Abstract

• The project will be implemented in a remote tribal ( indigenous people ) & rural area of Central India
• About 70 % of the population in the project area is below the poverty line
• It will provide a facility of email , Internet & computers to the population of about 40 villages to access information, avail better e-governance facilities & send/receive messages
• About 0.5 million visits by poor villagers in tribal & rural areas will expose them to this facility over the project period
• It will be centered around a weekly market village named Sawalmedha which is visited by about 10000 villagers every Monday & another 3000 villagers on other days of the week.
• It will also the test the feasibility of using I.T in the context of Functional Communities & Weekly Market Centres
• The project will save substantial expenses which poor villagers currently make to access information by travelling and spending their time ( equivalent of daily wages )
• The project will take help of women in the villages ( called "Sathins" means friends ) who will act as the catalyst in this information exchange
• The beneficiaries of the project will include
  • Rural & tribal population
  • Poor of the villages
  • Villagers depending on agriculture & wage labour
  • Women
• The information exchange proposed is in the areas of - government information, prices, marketing & availability agri-forest produce, health & diseases, agriculture diseases, employment, grievances against government, availability of agri inputs, trading information & sending/receiving messages.
• The project will help identify new areas in which Internet & I.T can help the poor villagers in tribal & rural areas
• The info will be collected & disseminated by/through a) Project Staff , b) "Sathins", c)  SIRDI Staff d) Government Staff ( if possible )
• It will use three modes of transferring information from and to Sawalmedha viz.
  • V-Sat
  • Email Machines
  • CD-Roms ( Some of the E-mail machines & CD-Roms will be used offline )
• The information from the government system, markets, potential employers will be   conveyed to villagers in Sawalmedha through the announcement system
• The info will be exchanged/input through following formats/medium
  • E-mails
  • Electronic Files
  • Voice Messages
  • Digital Photographs
  • Scanned Images of documents
  • "Hybrid" Emails ( Printing emails & delivering messages through messengers )
  • Announcements on public address system
• The project will also test the technological feasibility of working with I.T products in  harsh rural environments such as:
  • Lack of reliable power supply
  • Lack of reliable phone lines
  • High temperature conditions
  • Non air-conditioned environments
  • High dust environments
• The project has a large replicability factor within India- about 2500

Project Area :

The project will be undertaken in India. The project is in a remote tribal belt of a province/state named Madhya Pradesh - in short  M.P in India. The name of the District is Betul which has as an administrative unit ( Tehsil ) named Bhainsdehi . Bhainsdehi tehsil of Betul district in Madhya Pradesh is on  the Maharashtra - Madhya Pradesh border.  It is a scheduled area, and has over 60% tribal population comprising the Gond and Korku tribes.  Women are 978 per thousand, literacy rate is 32.4%.  

Sawalmedha village is a Weekly Market Centre in Bhainsdehi Tehsil where about 10,000 people collect every Monday to purchase their essentials, sell their produce ( agri or forest ) , meet each other, decide marriages etc. Another 3000 to 5000 villagers visit the Weekly Market Centre during the rest of the week..  

District head quarter Betul has about 20 Government departments delivering variety of services i.e. Health, Education, Agriculture etc.

Project background and justification :

The project area has following features:

• About 10 thousand people from about 40 villages come to this weekly market every week on Monday
• About 500 people visit the village for their daily needs
• 70 % of  the population in the area is below poverty line
• They have no money to travel to markets & Government offices
• The District head quarter is about 60 km away
• Women never get an opportunity of traveling to Government offices or business/market centres beyond this area
• There is only one phone line connecting about 20 phones to an exchange 20 km from the village, but the availability is less than 10 %.
• The village does not get electricity for even few hours per day.
• There is no Internet availability & will not come for another 5 years or so

Problems Statement : 

Currently the tribal population in remote areas has

• little access to information  on commodity markets
• little access to information  on employment & labour markets
• little access to information  on government schemes
• poor grievance redressal mechanism at Government level
• spend a lot of time and money for getting information

The Technolgy Focus & Justification :  

The following development & networking problems are being addressed by this project :  

