Perhaps nowhere else in the world is the level of energy equal to that of India for innovating information technology to enable development. Government organizations, non-government organizations, private enterprises, industry, and a number of on-the-ground social entrepreneurs from among India's rural poor have been creating new models for computing. The People and Practices Research team, together with Intel product groups, is actively involved in delivering new models of computing for India.
Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) as Income Generators
Companies that want to succeed in India must give up the hope of large margins and focus instead on volume - lower per capita incomes multiplied over a very large population. Companies selling such personal care items as soap or shampoo have learned that sell small, inexpensive sachets of products will enable a much broader base of consumers to access their products.
Similarly, access to technology is almost never "personal" in most of India. Rather, firms need to think about shared, or mediated ownership, whereby access to technology is rented for a short time, rather than owned. In projects such as the N-logue or
Drishtee, firms have been creating the sustainable spread of technology by enabling village entrepreneurs to acquire technology and charge modest fees for its use. Villagers benefit in numerous ways from having access to the technology, but do not have to produce the large amounts of capital that would be necessary for personal ownership.
But there is more to the story than just "fee for use". These kiosks are important examples of how firms make smart decisions about local resources, including technology expertise. Kiosk owner / operators do most of the computer operation on behalf of individual "users" accessing their services. Owner / operators thus play a kind of translation role for their fellow villagers, extending the services to a greater number of people. This has been key to the success of such organizations as N-logue and
Drishtee. Such kiosks feature multiple applications and services, including email and chat, and offer villagers access to a wide variety of government services including caste certificates, school examination results, driver's licenses, government pensions, and marriage schemes, to name a few.
Some kiosks also provide people with multi-media access to other institutions, such as hospitals. One kiosk used a PC mounted camera to take photos of villagers' eye ailments to submit to a local eye clinic for triage. In another example, villagers sent pictures of infected vegetables to the agricultural extension service and were told a response would come via email the following day. These kiosks provide tremendous value to villagers, saving them considerable amounts of time they would otherwise have to spend away from their fields or employment, which would result in lost wages-an unacceptable alternative for people struggling to survive on a subsistence income.
Perhaps the most famous of the "village kiosk" experiments in India is run by the India Tobacco Company (ITC).* This firm's
e-Choupal experiment has successfully reduced the costs of business for ITC and increased revenues for its suppliers-farmers throughout rural India-by helping them connect with one another more efficiently.
ITC provided computers to selected farmers who have the aptitude and responsibility for serving as the point of contact for other farmers in their area. Other farmers come to these points of contact to sell their produce to ITC, and to buy crop insurance, tools, seeds or fertilizer. By eliminating many middlemen, ITC has benefited itself and the farmers-not just the kiosk operators, who command a fee for their services, but all farmers who participate in the system.
Applying Technology to Streamline Economic Development Projects
A second key use of technology in India is to streamline operations of several economic development projects. For instance, an organization called SKS*, based in the state of Andhra Pradesh, has begun using technology to bring efficiency to the processes involved in administering microloans to women in a number of villages in that state.
Originally, when women borrowers would make a weekly payment on their loans, three written records had to be created: one for a receipt to the payer, one as a record in the mobile log, and one for transcribing from the mobile log to the permanent ledger of accounts. Now the transaction is carried out with a Palm Pilot equipped with a smart card reader. The women of the village keep smart cards on which their balance and account history are stored-a mobile passbook of sorts. The Palm Pilot provides an automatic reading of the smart cards and is the means by which the payments are recorded. Back at the regional office, the day's receipts are downloaded to a PC that houses a database of all accounts. In this way, the accuracy and timeliness of the loan programs have improved, and loan officers have developed new technology skills in the process.
