Background

Kerala, as a state, has performed exceptionally well in the past in its National Literacy Mission. It has achieved 94.6 percent literacy (the highest in any Indian state), the highest density of science and technology personnel, 100 percent digital telephone exchanges and the highest telephone density. The people of Kerala are known for their fast learning skills.

The aim of this project was to familiarize one person from every family (6.4 million families) in the state with the basic use of computers, empower them to access relevant e-content in the regional language and to provide services such as e-learning, e-transaction, capacity building programmes, e-government services. It was started as a joint venture between local bodies (gram panchayats in rural areas and municipalities in urban areas) and private entrepreneurs to bridge the digital divide by providing community access to computers and the Internet.

In November 2002, Dr A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, the President of India, launched the project in Trivandrum whereas the Chief Minister of Kerala started Akshaya centres in Thiruvananthpuram and Malappuram in May 2003.

Objectives and Goals

The project has been launched with the following objectives:

• To provide basic functional skills (e-literacy) to every family in the state.
• To ensure universal access to various Information and Communication tools as well as technologies.
• To provide relevant content to the local population in the native language.
• To provide community access centres, which can eventually be developed as centres to provide integrated e-governance services.

Planning

The District Panchayat, Malappuram, presented a proposal in February 2002 to train interested rural youths in ICTs, at a budgeted cost Rs 6 million. A survey conducted in the district resulted in a list of 26,000 trained IT personnel and 451 private IT training institutes (mostly concentrated in urban areas).

The project was launched as a pilot in Malappuram district. The district has an area of 3,372 sq km and a population of 3.7 million (of which more than 70 percent are Muslims). Six hundred thousand families in the district live in 102 panchayats and five municipalities. The district is administratively divided in to 137 villages, 14 blocks and six talukas. The district has a satisfactory penetration of landline and mobile phones (250,000 phones). It also has 3,500 voluntary organizations.

The Town and Country Planning Department was entrusted with the task of identifying geographical locations. It identified 801 locations for Community Technology Centres (CTCs), which were located on main/link roads, with telephone connections and available electricity power. The District Panchayat finally selected 634 sites after the approval of Gram Panchayats. Of these, 565 CTCs have already been set up. The project proposes to establish 9,000 CTCs throughout the state, so that there is one CTC within a distance of 2 km of every household. Three critical factors in the project are: the number of centres, the number of users and the mass of content. The three major components are: access, skill sets and content. The project had initially planned for one CTC among every 1,000 families. However, currently the plan is to have one CTC among every 1,500 families.

Services Provided

Various services are provided from networked and stand-alone computers. An e-literacy campaign that imparts IT related training at the CTCs has been started. These centres also provide services such as desktop publishing (digital albums, identity cards, report cards, etc) and conduct advanced courses on ICT related subjects. Of the 565, only 83 CTCs have Internet connectivity. They provide services such as web browsing, e-mail, Internet telephony, web-based consultancy, etc. Each CTC has 10 computers (smaller and remote centres have six or eight computers), two printers, one web cam, one scanner and one CD writer. These centres are planning to provide e-government, e-education and e-health services in the future.

Target Group and Intended Beneficiaries

The target group is the 600,000 families residing in the Mallapuram district. One member from each family (selected by the family), preferably in the age group 15-65 years, is the intended beneficiary of the project. In the extended phase, it is envisaged that 6.4 million houses will be covered in the state.
 
Institutional Arrangements

All CTCs have been established using the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) model. Private entrepreneurs have set up CTCs in their own (or rented) buildings and have invested money on computers, equipments and furniture. Each centre has 10 computers. The total cost of the computers is Rs 383,000. Of this, Rs 200,000 is made available by commercial or cooperative or rural banks without secured collateral. The government provides Rs 120 per person as contribution towards e-literacy, training material and content in the local language. The learner pays Rs 20 to the CTC owner towards completing the course.

The ward implementation committees of panchayats and municipalities monitor the functioning of the CTCs. The President of the District Panchayat heads the district-level implementation committee. At the state level, the Secretary, Information Technology, heads the IT mission and coordinates work of six crucial departments. The state-level executive committee is headed by the Chief Minister and is represented by ministers and secretaries of relevant departments. The District Coordinator of Akshaya has a District Programme Officer (for the campaign) and an Assistant Mission Coordinator (for implementation). About 4,500 women from Kudumbashree, a movement of 60,200 women in the state, have been engaged in mobilizing for the e-literacy campaign, particularly in Mallapuram district . There are 13 block-level coordinators who are appointed on contract and 100 panchayat-level coordinators, who execute and monitor the project.

