators in the building of social institutions and culture that would provide the enabling environment for knowledge management. The challenge before development organizations that include NonGovernment Organizations (NGOs), multilateral aid agencies, donor agencies and government agencies, therefore, is to work on models of participatory learning and organization that would help people engage in a continuous process of dialogue among themselves that would enable people to codify, externalize and universalize their knowledge. The diversity of TKS have to be integrated into the global mainstream by harnessing the latest ICTs, for sharing ideas and experiences, mobilizing resources and support, advocating policy changes, accessing resources and intelligence.

The challenges and opportunities for the development of organizations arise at various levels, viz. (i) Community level: Since social development is a learning process, one must start from what people already know. The challenges include the need for revitalization of the TKS by overcoming their limitations and making them more equitable and participatory. The opportunities include lessons that can be learned from the failure of welfare state and relatively small-scale NGO successes; (ii) Global issues: The challenges include macro and global environment, such as globalization, market economy, rapid technological changes and digital divide. The opportunities include capitalizing on the huge advances of technology, e.g. Internet that is facilitating the large scale dissemination of ideas, mobilization of resources and collaboration among communities, organizations and networks; (iii) Organizational level: The challenges include shortage of funds, too much accountability to donors, inadequate cooperation from local government agencies, shortage of competent staff, reinvention of the wheel, inability to harness past experience, poor documentation, poor networking and too little sharing across agencies. The opportunities include availability of new technology, a number of success stories and governments becoming more open to NGOs.

Information systems can play a significant role in combating rural and urban poverty, fostering sustainable development by creating information rich societies and supporting livelihoods. Successful information system intervention relies on an enabled environment, participation of private sector and NGOs, free flow of information, access for women and capacity building. The challenge for governments is to ensure the convergence of their initiatives and those taken up by various development organizations, to address the digital divide.

SUCCESSFUL INFORMATION SYSTEMS INITIATIVES

As the reach of Internet and wireless communication technologies continues to expand at an unprecedented rate around the world, concerns are growing about ways and means of bringing rural communities into the fold as well. A number of approaches have emerged, such as building bridges via globally dispersed online communities or via locally based community information systems. Some of the more successful models in other countries, reaching larger number of people are: (i) FarmNet: farmer information network in Uganda (9); (ii) MahilaWeb (http://www.mahilaweb.org): a network of NGOs working for the empowerment of women and gender in Nepal; (iii) Pakissan (http://www.pakissan.com): first Internet agriculture portal for farmers in Pakistan; (iv) PEOPlink (http://www.peoplink.org): trains and equips grass roots artisan organizations in 22 developing countries and serves artisans to market their hand made items over the Internet; (v) Tortas (http://www.tortasperu.com.pe): an e-commerce portal for homemade cakes of Peruvian women; (vi) Metrocomia: outsourced web services centres in a dozen countries in Africa, Latin America and Asia: strengthening export opportunities, bridging the digital divide and building a local Internet industry using local talent (14); (vii) GrameenPhone (http://www.grameenphone.com): Grameen Bank's village phone programme in Bangladesh, enhancing rural social and economic development; (viii) CyberCare (http://www.lioncybercare.org): providing Internet access and educational resources among 26 networked orphanages in Malaysia; (ix) MarketWatch (http://www.marketwatch.mn): price information and analysis service in Mongolia; and (x) NairoBits (http://www.nairobits.org): web services centre for slum children in Kenya.

INDIA'S INITIATIVES IN RURAL COMMUNITIES

India is emerging as a testing ground for new technologies and business models that aim to narrow the digital divide between urban and rural people in developing economies. Limitations in electricity, telephone, Internet connectivity and other kinds of basic infrastructure in India's rural areas are a key challenge for a number of development organizations. The corporate sector too is discovering that bridging this digital divide could translate into new market opportunities (17).

India has a population of over one billion, 70 percent living in villages. The literacy rate is only 52 percent (65.5 percent of males and 39 percent of females). There are 18 languages officially recognized, each having a different character set. Around 50 million people speak English. The present indicators of information technology (IT) penetration in Indian society are far from satisfactory. PC penetration is 0.58 percent (Asia is at 3.31 percent and world average is at 8.42 percent). Despite the ongoing deregulation of India's telecommunications sector, its national teledensity is one of the lowest in the world, improving slowly from 0.06 percent in 1990 to almost 3 percent today. India's new telecom policy seeks to increase telephone penetration to 7 percent by 2005 and 15 percent by the year 2010. It encourages development of telecoms in rural areas to increase teledensity from the current level of 0.4 percent to 4 percent by the year 2010. It also projects Internet connections will grow from the present 4.5 million to 10 million by the year 2003.

