Information technology advocates who see a strong case for its use in bridging the digital divide hold that poverty and lack of access to information are linked. Better information and communications technologies (ICTs) are perceived as harbingers of opportunity, especially for the excluded, to deal with deprivation and remoteness.

There’s some scepticism about the sense of hope that fuels social experiments in IT. And this debate on whether IT can do anything for poverty is specifically posed against the backdrop of the burgeoning numbers of telecenters in the rural Indian context today. Also called ‘Information Kiosks’ or ‘Village Knowledge Centers’, telecenters represent the most significant aspect of the ICT for development world. Significant because, they bring into scenarios characterised by huge development challenges, new-age paraphernalia that promise to do much more than merely transform the landscape. The telecenter is seen as having the potential for public access facilities in low-income and rural areas to provide a broad range of low-cost communication and information services, ranging from phone calls and email to multimedia, distance learning and e-commerce.

The tele-center ‘revolution’ beginning the late 1990s, was a step to taking IT to underserved populations—a shift from the urbane nature of India’s IT forays. It has ushered in the concept of a community computer, providing a space for those who cannot afford their own PC, phone line or Internet connection and has coincided with the greater affordability of technology itself.

Multiple players in the country, seeking to bridge the digital chasm between the urban ‘haves’ and the rural ‘have nots’, have set up tele-centers. A preliminary collation indicates efforts by the government under the e-governance rubric to reach village communities (like GyanDoot in Dhar, Madhya Pradesh; Lok Mitra in Hamirpur, Himachal Pradesh; e-srinkhala in Kerala; Mahiti Shakti in Panchmahals, Gujarat). NGO efforts include the Village Knowledge Centers of the MS Swaminathan Research Foundation, Pondicherry; kiosks in Madurai, Tamil Nadu run by Development of Humane Action Network Foundation, and more recently, RASI Maiyams run by the Foundation of Occupational Development, in Tamil Nadu along with the district collectorate of Kanchipuram. Private sector initiatives to address the information needs of rural India that have received prominent coverage by the media include Drishtee, TARAhaat, N-Logue and Baatchit. The private sector has also partnered with the government in some cases like the Mahila Spurthi initiative, where CoOptions and the district collectorate of West Godavari district Andhra Pradesh have come together to set up kiosks.

For corporates, kiosks that answer specific needs of rural agricultural communities seem to make perfect business sense. The EID Parry enterprise is aimed at enhancing e-commerce in the agricultural sector. Internet kiosks called ‘Parry’s Corners’ have been designed to cater to the agricultural, educational and commercial needs of the rural communities of Nellikuppam, Tamil Nadu, using connectivity provided by n-Logue. In order to make navigation easier, the website has been equipped with rollover audio features and Tamil-language text.

e-Choupal, ITC’s International Business Division offers farmers of North India information, products and services to enhance farm productivity, improve farm-gate price realisation and cut transaction costs. Farmers can access latest local and global information on weather, scientific farming practices as well as market prices at the village itself through this web portal - all in Hindi. Choupal also facilitates supply of high quality farm inputs as well as purchase of commodities at their doorstep. Given the literacy and infrastructure constraints at village level, this model is designed to provide physical service support through a Choupal Sanchalak—himself a lead farmer—who acts as the interface between computer terminal and the farmers.

The network and connectivity model adopted by Telecenters differ. The Drishtee kiosk has a user-friendly, stand-alone application. The database, mail and other messages queued at the kiosk get uploaded and updated to the district server whenever the kiosk connects. The district server acts as the local content provider, providing data like the Mandi price, etc and acts as a sub-administrator, processing the requests of the local kiosks, facilitating communication, monitoring kiosks and administering the district database. The web server acts as the main administrator of the complete system. It coordinates communication between districts, administers the performance of districts and kiosks and acts as national level content provider. The Drishtee kiosk connects to the web server through an ISP or connects directly to the district server as the latter acts as a Remote Access Server. In Rajasthan, Drishtee has partnered with Aksh Optifibres to provide Optic Fibre Connectivity to the kiosks. Drishtee is also exploring the ‘hunting line’ facility, which will enable an auto transfer to the next line when the original line is inaccessible.

The n-Logue model uses the corDECT Wireless in Local Loop developed by TeNet group to provide access and connectivity. The kiosk is connected to a Local Service Provider where a Data Interface Unit switch is located. The LSP in turn is connected to the basic service operator, be it BSNL or private operators like Tatas or Reliance using copper or fibre optics. The copper carries the voice while a leased line from a LSP to a nearest Internet gateway carries data. A LSP can serve kiosks within a radius of 25 km and cater to needs of nearly 300 villages. The LSP and ‘Chiraag’ kiosks—the n-Logue brand of kiosks—work in a typical hub and spoke type pattern with the LSP forming the hub and the kiosk operators forming the spoke. This arrangement provides dedicated bandwidth for all hub and spoke connections. Many tele-centre projects across India use the corDECT technology to provide connectivity, prominent among which are Sustainable Access in Rural India in South India, DHAN in Tamil Nadu, GyanDoot in Dhar Madhya Pradesh, EID Parry in Nellikuppam, Tamil Nadu.

