A few years ago, in the tribal dominated, poverty-stricken Dhar district in the Central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, bureaucracy and lack in infrastructure was yet another obstacle for its hard tried inhabitants. Everyday several hundreds villagers had to travel to offices at the district headquarters from remote, faraway villages to obtain information, submit applications, meet officials etc. Not only did that cost them transportation money and a day's income, the villagers could furthermore not be certain if the person or information they were looking for would be available to them. Adding to these problems are widespread problems such as corruption, professional incompetence etc. Officials together with the villagers decided to address these problems through the use of information communication technology (ICT). Their ideas and discussions led to the birth of Gyandoot, a user financed information network that involves building communication infrastructure and putting up a community intranet. Today, the Gyandoot project is a prime example of a highly cost-efficient, economically self reliant, user financed community network. It has so far enabled more than half a million rural citizens, especially within e-governance and e-commerce.

History

During the fall of 1999, Dr Rajora, an officer in the Indian Administrative Services (IAS), Dhar district called for a meeting with leading officials to discuss the possibility of connecting the villages of the district to the Internet and find out what information and services the villagers had interest in and at which price. Opposition against the initiative was very strong as many thought the district was too underdeveloped, too illiterate and with too many infrastructural lacks. However the meeting was followed up by more meetings and ideas started to take form.

Dr Rajora started to visit the villages and had fruitful conversations with the gram panchayats (village councils). Through those conversations it was possible for Dr Rajora and the gram panchayats to identify roughly which kind of information was needed and how it could benefit the situation of the villagers. Gyandoot was conceived in a discussion with the secretary of Information Technology, Government of Madhya Pradesh on November 11th, 1999 and the pilot project launched on 29th of the same month. January 1st , 2000 it was commissioned, only 51 days after that the concept was conceived.

Beneficiaries

The beneficiaries of Gyandoot is the rural population of the poverty-stricken district of Dhar. Of the early Gyandoot users, 50% were in the productive age group of 20 - 60 years, 40 % worked in non-farm activities whereas 30 % had achieved a higher education. The network services were also used by the illiterate (4%) and those over 60 years (6%). Estimated 10 % of the users approached the kiosk purely out of curiosity and ended up using the network.

Of the early user group only 14 % belong to the weaker sections of the society. No women nor illiterate were represented in that layer of society as were the case for scheduled castes and scheduled tribes. Only 8 procent of early users were women, all with higher education and from high castes. The percentage of women increased to 13 after one year.

Business Model

The Gyandoot community believes that whatever enables people, they will find resources to pay for. The business philosophy is to involve the community in the process of planning the ICT intervention and let their opinions be heard prior to making any important decisions. Taking part in designing, selecting information, financing, executing and owning such systems will generate responsibility, high sustainability and keep cost down.

The Gyandoot samiti (community) bears the costs of bandwidth and frequency. The village panchayats pay for the equipment and space for the soochanalayas (kiosks), which are operated by soochaks, who is selected among the unemployed educated youth of the village. The soochak bears the cost of the computer/modem/Wireless in Local Loop (WLL) kit. Gyandoot samiti does not bear any cost of starting the soochanolayas, but it helps the soochak get a bank loan for starting the soochanalyas. The info-kiosks in the Gyandoot network are either leased out by the local rural body (village council) or privately owned as profit making business units.

Organisational Infrastructure

The Gyandoot network has not only enabled the district with ICT, it has also altered communication channels, decision-making, and the balance of power within the District Council through the reorganisation and redistribution of information. As a result of the network, the organisation and flow of information is now examined from a socio-technical point of view and is customised to fit the social network of all the organisations in the district. This have added to the transparency and efficiency of the organisation of the district but it has also meant a more coherent and transparent distribution of information to the end users. On the Gyandoot intranet, villagers are able to access information in their own language, which is both user-friendly and in a - for them - logical categorisation.

40 soochanalayas, have been set up in buildings close to the village centres, weekly fair markets and bussing points. Thousands of villagers, who attend the markets or pass through the bussing points every week to sell their products and conduct their errands, will be aware of the possibility of using the soochanalayas. A local youth has been trained to operate the sochanalaya as an entrepreneur.