In India, a number of innovative experiments already under way indicate that achieving global digital access and jump starting development may not be as difficult as many think. There are more than fifty grass roots projects in India that are using modern ICTs for the benefit of urban and rural citizen consumers by providing: (i) enhanced access to information and communication across large distances; (ii) improved access to governmental and quasi-governmental resources and services; (iii) opportunities to trade or bank online through kiosks; (iv) new opportunities to design, manufacture and market products through Internet or intranet systems; (v) increased and improved education through computers or about computers or both; (vi) superior medical advice, diagnostic information and information about local resources; (vii) opportunities to earn a better living' by learning a new skill in the knowledge based economy; and (viii) improving agricultural productivity. The success of a rural information system initiative depends on how far it progresses down the stages of IT and information diffusion: initiation, adoption, adaptation, acceptance, regulation and infusion.

OVERVIEW OF SELECT INFORMATION SYSTEMS IN RURAL COMMUNITIES

Akashganga - ICTs in the Lives of Rural Dairy Producers

Akashganga means "the milky way." It was launched in 1996 at Anand, Gujarat and implemented by Shree Kamadhenu Electronics Pvt. Ltd, with the objective of using appropriate IT to facilitate the timely collection of milk and thereby generate higher profits for the rural milk producers. Akashganga is being used at the Dairy Cooperative Society (DCS) a farmer-owned, grass roots unit in the cooperative structure. All the farmers of the DCS congregate twice a day at its premises to sell milk. Before Akashganga, all the milk collection activities were performed manually. Milk was often spoiled due to climatic conditions as producers waited in long queues to receive payment for the milk sold. The simple technology used in this project has enabled the timely collection of milk and thus, generated higher profits for the producer, now paid well in time. The equipment used at the milk collection centre was presented in Figure 1.

The basic milk collection transaction is comprised of: measuring weight of milk with electronic weighing scale; fat testing using Milko Tester; capture of unique member ID by the PC software; and printing of a pay slip with all this data and the amount to be paid (20). The Dairy Information Services Kiosk (DISK) offers a multitude of animal husbandry related services, besides maintaining databases and Internet connectivity at the DCS. Akashganga has been implemented at more than 400 locations, used 365 days a year and for more than 6 hours in a day (16).

Benefits: Speedier collection of milk, shorter queues due to the timely disbursement of payments and a lower prevalence of corrupt practices due to the maintenance of DCS accounts.

Future plans: Akashganga is currently being enhanced with DISK and a Dairy Portal that allows people at the Union to access the database and DCS information using the Internet.

Information Village Experiment - Empowering Rural People Through Access to Timely and Relevant Information

Launched in January 1998, by a non-profit foundation M S Swaminathan Research Foundation (http://www.mssrf.org), Chennai in the Pondicherry region of South India, helps prove that ICTs can change the way of life in rural areas, especially for marginal farmers and those without assets (14). The key benefit of ICTs in sustainable agricultural and rural development is the ability to take generic information and render it locally specific.

The project's operational centre is located in Villianur that has nine public phones and three ISPs. It acts as a hub or Value Addition Centre (VAC) of a local area network (LAN) set up over 10 villages, serving a population of about 21,500. The VAC, with two Internet dial-up access modes, collects and transmits relevant information from the Internet to other computers on the network. The villages act as Village Knowledge Centres (VKC) or Information Shops and are connected by a hybrid wired and wireless network - consisting of PCs with multimedia tools, printers, scanners, telephones, modems, VHF duplex radio devices and e-mail connectivity for voice and data transfer (5). The VKCs are run on a voluntary basis and are set up either in a Panchayat (local government) office or a private individual's house or even a temple. Volunteers have been given basic PC training so they can use Windows 95, send/receive messages using Microsoft Exchange and compose documents on Microsoft Word 97 using I-LEAP Tamil (local language) fonts.

