Connecting People-Changing Lives in Asia
Chapter 2
Rural access:
demonstrating the value of ICTs
"The effectiveness, usefulness and even acceptance of the rural ICT projects depend on the extent to which communities participate in the various
aspects of the project and in
its management."
- Mahesh Uppal, Lessons Learned from PAN projects
on ICTs in Rural Areas
Connectivity and infrastructure
PAN's early days saw considerable effort invested in establishing ISPs in countries and regions where no such services were available and where none were likely to become available within a short time span. It was a challenge for PAN to determine how ISPs could become viable in countries where telecommunication costs were high, infrastructure was limited, and the market was relatively small. But creating the basic infrastructure was an essential prerequisite for any country hoping to join the information economy or to exploit the potential for community development through effective ICT use. PAN supported the former state enterprise Datacom in Mongolia to become the country's first ISP by installing a low-cost Internet dial-up system in 1994. PAN continued similar work in the mid to late 1990s helping countries like Laos, Viet Nam, Bhutan, and Cambodia establish ISPs and create platforms for developing local content. These projects included long-term sustainability strategies based on a sound business approach.
Why is rural access important?
It seems to be accepted wisdom that Asian nations and their major cities must be connected to the Internet and other ICTs. But it is sometimes difficult to understand why ICTs are also important for people living in rural areas. Rural dwellers are among the world's poorest people (IFAD 2001), with less access to health services, education, and clean drinking water than anyone else. Three out of four are undernourished.
For over 10 years, PAN has investigated how poor, and even illiterate people, can benefit from ICTs. The results show that, in fact, ICTs can dramatically improve their lives. A typical rural ICT project uses technologies, such as computers, networking, and the Internet to deliver content on such topics as livelihoods, government programs, agriculture, health, and education. The ICTs may also deliver services, such as telephony or access to
e-governance to a rural community. Content demands vary from community to community
and often include information about agriculture (weather reports, appropriate crop rotation), education (lesson plans, teacher resources,
student resources), health, and government development plans and services.
Unfortunately, connectivity in most rural areas in Asia is non-existent or substandard compared with urban areas. Also, the often low market potential for rural communications, combined with the substantial added cost of bringing connectivity to rural areas, has forced many telecom providers to forgo their plans to expand to these areas - the return on their investment is just not high enough.
Understanding that rural communities would never have individual access as urban residents often have, PAN has fostered use of ICTs in arrangements where rural communities share access through a common, public space. The most typical model is a community telecentre, a number of which have sprung up in rural areas with PAN's assistance. For a community telecentre to be successful, local grassroots organizations and institutions must be involved and needs assessments must be conducted within the local context.
To assess the continuing social and economic benefits of ICT for rural communities, for a decade, PAN has successfully supported
- A concentration of ICT-enabling projects such as telecentres at the community-level
- A core of networked projects focusing on distance education, small- and medium-sized enterprises, and health care that will contribute to alleviating poverty
- A cluster of regional projects that network ICT innovators in the region at both institutional and individual levels.
In this chapter, we examine PAN's contribution to the empowerment of rural people in Mongolia, Bhutan, India, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, and Pakistan by increasing their access to ICTs.
The pilot project
Just over 10 years ago, Mongolia - a country of
2.4 million - was isolated from the rest of the world, its infrastructure deteriorating or non-existent. It faced the challenge of making a transition from a centrally planned economy to a free market system after the collapse of the former Soviet Union. More than two-thirds of its population lived in remote and rural areas.
Today, Mongolia is a regional leader in
Internet-based methods of development.
About 30,000 individuals - ranging from the
prime minister to teachers and teenagers -
are dedicated Internet users.
How did it happen? In 1995, IDRC provided technical and financial support to Datacom, a local former state-run software and networking company, in its efforts to install a low-cost dial-up system to connect to the Internet. This was an opportunity for PAN to experiment with methods, approaches, and protocols that might create a model for other developing countries. Within 2 years, a dedicated satellite connection was established and a Mongolian website was created; however, users were mainly urban.
In 1998, a second project to examine the feasibility of wireless technologies and extend Internet access to all 22 provinces began. This project was implemented in collaboration with the Government of Mongolia, which had approved a national plan to provide all government offices and educational and research facilities with Internet access. This indicated an effort to better serve the majority of its citizens, who live in rural areas. Two central network stations and nine remote stations were established in the capital city of Ulaanbaatar, and one central station and two remote stations in the provincial city of Erdenet.
Other projects followed, such as one on
Internet-based distanced education to help the government achieve its mission of delivering education to 75% of its population by 2010. In the area of health service delivery, a project aimed to make health care more accessible by testing distance medical diagnosis for rural areas and distance learning for rural physicians.
One of the keys to Mongolia's success is training
of informal community leaders - such as
well-respected teachers and doctors - to head
the rural centres and promote the Internet.
The next challenge is local content. Although 90% of Mongolians are literate, few rural people understand English. PAN is working with local nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to develop and fund content that rural people will be willing
to pay for - such as the price of farm equipment
or local news.
In recognition of PAN's pioneering work with Mongolian researchers, IDRC was presented the prestigious Friendship Medal from the President of Mongolia, Natsagiin Bagabandi in October 2004.
