Digital Inclusion on Development in Rural India

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• Digital Inclusion on Development in Rural India

K.K.Thyagharajan, Professor, R.M.K.
Engineering College
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• What is Digital Inclusion ?

It is the inclusion of ICTs to face social and
economic challenges of underserved communities
both in rural and urban areas.
24 November 2007
K.K.Thyagharajan, Professor, R.M.K.
Engineering College
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How to Achieve Digital Inclusion ?

• The number of persons using the technology
  tools (Internet and mobile phones) of the digital
  age should be increased.
• People should be connected so that even the
  people in most remote location can access the
  same information as people with technological
  enrichment.

24 November 2007
K.K.Thyagharajan, Professor, R.M.K.
Engineering College
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Why People Should be Connected Together ?

• Being digitally connected has become
  unavoidable to economic, educational, and social
  advancement.
• Internet and Wireless Technologies connect
  people together. Access to information sources
  through these will be vital for rural areas to
  realize their development goals in healthcare,
  education, and social development.

24 November 2007
K.K.Thyagharajan, Professor, R.M.K.
Engineering College
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What are Benefits of Digital Inclusion ?
Over All Development
24 November 2007
K.K.Thyagharajan, Professor, R.M.K.
Engineering College
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Why Digital Inclusion Fails ?

• Digital inclusion activities are often performed
  with a limited knowledge of the profile of their
  target users, and the needs of those with limited
  income are often overlooked.
• The benefits of the Information Technology
  revolution are today unevenly distributed within
  societies, geography, income, age, employment,
  and education.

24 November 2007
K.K.Thyagharajan, Professor, R.M.K.
Engineering College
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How to Make it Successful ?

• The power of computing and information
  technology must be extended beyond its
  traditional user base to reach people who have
  not had access to such technologies until now.
• The first step towards this can be achieved
  through information literacy to make each person
  an independent self- sufficient user.

24 November 2007
K.K.Thyagharajan, Professor, R.M.K.
Engineering College
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Land Record Computerization
24 November 2007
K.K.Thyagharajan, Professor, R.M.K.
Engineering College
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Digital Inclusion in Rural India

• Many people in rural areas are able to join the
  information society, due to an emerging
  proliferation of information and communication
  technology devices, especially mobile phones, in
  the home and work environments.
• Recently help lines and SMS have become
  popular mediums for information dissemination due
  to increased availability and accessibility of
  fixed and mobile phones.
• Digital Inclusion Programmes such as Lifelines
  and AGMARKNET have been designed for the use of
  rural communities in India

24 November 2007
K.K.Thyagharajan, Professor, R.M.K.
Engineering College
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Lifelines

• Lifelines is a digital inclusion program
  developed by British Telecommunications (BT) to
  help rural communities in India.
• It is a voice-based service for village
  communities and provides them information related
  to agriculture, animal husbandry, horticulture,
  fisheries, dairy sciences and post harvest
  technologies.
• This phone-based information service provides
  vital information to rural communities in India
  to improve their lives.
• Until the recent ICT initiatives like
  Lifelines, the only source of veterinary and
  agricultural information available to farmers in
  rural India was through community meetings and
  agriculture extension workers.

24 November 2007
K.K.Thyagharajan, Professor, R.M.K.
Engineering College
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Digital Inclusion for Agricultural Marketing

• Marketing today depends on information system,
  which provide adequate information about what
  people want, at what price, and who can supply
  it.
• Various studies reveal that farmers get a
  reasonably higher price by selling their produce
  in the regulated markets compared to rural,
  village and unregulated wholesale markets.

24 November 2007
K.K.Thyagharajan, Professor, R.M.K.
Engineering College
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Digital Inclusion for Agricultural Marketing

• ICTs need to be extensively promoted in
  agricultural marketing to generate useful
  databases and information packages to provide
  these details and for expanding marketing
  opportunities. It should also provide information
  on the demand, availability of different
  produces, produce specifications with regard to
  price, quality, pack size, packaging material,
  quantity and the time frame of supply.
• As a step towards globalization of agriculture,
  the Directorate of Marketing and Inspection (DMI)
  of India has embarked upon an ICT project
  Agricultural Marketing Information System Network
  (AGMARKNET) in the country, for linking all
  important Agricultural Produce Market Committees,
  State Agricultural marketing Boards /
  Directorates and DMI regional offices located
  throughout the country, for effective information
  exchange on market prices.

24 November 2007
K.K.Thyagharajan, Professor, R.M.K.
Engineering College
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Health Care Services

• In health care systems the underserved zones,
  both rural and urban, can be reached with mobile
  technology, which will allow patients data
  acquisition and post processing in specialized
  medical centers, and patient treatment.
• The use of mobile devices in conjunction with
  portable acquisition systems, such as ECG or
  arterial blood pressure, allows the building of a
  clinic database which could be analyzed and
  processed to apply preventive medicine in
  cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, and cancer.
• To do this, all patient data are shared between
  educational and research communities, and bring
  computer resources to them.

24 November 2007
K.K.Thyagharajan, Professor, R.M.K.
Engineering College
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Conclusion

• There is the need for a multi-stakeholder
  process and team effort among all stakeholders,
  including governments, the business communities,
  non-governmental organizations, and national
  organizations to provide a coordinated approach
  to address IT capacity building challenges.
• Novel approaches in computing technology have
  the potential for great impact in the areas,
  including education, healthcare, and economic
  development. Some tough research problems such as
  networking infrastructures, intuitive user
  interfaces, low-cost computing devices,
  geographically relevant applications must be
  solved to realize this vision
• The use of technologies such as cell phones,
  and wireless technologies that make computing
  affordable, accessible, and relevant must be
  encouraged.
• Finally, communication infrastructure such as
  DSL or fiber optic networks is often a major
  limitation to technology development in rural and
  lower income areas. In the near future nearly all
  businesses, institutions and citizens will be
  linked through broadband technologies, which will
  make digital inclusion in all fields.

24 November 2007
K.K.Thyagharajan, Professor, R.M.K.
Engineering College
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• Thank You

24 November 2007
K.K.Thyagharajan, Professor, R.M.K.
Engineering College
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Digital Inclusion on Development in Rural India

• Farmers call a designated number using a
  landline/mobile phone. The call first reaches the
  Interactive Voice Response System (IVRS) where
  he/she registers the query with the help of a
  voice menu. The query is stored as a voice clip
  in a database server. A knowledge worker logs
  into the application through a web interface,
  views all the calls that are waiting for
  attention, and searches the FAQ database for the
  answers. If the knowledge worker finds the
  answer, it is retrieved and stored in the
  Interactive Voice Response System (IVRS). If the
  answer is not found, the knowledge worker
  forwards the question to the subject matter
  experts. Once a response is received from any of
  the subject matter experts, the application
  alerts the knowledge worker who examines the
  response and if appropriate stores the answer in
  the database and makes it available for future
  queries. A voice clip of the answer is played
  back to the farmer when they call back to
  retrieve the information 24 hours later. Farmers
  can also visit their nearest information kiosk to
  call the Lifelines service or to access a
  database or listen to audio clips of frequently
  asked questions and also to send digital
  photographs of diseased crops or animals for
  remote diagnosis by the agricultural and
  veterinary experts.

24 November 2007
K.K.Thyagharajan, Professor, R.M.K.
Engineering College
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