The entrepreneurs are alone responsible for their own earnings. Some soochaks prefer to keep their services to a minimum while other do aggressive marketing and investigate user demand and satisfaction. Some are known to have hired assistants whose job it is to inform about the soochanalaya, do research on user demands and increase user satisfaction. As the users are very price sensitive it is of very high importance to offer information that is valuable to the beneficiary at the right price

The soochaks are viewed as the front men of Gyandoot, who provide an interface between the community and technology. The cutting edge is crucial for spreading the message of the new technology in the community. Most soochaks offer five different kinds of services in their soochanalayas: Gyandoot intranet, Internet surfing, offline activities, telephony and fax/copier/other services. The most popular services have proven to be the Gyandoot intranet and the offline activities.

Technical Infrastructure

The Dhar district is covered by fast Internet connections. The quality of the connection appeared to be a major determining factor for the Gyandoot network. Initially Dhar was mainly connected through cobber connections. However not all areas in Dhar are connected via cobber wires and it was necessary to look for further communication infrastructure solutions. Adding further cobber wires seemed like a both expensive and technically insufficient solution.

WLL technology was the obvious solution because it as opposed to Very Small Aperature Terminal (VSAT) and cobber wires is capable of supplying reliable connections which is easy to maintenance and at a low cost. WLL technology also has a lower establishment cost and demands less work to put up.

What are the lessons learned

The current state of the rural telecom infrastructure and connectivity makes it necessary to improve the telecom infrastructure and provide at separate intranet. Wireless in Local Loop has shown to be a solution that is both reliable, widely covering and with a relative low maintenance cost.

The introduction of Gyandoot intranet has generated a more transparent bureaucracy in the district of Dhar. The organisation has become more efficient as the workers feel a greater individual responsibility. Procedures which previous which could take weeks to proceed can now be carried out within a couple of days.

Training the local youth to operate the soochanalayas has proven to proven to be a sustainable way of operating the network and involving the end-users. Their soochaks provide inexpensive labour and their very presence in the soochanalayas makes it easier for the local population to accept it and use its services.
Furthermore many soochaks have done an excellent job informing about the service which are provided in the soochanalaya and how the beneficiaries can profit from it. Initiatives such as research in user satisfaction have also paid off in terms of the amount of user hours and the benefits of the services.

There are still some general problems which have to be approached before the beneficiaries will be able exploit more of the potential in the Internet. Though the Gyandoot intranet is designed in a very user friendly way, illiterate people will still find it difficult to benefit from its services. An electronic money system have not yet been introduced to the rural farmers. Beneficiaries who use the virtual market will still have to include a physical element - in terms of an office or a meeting - to do their business.

Sustainability and replicability

Community network could become viable only when beneficiaries are willing to pay for a product or service at a sustainable cost. Social investment in rural ICT networks could ensure that this new infrastructure is built in a financially responsible and scalable manner. The low cost technology options, provided by the Gyandoot samiti and the highly useful information on the intranet, made it possible for Gyandoot to break even in less than eighteen months. Gyandoot is today a zero cost model, which is viable and sustainable.

The governing institutions have benefited from Gyandoot in terms of transparency and efficiency. This has resulted in better services for the beneficiaries and in a better relation between government and user.

The soochaks have obviously created a healthy business for themselves. Those who have put in an extra effort to inform about their services and improve on their usability have been able to generate more profit than those who have not. The reputation of the soonalayas has neither gone unnoticed in the commercial world and more banks have come forward to provide loans to entrepreneurs, who are interested in starting an information kiosk. The information kiosks in Gyandoot crossed the barriers of the district boundary and became nodes of global communication. The business model in the Gyandoot network has been its inherent strength, which has helped draw attention of corporate and business houses towards community networks. The demand for information has led to the establishment of 19 privately owned soochanalayas in addition to the initial 21.

It is apt to say that the cluster approach embraced in Gyandoot community network to provide access to information technology through privately owned kiosks have become a replicable model for development nations.

Additional Information:
Rajora, Rajesh: Bridging the Digital Divide: Gyandoot - the model for community networks. Tata
McGraw-Hill Publishing Company Ltd. 2002.

Quotes
"I sold my cow in the digital market" Kalsingh, village of Mirjapur.
"I did not have to look for the revenue officer; I got land records from the kiosk" Parmanand Modi, owner Modi Petrol Pump