Paving the way for a knowledge revolution in the villages
To address the digital divide in India, PAN began a partnership with the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF) in 1997. The goal was to examine the impact of ICTs in fostering sustainable agriculture and rural development. Using a makeshift modem-and-radio set-up with a solar power back-up, five village knowledge centres (VKCs) were established in the rural areas of Pondicherry, where one out of five people lives below the poverty line. The VKCs are essentially community telecentres, but combined with the proper physical and human infrastructure, they become the main channel for obtaining relevant and timely information. They provide people in rural areas with appropriate knowledge about livelihood, health and social well-being, and economic opportunities. The main impetus for developing the VKCs was to research whether ICT could be a beneficial tool for social and economic development of rural communities. MSSRF succeeded in demonstrating these benefits, particularly due to the high level of community involvement (in the community where each VKC is located, it must provide volunteer staff and guarantee equal
access to all, irrespective of their social and economic situation).
In 5 short years, more than 50 000 information-shop users in a dozen communities in Pondicherry have gained access to a new wireless Internet connection. The demand for local, relevant information was relentless. People wanted to know more about government financial schemes for the poor, health care, nutrition, sanitation, employment, food prices, education, and the costs and availability of agricultural inputs such as seeds, fertilizer, and pesticides. Women, in particular, were interested in the fluctuating price of grain as female agricultural workers are partly paid in grain.
As one writer (Shore 2003) explains,
Fishermen, dairy farmers, and coconut sellers also keep a watch on product prices. Teachers prepare lessons and students do homework. Panchayats, or local councils, do their accounting and correspondence, and gain access to grants for infrastructure such as roads, bus stations, streetlights, and drains. State and federal government representatives put together their reports and use voice lines to consult with superiors about local queries. Job seekers find employment. Older people share traditional medical lore. Many morning users come to centres to read newspapers. Everybody relies on weather reports.
With additional funding from the Canadian International Development Agency, a second phase of the project began in 2001. The goal was to enhance connectivity and assess the potential sustainability of the ICTs. Some VKCs were upgraded to test new technologies with broader bandwidth enabling such new applications as video conferencing. Other VKCs were also established, providing relevant information in the local language, Tamil. As some villagers are illiterate, information such as weather reports was downloaded as RealAudio files and played over speakers in front
of the VKCs.
Volunteers have built their own databases containing details of approximately 130 government programs for low income rural families; a directory of insurance plans for both crops and families; pest management plans for rice and sugarcane; a directory of local hospitals, medical practitioners, and their specialties; a regional timetable for buses and trains; and a directory of local veterinarians, cattle, and animal husbandry programs. An evaluation of the experience of the MSSRF in setting up VKCs describes 28 specific instances
of how rural people have benefited from ICTs.
The MSSRF has made it a priority to collaborate with existing agencies and scientific organizations and has more than 25 partners. One of these, the District Rural Development Agency, has begun to use the VKCs to disseminate information and provide loans for micro-enterprises. This application demonstrates the usefulness of ICTs in facilitating initiatives for building capacity at the village level.
Meeting multiple needs
In its IT action agenda, the Government of the Philippines committed to ensuring that every business, government agency, school, and home would have access to information technology by the end of the 21st century. With 70% of its 70 million people living in rural areas where telecommunications capacity is limited, community access rather than individual access is the preferred approach.
PAN supported a 5-year pilot project in the Philippines to establish four multipurpose community telecentres (MCTs) on the island of Mindanao and bring ICT to the rural villages. MCTs contain many resources, including a public telephone office, a reading centre or library, information about the barangay (the village-level government), Internet access to information about agriculture, education, health, and livelihoods, and an Internet café. The goal of the project went beyond ensuring connectivity to also spur content development at all levels and create an environment for two-way communication and interaction.
A key component was engaging villagers in the content development process to ensure that their concerns and needs were met. Another important component was the staffing of the MCTs by at least 10 volunteers, two a day. The volunteers - high school graduates or individuals with college or university studies - had no previous exposure to computing or the Internet. They were trained not only in ICT skills but also in information literacy and MCT management.
The community meetings revealed a need for information about general health, distance
learning for unemployed youth, weather advisories, and pest control management, among other topics. One community decided to work on an application that would directly address malnutrition. Village health workers and daycare centre teachers participated in the development of this digital content and its applications, making use of indigenous knowledge as well as government or civil society information and services that could be delivered to the rural community.
Significant impacts from the MCT project included building the capacity of DOST (Department of Science and Technology) staff and local people and creating awareness among Philippine government units of the value of rural ICT initiatives. In addition, the MCTs became entry points for other rural development projects in the barangays.
In its final project report, the research team argued that information resources cannot be delivered the same way to all locations, but have to be adapted to the community: "In this context, what is made available in the MCT has to be translated, repackaged and disseminated by the community,
in their language, to their membership through traditional and other means like radio
Internet browsing."
This PAN-supported project was presented to the Philippines Cabinet as a model for designing a large-scale government project aiming at connecting thousands of rural communities.
References
IFAD (International Fund for Agricultural Development). 2001. Rural poverty report 2001:
the challenge of ending rural poverty. IFAD/Oxford University Press, New York, NY, USA.
Shore, K.J. 2003. Work in progress - rural Pondicherry's wireless Internet. IDRC Reports, 17 Nov.
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Accessing information at the local VKC in rural Pondicherry
