Village Information Centres

In October 2003, over 70 development activists, academics, policymakers, public sector officials, and private sector representatives gathered for a workshop entitled "Rural Knowledge Centres: Harnessing Local Knowledge via Interactive Media" held by the M S Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF) in Chennai, India. They considered the following questions:

1. What are the dynamics of village knowledge centres?
2. How can their scope and scale be amplified?
3. What partnerships can be formed with private sector?
4. How can policymakers help enhance the ICT4D agenda?

This document details the group's conclusions and offers recommendations to policy makers in India focussing on the use of information and communication technologies for development (ICT4D), as well as World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) policy makers. The WSIS is to be held December 10-12 2003 in Geneva.

The report is divided into two parts, the first of which presents 15 recommendations for policy makers in India. One recurring theme in these recommendations is inclusion. Meeting attendees articulate the goal of extending the benefits of ICT to all 600,000 villages in India by 2007 - and to as wide a range of people possible within those villages. Here are a few strategies proposed for attaining this goal:

• Partnership: A National Alliance for ICT for Poverty Eradication could be created to launch an Every Village a Knowledge Centre movement. This alliance might include the private sector, cooperatives, NGOs, research and development (R&D) institutions, women's associations, mass media, and government agencies. To cite another example, MSSRF's Virtual Academy for Food Security and Rural Prosperity could establish linkages with national challenge programmes like drought management, or with other organisations devoted to the knowledge and skill empowerment of the rural poor.
• Local content: "The usefulness of a computer-aided knowledge centre in villages will be directly proportional to the social, ecological and economic significance of the static and dynamic information being provided." Along those lines, attendees identified the need for increasing India's competitiveness in domestic software applications: rural families need information relating to weather, markets, health, and other day-to-day information needs. In each agro-ecological zone, they say, leading industries could adopt specific villages where they could provide locally relevant marketing and management information. Furthermore, attendees say, there is need for standardisation of local language websites and also names in Indian languages. Dissemination of information should be in the local language. Finally, in e-governance especially, "there is need for promoting participatory methodologies of content creation and knowledge management. The approach to rural women and men should be one of partnership and not patronage."
• Inclusion of women and attention to gender equity: Women should participate both as managers and users of ICT, attendees say. Both an environmental audit and gender audit, they urge, should be integrated in procedures for monitoring and evaluation. In addition, all community members, especially women, need to have a sense of ownership in the e-centres. Panchayati Raj institutions, in which one-third of the members are women, could provide the physical space for rural knowledge centres. To support these ends, the Government of India should liberalise policies for the operation of community and ham radio stations. This, attendees say, will help to confer the benefits of the knowledge age to every woman and man in a village: "Reaching the unreached and including the excluded will be possible only through an integrated ICT system".
• Skills development for financial empowerment: For self-help groups (SHGs) to become sustainable, attendees say, linkages with markets and research institutions and data management centres need to be established. In addition, small-scale industries and Khadi and village industries should receive particular attention in terms of upgrading of both technology and marketing skills. Finally, servicing facilities at the local level should be improved through capacity building measures, which might also provide additional employment opportunities for rural youth.

The report then presents recommendations for policy makers at WSIS. Again, inclusion of the marginalised and neediest communities in ICT4D is a key focus. Excerpts from this section of the report follow:

1. Infrastructure - Developing nations should pursue near-universal and affordable access strategies via low cost devices, open source or shareware software platforms, reasonable tariff levels, and level playing fields between telecom and datacom operators.
2. Content and Online Services - Access should be promoted to global content via the Net as well as generation and promotion of locally relevant content in local languages. This includes local language tools, digital libraries, e-learning, archives of local cultural resources, and needs assessment of rural communities. Government agencies need to play a bigger role as online content providers.
3. Grounding in Community - Online and offline forums should be promoted for communities of interest and communities of practice to exchange knowledge on harnessing and creating ICTs in the rural context.
4. Commerce - Online services (eg. e-government) should be designed with a mix of free and fee-based services so as to ensure commercial sustainability of rural ICT4D initiatives in the long run.
5. Progressive Attitudes towards Change - A culture of change, knowledge and lifelong learning should be encouraged by rural communities and the government agencies serving them, along with an openness to a wide spectrum of ideas in the knowledge age.
6. Human Resources - Capacities should be built up not just in adoption of ICTs in rural areas, but in creativity with regard to devising new applications, R&D focus areas, and harvesting of local knowledge. Self-help groups and volunteer initiatives should be actively harnessed in this regard.
7. Alliancing - Stakeholders in private, educational, government, donor and multilateral sectors must pro-actively form partnerships to ensure ethical and economic use of ICTs in rural communities.
8. Investment - Special financing should be set aside for ICT initiatives involving marginalised communities, the disabled, refugees, migrant populations and youth.
9. Regulatory Environment - The optimum regulatory environment for the proliferation of successful rural ICT4D initiatives includes removal of restrictive import duties on ICTs, promotion of wireless communication channels, opening up of community media like radio, free flow of content, and funds for near-universal access to infrastructure and services in rural areas.
10. Alignment with Millenium Development Goals - A clear focus on quantitative and qualitative metrics at the macro and micro level, for urban and rural communities should be incorporated at the level of traditional and new media initiatives.

Click here to access the full report (in Microsoft Word format).