IT still not reaching 70 percent of India’s masses

At a recent conference held by the Computer Society of India, experts concurred that bridging the digital divide could remain a key concern in India for years to come, considering that 70 percent of the country’s population has been bypassed by the IT sector. Technical experts and bureaucrats convened to suggest how IT and its benefits could reach the masses. FREDERICK NORONHA reports

For some years now, India’s booming IT sector has gained an aura of invincibility, primarily because information and communication technologies (ICTs) have emerged as a better, speedier, and cost-effective means for providing information, literacy, and knowledge management.

But the magic wand of information technology, which has an enormous potential for developing countries, is still not reaching 70 percent of India’s populace residing in the vast rural countryside, warned experts at a conference on ‘Computer applications for rural development’ (CARD) organised by the Computer Society of India (CSI) in Lucknow recently.

A national-level body of IT professionals, which has networking specialists working in computers for some decades now, CSI’s CARD-2003 meet was aimed to "serve as a forum for the industry, government bodies, academia, professionals, panchayati raj institutions and students to share, interact and exchange their knowledge and experience on how computer and IT applications can be used for rural development."

Rural and developing societies acutely need a model that provides access without necessarily requiring all the capacities associated with the emerging technology, but at affordable rates.

CSI says that telecentres (also known as community communication centres, infoshops, telecottages, community access centres and infothelas) have emerged in the last ten years as the primary means for providing public access to a range of telecommunications services and particularly the Internet. Telecentres are providing solutions to a host of development problems concerned with the digital divide—community access to information; health and wellness initiatives; e-democracy; e-government; cultural and indigenous knowledge preservation; rural and agricultural development; and electronic commerce.

Some of the issues CARD-2003 looked at included communication and universal access information management; e-governance applications and services through IT; the user interface; the Indian regional language solutions; GIS (geographical information system) applications in land, crop, water and soil management.

Also up in focus was the need to build affordable devices and embedded systems in a talent-rich, resource-poor country like India.

CSI’s chairman for the Lucknow chapter, Sanjay Bhoosreddy, explained that the objective of the national meet was to deliberate upon various possibilities of using IT in rural development programmes to achieve an efficient and qualitative improvement in the lifestyle of the rural population.

CSI national vice-president M L Ravi suggested that interactive sessions, video conferencing and the Internet could better educate rural students, leading to economic benefits in these areas.

Others present at the meet were technical experts, bureaucrats and public representatives from the zilla parishad and zilla panchayat (local government) from Uttar Pradesh.

Various practical models were showcased at the conference to underline the potential of information technology for the uplift of village life and rural development.

Experts explained how IT can help in increasing crop yields, fertility of soil, optimisation of land use in terms of crop cultivation in various seasons, marketing of agricultural produce, reduction in transportation cost and time, updating of knowledge of latest variety of seeds and fertilisers and crop diseases with their prevention and cure.

Technologies like GIS were explained to show how these store special data and help in analysing the optimum solution for infrastructure facilities in rural areas. A pilot model, which helps in the prediction of trends based on previously stored data, was showcased at the conference.

It was strongly felt that IT and its benefits could only be availed if the user at village level is aware of the potential of this recent technology. Large-scale awareness programmes should be organised from every level, CSI experts argued.