Content creation to suit local needs is the key element in the project. Based on the needs of the community, the VAC has generated and made available on the network a number of databases in Tamil: entitlements to rural families (multitude of schemes of the central and state governments, banks); list of families below poverty line (in English); prices of agricultural inputs (seeds, fertilizers, pesticides) and outputs (grains, vegetables); integrated pest management; cattle diseases; transport (road conditions, bus and train timetables); health care (hospitals and medical practitioners directory, women's diseases, interactive CDROMs and videos); and weather (appropriate timing for sowing, areas of abundant fish catch and wave heights in sea). Most of the information is collected and fed in by the local community itself that means the information provided by the VKC is specific to the needs of the rural community (6). Weather information about wave heights at sea and wind directions (figure 2), crucial to the fishing and farming communities of the coastal area villages such as Veerampattinam, are downloaded from a US Navy Web site, translated into Tamil and broadcast over the public addressing system to the fishermen as they are preparing their boats in the early morning. The project won the Motorola Gold Award 1999 and the Stockholm Challenge Award 2001 in the Global Village category.

Benefits: Empowerment of villagers through increased knowledge via the distribution of reliable locally specific information, ranging from crop types, wages and food prices to the weather.

Future plans: To conduct research on the formation of multi-sector partnerships within rural communities to form a sustainable model of information systems for rural areas; development ICT based applications for rural areas, like online community banking and distance education; exchange research results with telecentre programmes in different parts of the world, to ascertain the impact of ICT and development of a set of parameters to make a choice of access technology and technology for powering the access devices.

Wired Villages of Warana - IT's Role in Village-level Development

Launched in December 1998, jointly by the National Informatics Centre (NIC), Government of India, Government of Maharashtra and Warana Vibhag Shikshan Mandai (Education Department), to demonstrate the effective contribution of an ICT infrastructure to the socioeconomic development of a cluster of 70 contiguous villages around Warana Nagar in the Kolhapur and Sangli Districts of Maharashtra. The Warana cooperative complex is comprised of 25 cooperative societies in the field of sugar, milk, poultry, house construction, etc., in a radius of 4 km. The project's aims were to: to utilize IT to increase the efficiency and productivity of the existing cooperative enterprise by setting up a state-of-the-art computer communication network; provide agricultural, medical and educational information to villagers at facilitation booths (FBs) in their villages; provide communication facilities at the booths to link villages to Warana cooperative complex; bring the world's knowledge to the doorsteps of villagers through the Internet via NIC Network; provide distance education to both primary and higher educational institutes; and establish a Geographic Information System (GIS) leading to greater transparency in administration especially in matters related to land (7,13).

A three-tier network was built (Figure 3): At the first tier sits the main hub, located at Sugar Administrative Building and Engineering College with high-speed very small aperture terminals (VSATs) allowing Internet access by business centres (BCs). Second tier is comprised of a 64 kbps VSAT connection established as a gateway WAN link to NIC, Pune. Six BCs equipped with high-speed wireless LAN for data transmission and state-of-the-art servers. Information technology centres (ITCs) with high speed receive-only VSATs, in addition to dial-up facility for fast data transfer for tele-education, LAN with 6-8 multimedia clients. At the third tier are 70 FBs with multimedia workstations and dial-up connections to the business centres (23). Based on need assessment, six web-based and nine network-based client server applications were identified for implementation. From the FBs villagers can access information about employment and agricultural schemes; government procedures such as, assistance in preparing applications for government certificates (ration card, birth, death certificates); crop information; and village information consisting of bus, railway, medical and hospital facilities, water supply details, etc. The ITCs will be providing computer-based education facilities to the village children. A GIS was developed that covers a base map of the 70 villages, covering schools, population, land under cultivation, etc. The software was developed in Marathi language.

Benefits: From the FBs villagers can interact with Warana management to register their grievances and seek redress; computerization of land records permits the villagers to view, print 7/12 extracts using data from CD, or from the Tehsil site right at their village booth; dairy activities permit the milk collection and analyzed data to be made available to the villagers at the booth as soon as it is generated; wired management of sugar cane cultivation software enables speedy, accurate and effective data exchange between the factory and the farmers; and the applications installed and planned are expected to bring approachability to administrators and a transparency to administration.