Technologies

Each CTC is equipped with personal computers, each having a LAN card, application software, a modem, a web camera, a printer, a scanner, a CD writer, a UPS, a cable networking component and a telephone connection. Connectivity will be provided through leased lines or through cables in the near future. Around 15 percent CTCs have some form of Internet connectivity. Five companies were short-listed (Escotel, Satyam, Asianet, Tulip and Aksh) for providing uninterrupted connectivity at 64 kbps/ 2 Mbps to all CTCs in the district on a monthly user-charge agreement. This work was awarded to Tulip, and the entire network has now become wireless.

Primary Access Points

CTCs provide primary access points. One CTC has been started for about 1,000 families and situated, in most of the cases, within a reach of 2 km from every household. On average, each centre provides e-literacy training to 1,000 members in the community in the span of 100 days. For each person trained in the basic course, the owner of the CTC gets Rs 80 from the Gram Panchayat, Rs 20 from the Janpad Panchayat, Rs 20 from the District Panchayat and Rs 20 from the member itself. The state government also pays Rs 10 per person as incentive for those trainees who complete their e-literacy targets in the specified time frame.

Capacity Building

The project has taken up an unparalleled challenge for providing e-literacy at an unprecendented scale. Each entrepreneur/owner of the 565 CTCs established so far has undergone two-day training at Thiruvananthpuram. Each member of the family is given 15 hours of computer training at the closest CTC from the household, which consists of 10 lessons prepared in the local language.

Constraints and Implementation Challenges

The project has faced numerous constraints and implementation challenges. One of the first questions asked was why not invest more in health and education instead of investing in ICTs. The conservative Muslim community also feared the possible misuse of computers for watching pornography on the Internet. These doubts were addressed by the project administration by reasoning and educating the users. There was a strong resistance from commercial, cooperative and rural banks to provide term-loans of Rs 200,000 without collateral. Local bodies like Gram/Block/District Panchayats and municipalities initially did not want to provide Rs 120 per person per family as a contribution towards e-literacy efforts from their own resources. Eventually, the state government had to provide budgetary allocations for these bodies.

The district has poor Internet connectivity though the telephone density is higher than the national average. This too was a constraint to the successful implementation of the project. Another major constraint was the unavailability of Malayalam content. The absence of Malayalam sites on the Web prevents the local population from deriving maximum benefits from the Internet.

Project Outcomes

The project has shown that the Public-Private Partnership model can be effectively mobilized to launch this type of project, helping to bridge the digital divide. Of the total cost of Rs 260 million, Rs 180 million has been invested by private entrepreneurs in establishing the CTCs. Local bodies contributed Rs 60 million towards the e-literacy programme. The state government has to spend only Rs 20 million for promotion and content development efforts. Around 40 percent of the 0.6 million families were made e-literate in the Malappuram district. The community has largely accepted CTCs as centres for communication and e-literacy.

Key Lessons Learnt

Apart from the fact that Akshaya has introduced a successful and effective PPP model for establishing CTCs, it was found that there is adequate skilled manpower available for operating computers in rural areas. The project also emphasized the fact that e-literacy is a precursor in a developing e-community. The project also shows that the People’s Action Plan is more important than the Technology Action Plan.

Sustainability

It is too early to comment on the sustainability of the project, as it is still in its nascent stage of implementation. The promise of one CTC per 1,000 families (5,000 population) may not be realistic. The long-term sustainability of the project would only be ensured once the CTCs are effectively networked with the provision of sufficient bandwidth.

Replication and Scaling Up

This project has been replicated in seven other districts in India. The PPP model is worth emulating and replicating to bridge the digital divide. In a resource-poor country, this model provides ample opportunities for community access to computers and ICT. This is certainly a better model than the one adopted by GoI to finance  public Community Information Centres (CIC) in the North-Eastern states of the country. The state of Kerala had set a target to scale up the project in all its 14 districts to provide e-literacy to 6.4 million families by 2004.

