Professional Documents
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India is known as an IT powerhouse but still has the largest number of poor
people in any country in the world2. India’s experience with policies for digital
inclusion may thus offer some useful lessons for other developing countries.
This policy brief looks at a range of initiatives in India including the ambitious
Common Service Centres (CSCs) scheme of the National e-Governance
Plan (NeGP). It looks at the challenges faced by the scheme in ensuring the
delivery of development services in a socially inclusive manner using this
infrastructure.
education (in English) and for services like public sector effort guided and supported by
printing and digital photography with little the highest policy levels.
use of the Internet by the community.
The union government of India announced
The first Indian rural Internet Service the NeGP12 in 2005-06. It is being
Provider (ISP), N-logue, soon realised that implemented by the IT Ministry, which
in order to be relevant, Internet connectivity has infrastructural responsibilities. A key
had to be bundled with services that rural objective of this plan is to set up a network
people needed. Until 2007, N-logue claimed of CSCs in rural India. Under the CSC
to run thousands of telecentres in many scheme, 100,000 ICT-enabled centres are
states of India, providing a number of being rolled out: one for every six villages,
digital services under its ‘Chirag’ brand8. covering all villages in India. This is being
However, the initiative seems to have more done in sync with extensive back end re-
or less folded up, after some unsuccessful engineering to develop digitally deliverable
attempts at partnerships with governments, governance services in various government
the latest with the government of the state departments. While the IT department
of Gujarat9. of the central government retains the
overall project management role, state
Another private sector-led initiative, governments will designate a state level
Drishtee, which began by working closely body to coordinate the CSC scheme13. The
with many governments to provide connectivity up to the block level14 is to be
e-governance services, now seems to have provided by NeGP-funded State-Wide Area
moved completely into the domain of private Networks (SWAN). Last mile connectivity
services10. This is despite the fact that many up to the CSCs is being provided using funds
studies have indicated that e-governance from the recently launched National Rural
services are the ones most in demand in Broadband Plan15.
rural areas. Drishtee’s present approach
seems to focus on higher income groups in In terms of on-the-ground
villages and does not appear to be engaging implementation, however, the CSC
with socially and economically backward scheme has ignored the evidence from
communities11. earlier initiatives delivering e-governance
and other services which are most
Common Service Centres relevant to disadvantaged sections. The
(CSCs) – A service delivery CSC scheme has chosen private sector
infrastructure leadership and does not build any clear
structural relationship with the district16
The current policy framework of the administration and local self-governance
Government of India for providing ICTs bodies. Private companies willing to
to disadvantaged sections builds on the implement 500-1,000 CSCs each are
three key policy lessons learnt from the chosen as Service Center Agencies (SCAs)
pre-2005 experience with telecentre through open reverse bidding17. SCAs
initiatives in India: (1) people need real select village level entrepreneurs and set
and relevant services rather than ICTs per up CSCs. The project documents clearly
se, (2) governance services are among the affirm the central role of the SCA: ‘The
key needs of disadvantaged groups, and SCA would be the prime driver of the
(3) building the infrastructure required for CSC scheme and the owner of the CSC
delivering such services requires a focused business’18.
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IT for Change Policy Brief, Community telecentres in India
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for Change
IT for ChangePolicy
Case Study, Mahiti Mitra
Brief, Community kiosks in India
telecentres
The rollout of CSCs has already run into entrepreneurs with business acumen for
major difficulties with state governments, managing CSCs (e.g. in West Bengal).
