Bundelkhand district covering the states of Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh in central India is historically one of the richest regions in India but unfortunately the present economic state of the area also makes it one of the areas having the lowest per capita income. The state of agriculture in the area has not been good because of low rainfall in the area, which has meant that poverty and food issues have loomed large.
Under such circumstances, taking ICT to the rural people was initially met with skepticism and a lack of conviction on both ends. Often enough, I revel at the possibility of using a faster and better processor, or an operating system, whether or not I utilize the time saved is another thing. But to take ICTs to people who claim to have all the time in the world, but no money to spend on ‘fancy’ ICT tools is another thing.
I recently visited such a group of people, in TARAhaat- a commercial franchise-based telecentre group, whose members took up the challenge to go to Bundelkhand and take ICTs to the local communities. My first few questions were of disbelief, I wanted to know how exactly did they convinced the local audience, what did they do to ensure local participation. For answers I was treated to many a smiles initially, till the ice broke and we started talking ‘strategies’. Needless to say, every other ‘marketing’ strategy had been worked upon, but with the ground realities such that people were not interested in saving time, the fact that they could not see direct correlation between ICTs and food and to top it all the services were for a price, things were not simple in any scope of imagination.
The TARA team is very focused on targeting the rural audience, and I learnt that the fact the services were priced was actually an advantage, because the local community often thought that the priced services were better and attached some importance to them. The community seldom wants to spend anything and has to be involved by making them feel that their expenditure is actually a saving in the long run, by giving examples and options which would cost more. The sustainability aspect of telecentres has been worked upon with careful deliberation in all TARA centres.
Even after over a decade in the area, TARAhaat members often have had to go to the community and ask them feedback on what they may want to learn, using the telecentre only as a space for knowledge sharing. The main idea behind this is primarily that people would atleast come to the telecentre, and develop some sort of a curiosity for the PC, which effectively for them has been a different kind of a TV. Based on such sessions, various programmes have been defined. A sewing course was started for the local women, in the hope that some of them could get interested in ICTs while in the centre. Such conversions due to increased interest have not been uncommon, more so for girls, who were not easily permitted to join a centre for ICT learning, which was often thought of as unnecessary for them. The community has also been helped to learn something and then start off a business on their own, based on the training given, thus encouraging rural entrepreneurship. The TARAhaat team firmly believes that the people who can actually ‘reach’ the local community have to come from within the community itself, though they admitted that a ‘foreign’ presence was always attractive at first. The interested people from a village have been trained in ICTs or other programmes, and they have been used as the link with the community for future interactions.
Even with these initiatives the telecentres aren’t exactly flooded with people. A lot still has to be achieved. Towards the end of my visit, I asked a TARA member, as to whether or not he felt they were successful, and he said, maybe it is true that they have not been able to reach out to all the people as of now, but he knew for sure that for the generation ahead, a new path had been created.