Gyandoot - Social Engineering Through IT

Gyandoot means "messenger of information" and is the name of an intranet launched by the Government of India in January 2000 in the tribal dominated Dhar district of the state of Madhya Pradesh. It is a community owned, self-sustainable and a low cost rural project developed to bring the benefits of ICTs to the doorsteps of villagers who are dependent on farming and agricultural industries. It is a unique form of Government to Citizen (G2C) e-commerce activity, wherein the District Panchayat is enabling over half a million rural tribal citizens affordable access to various government and market-related needs through IT. The Village Panchayats paid for the equipment and space for Soochanalayas or Internet Kiosks (IKs) operated by Soochaks or Kiosk Operators (KOs) selected and trained from among the unemployed educated youth of the village. The Gyandoot Samiti has provided the back-office support that is required to make the services directly benefit rural citizens. This led to the establishment of over 31 IKs in each Village Panchayat to provide commercial Internet and voice connectivity in the villages. These IKs, equipped with PC, printer and UPS, are owned and managed by KOs (1, 11). Figure 4 shows women seeking information from the Internet kiosk.

The success of the project is largely due to targeting the information interests of the community, making available: government information and forms, so that villagers could submit applications to the government departments on the Internet; rates of agricultural produce, land record rights and caste certificates; online public grievance and redress; rural e-mail facilities (free); health services; rural e-auction; online matrimonial information; information regarding government programmes; information for children; and online employment exchange. The villagers are willing to pay Indian Rupees (INR) 5 (10 cents) to use the services (19, 25). The project has received the Stockholm Challenge IT Award . 2000 and CSI- TCS National IT Award for best IT usage for the year 2000.

Benefits: Provided the marginalized tribal citizens with their first ever chance to access knowledge via a cost-effective, replicable, economically self-reliant and financially viable model; allowing the knowledge economy to directly reach the 'have-nots' and 'know-nots'; providing self-employment through entrepreneurship to local rural youth; providing partnership between the government and the citizen; and by using IKs eliminating middlemen and increasing the transparency within local administrations.

Future plans: To expand its educational resources and switch over from the current dial-up technology to a Wirelessin-Local-Loop (WLL) system that would enable kiosks to be set up in every village within a 25 kilometer radius (21).

Honey Bee Electronic Network - Knowledge Network for Augmenting Grass Roots Innovations KnowNet-Grin

Launched in April 2000, jointly by the Society for Research and Initiatives for Sustainable Technologies and Institutions, Indian Institute of Management and Grass Roots Innovation Augmentation Network, all based at Ahmedabad in rural Gujarat; the aim is to reach other Indian states through Honey Bee Network Collaborators. This is a voluntary network and allows the poor to share their knowledge with other communities and learn from others, amassing a database in their own language. It aims to: build a new paradigm of development that builds upon what poor people are rich in, i.e. their knowledge; scout, disseminate, add value, reward and compensate, and protect their intellectual property rights; create a knowledge network by connecting innovators so as to promote lateral learning and to transform the mind set in developing countries beginning from India so that people's creativity and innovative potential becomes the touch stone for evaluating the success of various public policies (18).

Honey Bee database has about ten thousand green grass roots innovations - including the outstanding traditional, ecological and technological, knowledge of farmers, artisans, pastoralists, fishermen and women - scouted from more than 4000 villages of India and some from other countries. Local people have developed these innovations without any outside help (for controlling pests through herbal pesticides, developing small machineries, veterinary medicines, soil and water conservation, organic agriculture, vegetative dyes, fishing, food processing, new plant varieties, etc.). The network is ten years old and has a presence in 75 countries. The database is multilingual (English, French and Gujarati) and has a multimedia mode accessed by touch screen interface, allowing use by farmers and tribals without computer knowledge. Figure 5 shows a farmer using the touch screen for information. The database consists of name, addresses of innovators and communicators. Innovations are disseminated through eight local language newsletters: English, Hindi, Gujarati, Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Pahari and Spanish (10, 8).

Benefits: Establishment of connectivity among innovators, collaborators, investors and policy makers; brought IT education to the grass roots and broadened the scope of the Honey Bee Network that was otherwise depended on newsletters, other print articles and one-to-one interaction to pursue its cause.

