Establishing IT projects in poor rural areas is easy. Getting these projects to endure over time, after the initial donor funding runs out, is the hard part. And yet the e Seva project in West Godavari has not only lasted the course, it is now self-financing. Although there were initially a number of challenges involved in bringing the benefits of connectivity to isolated mandals, or village communities – these have been overcome, and a new generation of village dwellers is now enjoying the benefits of being connected to government, to the internet, and to one another. Under this project information kiosks have been established in the villages. The computers in the kiosks are on a district wide network (a hybrid of dial up, 802.11 and WLL) helping kiosks interact with the district server hosting the local portal. To save on the networking cost, the project has developed a unique synchronisation tool that allows the kiosks to work offline and allows the databases to be periodically synchronised in minimal time.
The e Seva district portal (www.westgodavari.org) allows access to a range of citizen services. These services range from the issuance of certificates to getting information about government programmes and support for community-based transactions between residents of different villages. Previously marginalised communities have now been networked together and given access to information about their rights as citizens, plugging existing information gaps and helping to bridge the digital divide.
Building stakeholders
Against a backdrop of rural poverty and and a complete absence of IT infrastructure, it was critical for the e Seva project to build broad-based support in the villages.
Traditionally the rural areas have suffered from a lack of access to government services, limited avenues for redress of grievances, and little or no information regarding the markets, products, agriculture, health, weather, education and so on. The 1.8 million women in the district have also traditionally been subject to inferior treatment.
This situation was viewed as an opportunity to improve the position of women in the community, and the decision was taken early on to make women crucial stakeholders in the e Seva project.
The project seeks to address the problem of information divide by providing a low cost locally developed model of e-democracy. The centres where the kiosks are located are exclusively run and managed by women self-help groups, allowing the women to be positioned as information brokers in their communities, and helping to bridge the gender divide. The project has provided information leadership to these self-help groups and has helped them act as change agents.
The involvement of the women self-help groups has helped to change the gender dynamics of rural settlements in West Godavari. The women have received extensive training in computer use, as well as on the processes that govern the entire project. As a result a group from the lowest socioeconomic strata have become one of the influential groups in their communities.
Building participation
The project since its inception has crossed over a million transactions involving the local communities. These transactions range from payment of bills to delivery of government certificates, to information sharing between different village communities. The information and the help the citizens used to seek from government made them run from pillar to post previously is now only a click away.
Over 70,000 primary school children have used the kiosks to gain access to the internet, a profound exposure to an information society that would have seemed unthinkable a few years ago.
The district community portal has enabled the vertical integration of the communities of West Godavari, providing opportunities for citizens to network and transact business. The project with over 200 kiosks currently crisscrosses the entire district and allows citizens to create local web content. A number of citizens have started to offer basic web design services, opening up an entirely new source of revenue for communities that have been connected to the web for less than three years.
12,000 different grievances from citizens have been received out of which over 11,000 of them pertaining to various problems have been redressed. The project has led to a citizen centric land records system resulting in evolution of a transparent and effective land record delivery system fully addressing the insecurities of the farmers. The project has also opened the possibility for the self-help groups to market their products directly without any middlemen to citizens within the district and beyond. The project portal is going from strength to strength and has large number of pages and databases related to the district and the citizens.
The web site has also become the primary local ‘broadcasting’ tool for information on government welfare programmes. The project has also led to greater transparency in the implementation of government initiatives and has made claim processing more efficient, directing resources to those most in need by giving local communities the ability to process complex social services transactions.
Why it worked
The people who worked on the e Seva project recognise that there are a number of factors that have proven crucial to making e Seva work.
Rural citizens’ right to information is possible only if the information is put into the public domain and new technologies like the kiosks have provided a cost effective means of doing that. For any IT project to succeed in an environment where IT has never before been present you need to ensure that there is a sufficient ‘critical mass’ of stakeholders to ensure broad community support.
The success of the project hinges upon the commitment shown by the women’s groups and also by the extent of their capacity building. The project therefore has a periodic system of assessing the strengths of the groups managing the kiosks. One of the indicators that is being used is the monthly turnover that the kiosks are able to do in financial terms. A kiosk doing better business provides a clear indication of its popularity amongst the wider cross section of the people.
The 200 kiosks have completed more than 1.2 million transactions so far, and are generating anything between Rs 10,000-25,000 (US$228-570) per month. The centres are doing good business and are becoming self-sustainable. They are earning their keep.
Another interesting aspect is that because of involvement of multiple stakeholders, the project has only taken two months from conception to the commissioning of the first kiosk. E Seva therefore holds tremendous promise for all those looking to implement similar kiosk-based services in rural areas. A clear commitment and desire to take everybody along can make even seemingly impossible tasks look attainable and plausible.
The project has enjoyed a unique involvement of self help groups, local IT professionals, banks and government. The offline synchronisation uniquely tried in this project has helped the kiosks gain connectivity at minimal cost. The project has demonstrated that a community network on sustainable lines can be locally developed with minimal investments. The model is also uniquely demonstrated that local knowledge and in house development provides better ownership of the project and helps in quick grounding and effective evolution.
Of course the aims of e Seva have not yet been fully-realised. The information gap between rural areas and cities remains, and the position of women is not yet equal. Yet progress has been made, and technology has provided an entirely new means of improving the lives of people who had previously experienced very few benefits from IT. I can only recommend to others looking to learn from our experience that they focus on the issues of sustainability, quick wins and community support if they are to see success.
Quelle: Public Sector Technology & Management, 07.03.2005