which have the primary responsibility for
development services. The fact that these The community end – Towards a
difficulties have been most pronounced in two-way flow
states like Kerala and Gujarat, which have Development policies and programmes
the greatest experience with government aim not only at delivering a set of services,
involvement in rural telecentre activities, but also at enabling communities towards
is a significant indicator of the systemic greater empowerment, through building
issues with the CSC programme. Gujarat their capabilities (to use Amartya Sen’s
had initially planned to merge its own capability approach). Correspondingly, the
rural telecentre programme, eGram, into potential of ICTs is also not only as a service
the CSC scheme but has now decided delivery platform, but also as a means for
against it, because of incompatibilities the empowerment of communities towards
between the two programmes, mainly self-determined goals. Since CSCs are
related to the ability to meet the full range designed to focus on the fee-based delivery
of requirements of rural governance. of specific services, they ignore the potential
The Kerala government is having similar of communities to explore the empowering
misgivings and is undecided about merging function/dimension of ICTs.
its successful Akshaya programme with
the CSC scheme. Both state governments Four pilot initiatives supported by the
seem to be finding it difficult to reconcile Government of India and the United Nations
the requirements of core governance Development Programme (UNDP)’s ICTD
and community-related activities with a project22 provide some important directions
corporate-led delivery model21. for policy frameworks seeking to integrate
community participation and empowerment
Significant modifications to the CSC scheme into publicly funded telecentre programmes.
through the implementation process are: These are projects that have been piloted
within relatively large scale established
- State rural development and village self-
development initiatives:
governance departments as the lead
department for CSC rollout, instead of - The Mahiti Mitra initiative (Gujarat) has
IT departments as recommended in the built its telecentre model around the
NeGP (e.g. in West Bengal and Gujarat); need to coordinate large amounts of
information and distributed activity in
- A structured relationship between a community-centred manner during
the village CSC and the village self- the reconstruction period following a
governance bodies, even though no such natural disaster. Telecentres provide
relation is proposed in the NeGP. The government information and are used for
CSCs are supposed to be accountable local community-generated development
only to the private companies, the SCAs information systems, which are employed
(e.g. in Kerala and Gujarat); and, for micro-planning.
- A role for local community-based - Mahiti Manthana23 is a project that uses
organisations (e.g. women’s Self Help community radio, community video and
Groups – SHGs) in managing CSCs even community telecentres to strengthen the
though the NeGP specifies only viable Government of India’s Mahila Samakhya
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IT for Change Policy Brief, Community telecentres in India
programme. This programme works with ICT infrastructure across the country.
disadvantaged rural women by organising Such basic ICT infrastructure should be
them into collectives around knowledge provided as a public good for governance
seeking and community action. The Mahiti and community activities, and at a
Manthana project experiments with a minimal cost for other activities, in rural
model of collective ownership of ICT and other under-served areas.
facilities by marginalised, often illiterate,
2. A basic national template for an ICT-
women, and, in the process, builds their
based delivery system for development
capabilities to claim their citizenship
and governance services should
entitlements.
be developed in consultation with
- The E-Krishi initiative of the government departments and agencies directly
of Kerala shows how development involved with social development
agencies and local governance bodies can activities. This should preferably take
partner with community-based groups place under the leadership of the
like SHGs and farmers’ clubs to develop departments for rural development and
ICT-enabled local agriculture services self-governance, with enough flexibility
that are empowering to participants for states to use contextual alternatives.
and not driven by narrow commercial
interests of corporate players. 3. At the state level, ICT departments
should restrict themselves to ICT
- The DRISTI initiative of the West Bengal infrastructural and capacity building
department of rural development and issues. Plans and activities related to
self-governance uses ICTs to strengthen developing rural points-of-presence
village self-governance bodies in terms and coordinating the development and
of both service delivery and enhanced delivery of digital services should be led
participation by the community. by rural development and self-governance
departments.