The franchise business model is popular with private sector operators in the tele-centre arena. The Drishtee business model gets revenues from the license fee and deposit fee collected from kiosk owners. An initial deposit of Rs 70,000 is collected from kiosk owners and is inclusive of the costs of providing connectivity with the server at the district level, equipment fees - computer, telephone, and scanner from the kiosk owners. The kiosk owner pays Drishtee Rs 10, 000 as a license fee and an additional Rs 10, 000 is charged as a refundable security deposit. Drishtee has a 20% stake and the kiosk owner has an 80% stake in the revenue earned from the kiosk.

TARAhaat also has adopted the franchise-based business model in which the franchisee or the owner has to pay for the initial capital investment and operating expenses every month. Besides this, they have also to pay TARAhaat an annual franchisee fee for the year round support provided by the latter. The franchisee or the TARAkendra owner in turn earns his revenue by charging the customers a fee against the products/services rendered. TARAhaat decides the pricing of the products and services.

At the upper end, rural Telecenters set up as businesses are usually equipped with a PC, CD ROM with multi media, modem, web camera, scanner printer, UPS with battery back up for around four hours, and typically offer a range of services from provision of government certificates and records; general information such as employment news; innovations like matrimonial services; e-education; market prices and auctions; and printing, photography, DTP etc. Services are usually provided for a price varying from Rs.5 to Rs.30. Most players recognise that the possibilities for using technology to meet local needs are immense provided community priorities are translated into specific services. In addition to government records, some tele-centre models facilitate online payments, like for transport reservations. In Punjab, on-line bookings for a bus service from Ludhiana to the International Airport in New Delhi is done at Drishtee’s kiosks. One centre run by the M S Swaminathan Research Foundation provides weather forecasts picked up from a decommissioned US Navy Satellite via the Internet and transmits the same over loud speakers to the coastal village. In the DHAN Foundation operated kiosks in Madurai, the web camera is used extensively. DHAN has partnered with the local Aravind Eye Hospital for remote diagnosis of eye ailments. Feedback on crop ailments is also obtained from the local Agricultural University, through web camera based transfer of images.

Focus on the youth, as also on the aura surrounding IT literacy, is a profitable niche for most tele-centre operators. The TARAkendras of TARAhaat besides educating people about the Internet and e-mail, has developed educational courses, both IT and and non-IT, to impart skill-based job-oriented education to the students. Courses being offered are in Information Technology basics, practical English, and Personality Development. Courses in the pipeline include courses on Sales Management, Office Administration and Career Counselling. TARAhaat feels that these courses have found widespread favour with the students and the unemployed youth as they feel it has increased their chances of employability. The local schools and industry have absorbed some of the brighter students as computer instructors and data entry operators. TARAhaat has also entered into a tie-up with industry for finding job-placements for its students as well as for short-term on-the-job training.

While telecenters seem to have provided shared access to communications infrastructure and generated some employment in rural contexts, there are still many critical challenges to the fundamental hope vested in their potential to really bring transformation.

Sustainability
Most tele-centres are started as ‘pilot projects’ with donor funding. In the beginning, a few demonstration centres or showcases are drawn up and after the proof-of-concept is established, then scaling is thought of. This approach is one that sets itself up only for a short-term success with no guarantee whatsoever of success in the long-term. The approach is not geared to creating solutions in the first place, that can be scaled up rapidly. Experts studying sustainability issues surrounding tele-centres feel that after the so-called ‘pilot phase’ when donor funding stops, in most cases, the tele-centres turn into ‘white elephants’, and that a business model conceptualised at the start is imperative. A case in point is the Madhya Pradesh Government’s much-publicised Gyandoot e-governance initiative. Thirty-nine information centres were set up to make people in 500 villages computer literate and serve as one-stop shops for information. Of these, seven centres have an average of 35 visitors a day and six centres are non-existent, as the phones do not work. The rest have very few visitors. Poor implementation and infrastructure has meant that it has made little difference to the lives of the villagers. In a recent interview to NDTV, a villager in Dhar district remarked, "Nobody has told us in the village that such a service is available." The report also highlighted how the operator at the information centre in Nalcha Block in Dhar has no clients. He has no electricity for hours and his information kiosk is deserted. Providing a basket of 44 services as was envisaged at the start seems a tall order, given the constraints.