• To allow a community ( which has no Internet facility & will not get it for another 5 years or so ) access to Internet related services
• To make available to the people a technology if not at their door-step but at least at a place which they visit at least once in a week
• To check how Internet technologies will work in remote areas where there is no access to phone lines; technical support is missing; the power supply is non-existent & road network is poor
• To help get information  through Internet at the minimum cost to them by reducing their travel time ( which can be converted into wages equivalent ) & their travel cost
• To help get the Government delivery systems closer to them through Internet

Project objectives: The main technological objectives are :  

• To test whether Internet can be brought to remote communities
• To check whether weekly markets can provide the leverage for “door-step” availability of Internet
• To tackle the lack of infrastructure problems ( electricity, technology support, phone lines ) while using Internet technology
• To assess the impact of use of Internet on tribal community
• To understand the social & psychological factors which influence use or non-use of Internet technology
• To identify  areas where Internet  can be used both in collaboration with Government & otherwise
• To identify technologies ( e.g. public address system ) & systems complimentary to Internet  for greater effectiveness in information  dissemination & use
• To understand how the Government machinery responds to the use of this technology
• To assess the economic benefit to the community

  The main social objectives are :

• Marketing of rural produce
• E-governance by setting-up a remote complaint redressal mechanism
• Getting rural agri-forest information  ( prevalent prices )
• Information about availability of agri inputs & prices
• Information & Help during epidemics & seasonal diseases
• Health related consultation specially for women
• Information  & Help for agri-forest diseases (crops)
• Information  about availability of medicines for human & livestock
• Employment & wage market information
• Information  about Government schemes

Project beneficiaries:

• More than 0.5 million people over a period of 9 months will benefit from this project
• Project will benefit 10 thousand people from about 40 villages who come to this weekly market at Sawalmedha every week on Monday
• Project will also benefit about 500 people from about 40 villages who come to  Sawalmedha on other days
• The project will help the poor as they do not have enough money to travel to markets or Government offices
• It will benefit poor population as 70 % of  the population in the area is below poverty line
• The project will help women to remotely access markets, Government offices and health information

Project Repllicability:  

• There are on an average about 5-10 functional community based weekly market centres of this size ( smaller & larger also exist ) in each district
• There are more than 500 districts in India & most of them will have functional community based weekly market centres of this size
• Hence the replication factor of about 2500 to 5000 exists

Project sustainability:

Some of the ways it could be made sustainable are:

• Charge a fee for this service from the community
• Link with government departments & provide them the service at cost
• Allow the traders to use this at cost
• Get government grants
• Get donations  

These will be experimented at different phases of the project

Project methodology:  

The methodology is :  

• Three centres will be setup at a) Sawalmedha (functional community based weekly market centres) b) Betul ( District headquarter ) c) Bhainsdehi Tehsil HQ
• The community will be mobilised by “Sathins”( women information leaders ) through awareness programs
• The village centre at Sawalmedha will collect queries & complaints
• Besides using Internet information at Sawalmedha , the Distt & Tehsil Centres will get answers to queries & complaints spl. from Government
• The above answers to queries & complaints will be transferred to village centre for passing on to a) the individual b) to the community by public address system c) to the community by “Sathins” ( women informationleaders )

Project time-line & Activity  Schedule:

The duration of the project is 12 months.

Activity  Schedule

Project outputs:  

Social :  

• Benefit to rural poor
• Saving of time & money
• Quicker redressal of complaints
• Quicker satisfaction of information  needs
• Lesser harassment  

Technological :  

• To test whether Internet can be brought to remote communities
• To check whether weekly markets can provide the leverage for “door-step” availability of Internet
• To tackle the lack of infrastructure problems ( electricity, technology support, phone lines ) while using Internet technology
• To assess the impact of use of internet on tribal community
• To understand the social & psychological factors which influence use or non-use of internet technology
• To identify  areas where internet can be used
• To identify complimentary technologies ( e.g. public address system ) & systems to internet for more effectiveness use
• To understand how the Government machinery responds to the use of this technology
• To assess the economic benefit to the community

Project monitoring & impact assessment:

• The org will submit a report every quarter
• An expert will be invited to evaluate the project every 6 months
• Funding org can send their representative anytime
• The impact of the project will be assessed by picking 1-2 families in about 50 % of the villages (about 50 families) & evaluating the impact based on baseline survey & the final outcome.