|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Digital India
It is this city-rich-village-poor anomaly that the book aims to address. The author says that only ICT (Information Communication and Technology) can usher in synergy in more than six lakh Indian villages, so that a neo-networked world dawns on them. The book is not about droning suggestions, but is a racy presentation of implemented projects where dotcom and telecom have changed the lives of villagers. ICT encompasses 8Cs — connectivity, content, community, commerce, capacity, culture, cooperation and capital — and these, if implemented properly, can enable rural India host outsourced services from the urban businesses, thereby creating vast employment opportunities in villages. This, in turn, can alleviate poverty, eradicate illiteracy and restrain migration to cities. Corporate houses, too, are aware of the vast market potential which these villages hold. At present, 50 per cent of the demand for two-wheelers, especially mobikes, comes from rural areas. ICT can help automobile companies get in touch with their rural customers and improve their market share. The author discusses various successful projects, like ITC’s e-Chaupal, where the grassroots have been touched, and villagers have been able to market agrarian products and commodities sans middlemen and arthiyas. The book says that ICT, instead of being a job killer, is a job provider down the line. Quoting the ITU World telecom report, 1995, the author says: "For every $1,000 the world earns and spends, $59 is created directly or indirectly by the IT sector." Acknowledging the efforts of those who have made ICT reach the countryside, Dr Ghosh cites the examples of IIT professors who move in Kanpur with InfoThela, a gear-fitted handcart with a computer fitted on to it, so that even the poorest of the poor can fax, phone and get connected through the Net. He also cites the example of Kerala fishermen who move around with cellphones on boats to be in touch with each other and double their catch by the end of the day. The book exhaustively discusses the many uses of information technology and telecom in the fields of healthcare, agriculture, education, business, environment, governance and rural development. MS Swaminathan Research Foundation experiment is on improving crop yield and agro–product output, while n-Logue project is on making ICT affordable to the poor. One of the chapters is devoted to TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) recommendations and spectrum-related issues. Besides India, the book enlists global ICT-based success stories from Bangladesh, St Lucia, South Korea and Zambia. Uganda, which had a maternal health project based on radio technology, saw maternal mortality drop by 50 per cent, while in Nepal 4,430 teachers were trained through radio-based distance learning. The author notes that ICT initiatives can be useful only if information service centres provide multiple services and that best results are obtained when the initiative comes from local community to set up and maintain the ICT centres. The book has tried to address the core rather than the crust and herein lies the difference. Going by various listed successful rural projects, the acronym ICT could very well stand for India Catapults to Transformation.
|
THE urban façade is suave and
glitzy, while the rural heartland still is grappling with illiteracy, bereft of
modern amenities. India, strangely enough, remains a country of contrasts even
after 59 years of Independence. The only consolation is that big countries need
a bigger time span to let the fluid of change seep in.