Future plans: Development of the database to incorporate information in 16 Indian languages - auto translation tools are being explored; improved site locations for kiosks identified on the spread of innovations, maintenance options and networking considerations.

TARAhaat - Connecting Rural India to the Global Village

TARAhaat means "star market place." It was a private organization Development Alternatives, whose goal is to bring information and marketing services using e-business to rural North India, in two rural regions: Bundelkhand (one of the poorest in Uttar Pradesh) and Bhatinda (one of the richest in Punjab) (http://www.tarahaatcom). It acts as a gateway that connects the village user to information, social services, healthy entertainment and to all kinds of markets, through a network of 20 odd franchised TARAkendras or cyber centres, customized in the language of their choice (English, Punjabi and Hindi). Figure 6 provides the screenshot of TARAhaat. The service piggyback on India's extensive rural phone network, supplemented where necessary by satellite links. It covers all three components of rural connectivity: content (through TARAhaatcom portal, a repository of information on sustainable development); access (through a network of franchised local enterprises) and fulfillment (delivery of information, goods and services by local courier services or franchised TARAvans). The revenue streams of TARAhaat provide for profit generation at each step of the supply chain, serving to further cements all its networks together (4, 22).

TARAhaat provides access to information resources as channels (health, nutrition, agriculture, sustainable livelihoods, schemes, law, governance, market prices, local yellow pages, details about products, etc), in the local language and user-friendly format. The services section covers TARAmandi (market news), TARAdak (mail service), astrology, bus services, chat, weather, etc. TARAhaat facilitates ecommerce through online shopping for products and services needed by rural households, farmers and industries. E-education covers basic computing courses for girls and the disabled and desktop publishing for enterprise franchisees. The willingness to pay is greatest for education, health care and livelihood information services, including commodity market prices and infotainment (6). The project has won the Stockholm Challenge IT Award 2000, for innovative applications of IT in the Global Village category.

Benefits: Consumer-to-Consumer (C2C) services connecting urban and overseas customers directly to rural crafts people producing opportunities for income flows, not only to the village, but also to TARAhaat for self-sustenance. Proof that an Internet portal can be commercially viable, provided it is responsive to the needs of its users and has a sufficient mix of (offline and online) revenues.

Future plans: To establish 47,500 TARAkendras by 2006 (covering one in 12 Indian villages and offering content in 15 languages) and quickly to generate growing business-to-business and C2C traffic.

BOTTLENECKS AND SOLUTIONS

Following are some of the problems faced and possible solutions for Indian rural community information system initiatives:

(i) Electricity: In many rural areas, electrical supply will be restricted to only 6 or 8 hours with varying voltage and frequency that are far outside the acceptable limits of hardware. Often grounding is not available. For most rural information system projects, battery back-ups, universal power supplies, solar power panels, circuit breakers and voltage stabilizers are necessary.

(ii) Hardware: PCs remain expensive, fragile, quickly obsolete, English-centric and complex in operation. The human-mediated computer kiosks, shared among multiple users of a rural community, could in fact prove to be the most inexpensive and inclusive form of rural infrastructure. This means moving from a PC paradigm to a community computer (CC) platform. The CCs require a hardware/software/connectivity investment of at least INR 40,000 (US $800) and serves 500 to 2500 citizens and consumers every week. Thus, the hardware cost per capita reduces to miniscule. HP Labs India (http://www.hpl.hp.com) has developed a 4-in-1 computer that splits a conventional Pentium IV Linux-operating machine into 4 separate workstations, each costing INR 15,000 (US $300). PicoPeta Simputers (http://www.picopeta.com) developed a Simputer or Simple Computer for INR 10,000 (US $200), which is a small handheld device that can read a smart card and has advanced audio and text processing capabilities in several Indian languages.

(iii) Inappropriate software: The lack of standardized code for major Indian languages creates interoperability problems between programs involving distinct codes. The Centre for the Development of Advanced Computing (http://www.cdacindia. com) has been working on Indian language fonts and software for over a decade. Many rural information system projects use its fontographic standards or text-processing software. A machine language translation project, Anusaraka (http://www.iiitnet/anu/anu_home.html), promises to allow Indian language users translation between various Indian languages, as well as access to English language resources on the web.