Joseph Thomas, of SARI talks about how external factors like poor rainfall in the region also affect the cash flow within the village and hence internet usage. High cash flow in villages is seasonal being tied closely to rain and good harvest. "Due to the seasonal nature of cash flow, revenue in the kiosks gets affected. Increase in the number of revenue generating services alone may not be enough for the kiosk to survive. Cash flow within the kiosk needs to be increased by applications that allow kiosks to make payments on behalf of villagers through the Internet."

The tele-centre business community as also many academics tracking initiatives seem to be in complete consensus about the central role that a market-savvy entrepreneur can play for making rural connectivity a financially viable proposition. The entrepreneurial abilities and ingenuity of the kiosk operator in providing locale specific services to the community is key. Joseph Thomas, Programme Manager of the TeNet-backed SARI project, says, "Kiosk operators have to have many different skills and ways and means to develop these skills will become the focus of attention now. Over the past one year, the project has observed the emergence of several skilled operators who through their individual effort have shown the kiosk can become financially viable. In order for the remaining operators to be equally successful it is imperative that a programme be designed to help those operators gain the same skills possessed by the successful kiosk operators".

Ashok Jhunjhunwala, professor of the Electrical Engineering Department, IIT Madras, who has incubated some of the very successful startups in telecom and networking, also affirms the overall enterprise approach of n-Logue. "Using entrepreneurship as the key as was done for the STD-PCO, putting a training and service infrastructure which could support such kiosks (again as business) and driving the kiosk operator to earn a minimum of Rs. 3000 per month", Prof. Jhunjhunwala feels, are the basics that have gone to make the n-Logue venture successful.

But to many non-profit players operating tele-centres, sustainability means much more than financial sustainability. Where the tele-centre is seen as more than a shop providing information and communications services, the goals of community development and the task of integrating social sustainability as a vital element into the planning and operation of the tele-centre become important. The M S Swaminathan experience focuses on the community’s ownership of the tele-centre emphasising how processual inputs that gradually enable ownership of the tele-centre by the community as an asset are central. A lot of significance is therefore attached to training poorer women, who then go on to becoming managers of the centre.

Financial sustainability: Case of the SARI project
The SARI project has focused on ways and means to increase revenues from the Internet based services. Many of the standard applications have been developed independent of the project by the different partners.

Also, each kiosk has revenues from three different sources

n Computer training and education
n Off line services, job typing, Desk Top Publishing, Audio-Video CD’s, games etc.
n Internet based services

The project has been able to identify that in an overall sense, it is students (ages 8 to 18) who will form the bulk of users at the village Internet kiosk. Encouraging this category of users therefore is seen as a priority. SARI plans to develop interactive educational content, hold internet based competitions and evolve special pricing schemes for this group of customers.

The project has also identified the need to increase financial transactions within the village Internet kiosk as the obvious way to increase cash flow. To this end, together with ICICI, the following products are being developed and tested.

n Internet based credit card
n Low-cost ATM
n Line of credit for Loans.
n Micro-finance interactions and transactions
n Money transfer

Hardware & connectivity
Hardware and connectivity related problems are a major challenge that rural telecenters face.

Current hardware menus still require heavy investment, although costs have been going down. For a vast majority in the rural Indian context, the prices of hardware make access to IT unattainable. Rajesh Jain, MD of Netcore, is among the young visionaries in the IT arena who strongly feels that the technology menu for rural contexts needs to be tailored differently from mainstream urban solutions. He further opines that the need of the hour is for a completely fresh and bottom-up analysis of the rural markets, keeping in mind the emergence of "cold technologies"—technologies, which have neutral revenue or even anti-revenue attributes.

Power shortage in rural areas has proved to be a spoke-in-the-wheel for almost all rural tele-centres. With power supply lasting up to not more than 3 hours or less on an everyday basis, and tele-centres having to depend on battery backup, questions about viability come to the fore.

In terms of technology, therefore, workable alternatives for rural India become a priority. Prof Ashok Jhunjhunwala, is the brain behind the indigenously developed (wireless) corDECT technology, which provides simultaneous telephone and Internet access. CorDECT is a giant step in the direction of fulfilling the dream to eventually networking 6.4 million villages across India. CorDECT is a Digital Enhanced Cordless Telecommunication (DECT) based Wireless Local Loop (WLL) system that offers a very low per line cost, toll quality voice and data service up to 70 kbps. It is suited for both dense, urban and sparse, rural deployment scenarios. CorDECT has the capability to sustain two parallel connections of the telephone and the Internet simultaneously. The corDECT system has been designed such that it can be easily integrated with the existing network. CorDECT has been designed to be a modular system. While the basic unit provides service to up to 1000 subscribers, within a radius of 25 kilometres, multiple corDECT systems can be connected together using a transit switch. The system has been designed in such a way that the initial investment for the fixed part is low. Further, since this scheme does not require frequency planning, the installations need not be coordinated. Coupled with the low cost, corDECT is one of the most versatile and viable Wireless in Local Loop systems available today.

