Dear Arun The article attached by you below has some pointers to the real issue. On rural connectivity situation in India, the only thing happening is the Government inititaive on CSC. Most others, including large corporates and NGOs, stop at announcements and events or research papers, and do not even have intention to do something substantive. Even the intention to participate in several PPP (Public Private partnesrhip) programmes is for them to benefit from Government largesse only. So, who is interested in furtherance of cause of rural? The issue, that comes to mind is, why should the onus be always on the government for evertything? Balaji

Arun Mehta wrote:

Leading up to the World Summit on Free Information Infrastructures, wsfii.org, in Dharamsala, international participants may be interested in understanding the rural connectivity situation in India. The article below is right, when it says that mostly so far, all we have had is pilot projects, and lots of conferences. The government is indeed trying to set up 100,000 telecenters, but so far, two years after Mission 2007 was launched, there is little evidence of anything on the ground. At the London wsfii, I predicted, hoping to be proved wrong, that not much would have been achieved by the government bythe time of the 2006 wsfii. Actually, a lot less has been achieved, than I expected. As regards viability, why do we forget Metcalfe's law: the value of a network is proportional to the square of its size? In other words, viability will improve dramatically if we network all 600,000 instead of just one-sixth: if 6 villages share a telecenter, a lot of the business will be lost: all the communications between the 6! People surely communicate with neighboring villages a lot more than they do with people far away. The old and the disabled will not be able to use a telecenter, unless it is in their own village. The Dharamsala WSFII could not be happening at a more opportune time, to point out another way. No longer do we need large telcos to condescend to provide connectivity to villages. People can do it themselves, as the airjaldi network in Dharamsala and others around the world so ably demonstrate. Arun http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1648695.cms Rural connect: The cooperative way MOHAN MISHRA On the face of it, the growing Naxalite menace may be treated as a law and order problem. But the root cause of the issue, as articulated by Dr MS Swaminathan, the father of Green Revolution, is: "Ignore farmers, see Red spread". Naxalism, along with farmers' suicides, are only the visible symptoms of a deeper disease: the worsening plight of agriculture dependent population and widening urban-rural disparities. To see how stark these disparities are, just take a look at the teledensity figures. Despite the euphoria over recent telecom growth, rural teledensity remains a measly 2% compared to 31% in urban areas. The teledensity growth in the country has been led by higher urban volumes while large parts of rural India still remain unconnected. Rural development is an urgent need and towards that goal, connect-ing the villages is the first step. There has also been a growing interest from all quarters including numerous corporates, in solving the problems of rural India using Information and Communication Technology (ICT). While there have been a slew of initiatives and announcements, substantive results have been far and few. One reason is that many tend to treat the matter as primarily a technology issue. The solutions offered would, therefore, have been around innovation at the product level and range from the earlier Simputers to the recent $100 laptop. These are only some options to the challenge of connecting villages. Very few have attempted to put together an integrated solution to overcome the challenge of connecting rural India. Second, sustainability remains a major stumbling block in the game of rolling out rural kiosks. No one has still found a satisfactory answer to the issue. Says Dr MS Swaminathan, whose MSSRF village kiosks are an industry forerunner: "Economic sustainability may not happen in immediate terms, but it is more a question of social sustainability." Pankaj Baveja, founder of Project Param, and a pioneer in rural computing, endorses these views, but adds: "That does not mean that solutions to sustainability are not possible. Issues are not so much to do with choices in technology and connectivity. It is more to do with ownership-operations model and with the nuances in implementation." Third, with the trend of showcasing, only conferences and seminars have been proliferating while there hasn't been substantive work on field. For substantive achievements in connecting rural India, a way forward may be the cooperative way. A shining example of marriage of technology with cooperative linkages for real grassroots transformation is Amul. Its manufacturing facilities are a point of envy for even the western world, and so are its IT-enabled logistics. In the words of the Amul CEO BM Vyas: "Amul is not a food company. It is an IT company in the food business". That is true rural empowerment using ICT. Cooperatives have been deeply entwined with the lives of rural people, fostering economic activity with linkages extending right up to the grassroots level. They have been playing an important role in rural development. Not many may be aware that in the country there are over 5 lakh cooperative societies with membership exceeding 22 crore. But more important, the principles of equity along with economic growth are embodied in the basic co-operative structures, and hence the co-operative way is the natural way for rural development -- and for reducing disparities. Recognising the need for rural development, the government is doing its bit by launching a bold initiative of setting up 100,000 Common Service Centres by 2007. Pankaj Baveja, says: "The needs in the vil-lages are so high that this programme is bound to deliver positive re-sults. So, progress it must in its implementation." The task of rural development requires a concerted cooperative effort and participation from all quarters. Along with the government and the co-operative sector, private industry needs to come forward to contribute substantively towards rural transformation, taking things beyond limited CSR activities. The visionaries and captains in the industry need to look at rural India -- not as mere markets -- but as investments. And this they need to do in their enlightened self interest. That may just be the key to sustain-able rural transformation. _______________________________________________ wsfii-discuss mailing list wsfii-discuss <at> lists.okfn.org http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/wsfii-discuss