Consolidating state and
community level experiences 4. The district administration is still the
into a policy framework most important implementational level
of the governance system in India, and
It is important that digital inclusion policies its role in the services delivery system
are situated within the overall development should be clearly defined.
policy frameworks, and are not just seen
as a part of telecommunication or other 5. Private companies have a role in
infrastructural policies. This approach developing commercial digital services
requires an appropriate institutional that can be delivered using CSCs. The
framework, and a programmatic design state and district level agencies in charge
that is oriented towards community of the programme should develop close
empowerment. Some specific elements of partnerships with all possible private
such a comprehensive policy framework are sector players for this purpose.
suggested below:
6. Corporate players should not be allowed
1. The central government’s telecom and to play the all-important and central SCA
IT department should focus on providing role in implementing CSCs. A rural ICT-
basic connectivity and other necessary based services delivery infrastructure
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for Change
IT for ChangePolicy
Case Study, Mahiti Mitra
Brief, Community kiosks in India
telecentres
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IT for Change Policy Brief, Community telecentres in India
Endnotes Society, 13 (2), pp. 233-258. Also see the above referred
document: Gurumurthy A., Swamy M., Nuggehalli R.,
1 UNDP (2008), Human Development Report.
Vaidyanathan V. (2008), Locating gender in ICTD projects:
2 Originally written for a policy toolkit brought out by the five cases from India, Bangalore: IT for Change.
Association for Progressive Communication (APC).
12 http://india.gov.in/govt/national_egov_plan.php.
3 Built from collecting a fixed sum from telecommunication
13 Ibid.
revenues, which were rising fast due to very rapid mobile
phone expansion. 14 The block level is the administrative unit for a cluster of
villages.
4 The number of landline telephones in use for every 100
individuals living within an area. 15 h t t p : / / w w w. c s c - i n d i a . o r g / A b o u t C S C P r o j e c t /
Connectivity/tabid/583/Default.
5 Telecommunication Regulatory Authority of India (2009),
aspx?PageContentMode=1
An approach to rural telephony. Retrieved from http://
www.trai.gov.in/recommendationpre.asp?id=113, 1st 16 The district is the node of local governance at the state
December 2010. level in the Indian administrative system.
6 Author’s direct observations from rural areas of Punjab, 17 Whoever bids for lowest subsidy per CSC gets selected.
one of the most prosperous states in India. Also read
18 http://dit.mp.gov.in/proj.htm.
an analysis of rural Internet connectivity figures in C.P.
Chandrasekhar C.P. (2008), ‘Aspects of India’s engineered 19 Pro-Poor Access to ICTs - Exploring Appropriate
traverse to an information society’, in Gurumurthy A., Ownership Models for ICTD initiatives, IT for Change.
Singh P.J., Swamy M. (eds), Political economy of the Retrieved from www.ITforChange.net/component/
information society. Information Society for the South content/133.html?task=view, 1st December 2010.
Series, Volume 1. Bangalore: IT for Change. Retrieved
20 Dossani R. (2005), Enabling ICT for rural India. Retrieved
from www.itforchange.net/media/ISSS/PolEco_of_IS_
from http://iis-db.stanford.edu/pubs/20972/Dossani_
Chapter3-Chandrasekhar.pdf, 1st December 2010.
Rural_ICT_2005.pdf, 1st December 2010.
7 h t t p : / / w w w. c s c - i n d i a . o r g / A b o u t C S C P r o j e c t /
21 Author’s conversations with senior government officials
ProjectComponents/Connectivity/tabid/174/Default.aspx
of the two states over January and March 2009.
8 See http://www.financialexpress.com/news/
22 See brief details about these initiatives in the 2006 Annual
nlogue-rolls-out-telephonycumnet-services-in-rural-
report of the National Institute for Smart Government,
maharashtra/71715/ and http://www.i4donline.net/
which is the project management agency for the ICTD
news/news-details.asp?newsid=7487.
Project, at http://www.nisg.org/docs/75_ICTD%20
9 See http://www.i4donline.net/news/news-details. Annual%20Report%202006.pdf.
asp?newsid=7487 for announcement of the partnership.
23 Disclosure statement: The project is run by an NGO with
This partnership is not on now, and the government of
which the author is working.
Gujarat has since gone for its own telecentre initiative.
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IT for Change Policy Brief, Community telecentres in India