The Foundation of Occupational Development is looking at the alternative of providing Internet connectivity at the Rasi Maiyams—FOOD’s kiosks in Kanchipuram—with the aid of mobile phones.

Reaching the last mile
Expressing scepticism about the telecenter model, Fredrick Noronha, a freelance journalist and IT for Development activist from Goa remarks, "What exactly could tele-centres get used for in the Indian context, is a question that needs to be asked. I think they’re vastly under-tapped because most people don’t have the ideas of what these could be effectively used for. I am not too fascinated with the tele-centre model…it is known to have reached nowhere in places like Africa, after tonnes of money was poured in."

The concern about relevance implicitly translates into relevance for the majority. A big challenge therefore, in reaching connectivity and networking solutions to people in India, pertains to access by the poorest. For tele-centres to have an impact on the more disadvantaged in any rural context, the social barriers that inhibit access of the poor and powerless have to be grappled with. A large majority in rural areas suffer from the simultaneous stranglehold of weak public infrastructure and low levels of individual economic strength and educational capability. Not many initiatives seem to reach the last mile although the tele-centre initiatives of MSSRF, and NGOs like DHAN, are more consciously directed at access for the poorest.

Talking about the MSSRF tele-centres, Professor Ashwani Saith, an economist from Institute of Social Studies The Hague, argues that the poor still remain underrepresented in accessing the knowledge centres. Prof Saith’s research underscores the imperative for moving beyond generic references to the village community. His concern is basically with the benefits of IT for the poorest. He argues that a range of questions need to be asked in the context of village tele-centres: What is the frequency of use by the poor vis-à-vis the non-poor? Who are the individuals from the poor families that use the facility: the school going, young, adult male? What are the patterns of use in terms of content, i.e., expressed need, for the poor and non-poor? What is the rate of participation of the Dalits?

Prof. Saith also observes that in the MSSRF experiment, the content and information that has been generated with respect to advice on ecological ways of growing local crops and protecting them from diseases, daily market prices for those crops in different markets in the project area, directory of insurance plans for both crops and families etc, are items of information that are of interest and relevance mainly to landowners, not to the rural poor who are mostly landless, whether as agricultural labourers or impoverished service and artisanal groups.

Apart from government records and certificates, the need for which even the poor have, tele-centres seldom deliver content or services relevant to the poor. Models that look at health education, literacy, skill building, linkages with industry and outside markets need to be designed and implemented. These models will demand investment towards research, production, and dissemination of appropriate content. CDs hold the potential for taking development knowledge to people and production of low-cost CDs is an urgent need.

The telecenter can also serve as a physical space that allows people to come together for planning development strategies to improve their lives, a model that Unesco calls multi-purpose community telecenterjs. Financial investment from donor agencies and corporates as well as the involvement of local NGOs can play a role in harnessing the potential of tele-centres to help the poor.

Directions forward
The scene of community informatics and tele-centres is itself rapidly changing, while ICTs also are in constant transformation. Varied experiences exist in many other developing countries and the social potential of tele-centres has been exploited in many ways. The tele-centre community needs to build up and create links and partnerships between the social, private and governmental sectors. All these sectors have a strong interest and involvement in overcoming the digital divide, be it for political, economical or social reasons, but in order to be effective, none of the sectors can operate on its own.

There is already a great deal of research into tele-centres and tele-centre management, but too often it is cut off from actual practitioners, their experiences and their needs. This gap needs to be addressed.

Huge possibilities for cross-sharing of innovations in community transformation processes aided by tele-centres exist if tele-centres can be networked. This networking need not be restricted to regions within a country alone but also regions across the developing world. In October 2002, 25 people from 11 different countries participated in the first South-South travelling workshop on ICT-enabled development organised by the MSSRF.

Telecenters can catalyse a revolution only if there is a consensus of perspective and a commitment in action to move beyond business models: "Telecenters are much more than mere access points to the new technologies. They are places of encounter, dialogue, learning and exchange that lead to personal and social change," opines Klaus Stoll, advisor, ICT for Development, Development Gateway. It is the scope for change in this direction that all stake-holders need to nurture.

Reshmi Sarkar
The author contributed this piece to Dataquest and is the programme coordinator of IT for Change, a non-profit organization located in Bangalore. ITfC supports the info-communication needs of other NGOs and undertakes research on the social dimensions of ICTs.