Recommendations

It is recommended the initial strategy of having one CTC for every 1,000 families be changed. In the long run, many ventures might not be financially viable. Instead of adopting such a rule of thumb, it would be better to decide the number and location of CTCs based on a need assessment and potential analysis. The project should focus more on implementation on the basis of field realities rather then rhetoric mode. There is an urgent need to standardize advanced learning courses, as repetitions already exist. It is also recommended that adequate, relevant content in the local language be provided to fulfil the community’s demand for information. Connectivity and networking of all the existing CTCs is a critical issue to be addressed before increasing their numbers. Numerous technology options like cable, VSAT, fiber, line-of-sight wireless as well as non-line-of-sight wireless exist for providing connectivity to the CTCs. It is also recommended a technology be chosen only after a detailed analysis of cost/capital requirement, recurring costs, usefulness in the geography, potential use of the bandwidth by the community and long-term sturdiness of the technology. Connectivity should support Internet browsing, Voice over IP (VoIP), multimedia, video conferencing and e-learning/e-health services. The government should also encourage all organizations, institutions, universities and business establishments in the state to host informative websites in the local language on the Net. A significant effort is still required to enable these CTCs to provide e-governance, e-health, e-education and e-business. Similarly, a vision of using these Akshaya centres as outlets of the FRIENDS project (see Chapter 9) is yet to be implemented. For the sustainability of these centers, the integration of Akshaya CTCs and FRIENDS need to be achieved at the earliest.

Human Interest Stories

From the United Arab Emirates to Olavattur

Twenty-seven year old Majeed Baba worked for six years in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) as a supervisor in an office. He was earning Rs 60,000 per month. However, homesickness and the desire to do something for his village brought him back to Olvattur in the year 2000, along with his wife and his one-year-old daughter. He rented a dilapidated building in the village at Rs 450 per month and started an Akshaya centre in May 2003. He bought eight computers, two printers, one scanner, one UPS, one web camera and the minimum required furniture, investing  Rs 300,000 from his own savings. He says, “I had to make 2,000 families e-literate in the first three months. From this, I earned Rs 270,000. Then onwards, all the machines became mine after recovering my investment in three months’ time.” He also helps in the nearby orphanage (housing 200 orphans) and organizes health and sanitation campaigns in the village. He provides free computer courses to needy children of the village. He is earning less than he did in the UAE, but he realizes that his work is more fulfilling and satisfying. His ultimate dream is that some day the President of India, his idol, would come to his village to visit his Akshaya centre.

“Learning to Drive an Auto is More Difficult than Learning to Use a Computer”

Phiroz Babu, the youngest in his family,  dropped out of school in the ninth class. His father died when he was 12 years old. The entire family’s responsibility fell on the shoulders of his elder brother who left for the Gulf soon after and now sends Rs 3,000 every month to the family. Apart from Phiroz, his wife and child, the mother and the brother’s wife constitute the family.

Phiroz used to collect sand from the riverbed to sell. He also drove an auto-rickshaw to support the family.. He had always thought that the computer was a very complex machine. After joining e-literacy classes at Kolmanna Akshaya center, to his surprise, he found that computers were very simple to handle -- in fact, less complex than driving an auto-rickshaw. On completing the initial course, he joined the six-week (three hours daily) advanced course to learn Windows 98, MS Office, Multimedia (Photoshop and Photo imaging) and the Internet, for which he paid Rs 500 from his own pocket. Now, after learning the computer, he dreams of owning a computer and working as a Data Entry Operator in Dubai.

Ashraf and his Band of Cyber Kids

 Abdul Ashraf, a 28-year-old who lost his left hand some years ago in an accident, got his Diploma in Computer Applications while he was teaching Hindi in the local high school. With an investment of Rs 200,000 (of which Rs 150,000 was taken as a term loan from a bank), he started an Akshaya centre in his village, Kizsheri. He also runs a Kids Club, which has a membership of around 100 children in the age group of 8-16 years. He charges Rs10 per hour from the children for playing computer games. He has dozens of innovative and skill based computer games. He has also launched a Cyber Kids scheme in which 30 children (between 10-16 years) joined immediately. In this scheme, he provides advanced courses on MS DOS, Windows, WordPad and MS Paint over a period of four months at a fee of  Rs180.

Contact Information

Sivsankaran

Director, Kerala IT Mission, ICT Campus, Vellayamballam Jun, Thiruvananthpuram, Kerala, India
Tel/Fax: +91 471 272 6881, +91 471 231 4307

Email: director@keralaitmission.org

Website

http://www.akshaya.net