(iv) Telephony: Many villages lack land line telephones. If they are available they often go down for weeks at a time and may involve various kinds of incompatibilities that prevent data transfer. A wireless CB-radio-type system for relatively slow data transfers using fax protocols, VSATs that connected directly to communications satellites or telephone connections in proximity to optical fiber cable routes may be chosen as alternative means.

(v) Connectivity: Internet subscriptions do not always cover rural areas and the connectivity will be achieved by making long distance calls to nearby cities. This results in slow and unreliable access. New developments in the area of connectivity are providing optimism: WLL systems are up-and running in several districts across peninsular India from N-Logue (http://www.niogue.com) service provider; private radio link installations that operate on 802.11 wireless protocol demonstrated an operating range of up to ten kilometers; prospects of mesh networks using either Bluetooth or one of the two wireless standards; WorldSpace (http://www. worldspce.com), the satellite radio broadcaster offers data and audio broadcasting capabilities, etc.

(vi) Policy constraint: The relaxed Indian government restrictions of 1990s, on diverse kinds of communications and media, have not kept pace with technology change, nor have they remained uniformly focused or directed (Direct-to-Home and community radio). The license fee for several technologies, including VSATs and digital signatures, place them out of the reach of small-scale rural entrepreneurs as well as established grass roots development agencies, providing no benefit for any section of rural society.

OBSERVATIONS

Below are some of the observations gleaned from the information system initiatives facilitating rural community projects in India: (i) Publishing and publicity of the projects is very minimal. With no comparative study or linking across projects the lessons learned by one project are not transmitted to the others. Appropriate technologies are rarely evaluated and financial sustainability, scalability and cost recovery are seldom addressed; (ii) Project plans frequently ignore the harsh realities and very few have substance for implementation; (iii) Economically responsible projects are already proving more successful than charitable or free models. Projects that identify and cost the services they provide are also more successful; (iv) Projects initiated following consulting at grass roots level is essential - top down approaches do not work. An intimate understanding of the social and economic parameters of rural India gives connectivity providers a significant advantage; (v) Initial information requirements may change over a period of time and therefore periodic assessment must be undertaken; (vi) Content creation in local language is a prerequisite for project success. It is imperative to develop locally relevant content in the local language and to present it intelligibly as well as offering suitable and adequate training; (vii) The scope of IT must be seen as reaching beyond that of just computers and the Internet to include radio, TV, microchip technology, etc. The use of automated butter fat assessment equipment as part of the Akashganga project is a classic example; (viii) E-government is one of the most promising sectors for exploring the uses of ICT. It involves two distinct activities: the computerization of government functions and the provision of G2C and C2G connections through which citizens can obtain access to a variety of information; (ix) Rural entrepreneurs and crafts persons are saving time, travel and effort. Greater benefits will be felt when wired micro-credit accounts come into use for online or distance transactions amongst or within village communities; (x) Information system projects have assisted rural communities by providing them with news, information, advice and knowledge that has hitherto been inaccessible to them. This information has allowed rural citizens/consumers to make more informed economic decisions: landless laborers have negotiated their daily wages more effectively; and tractors, threshers, old television sets, cattle and motorcycles have all been traded across towns and villages due to online advertisements; (xi) Until the cost of basic IT devices that deliver the 'last mile' of connectivity and local language software is lowered, the goal of wiring rural India will remain a dream.

CONCLUSION

Creating information-rich societies is a key element of poverty reduction and sustainable development. To empower poor people and to reduce the digital divide, information system projects should (i) be developed in local language prioritizing the local needs and content; (ii) be a model of low cost solution so that poor people can replicate this model or can own or share the system; (iii) be owned and participated by the community in general; (iv) be sustainable in long terms; (v) be able to adopt and utilize innovative ICT means that might be low cost and alternative solutions to century old access problems; and (vi) be supportive to local and public access points as in rural areas where the divide is the widest, ICT solutions need to reach the people through public access points. Enabling the whole environment is essential for the provision of information and communication services, the promotion of innovation and entrepreneurship and the free flow of information. Giving voice and addressing the needs of the poor and the most marginalized (especially women and girls), and helping them apply their knowledge, is a key element in combating poverty. The community information system centres can play a significant role in meeting the socio-economic aspirations of rural communities by successfully addressing the "8Cs": connectivity, content, community, commerce, capacity, culture, cooperation and capital.