Empowering Rural India

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Empowering Rural India

APJ ABDUL KALAM PRESIDENT OF INDIA

Posted online: Sunday, August 14, 2005 at 0154 hours IST

 

 

 

 

A new situation is emerging in India. Very rarely in history have we come

across such a constellation: an ascending economic trajectory, rising foreign

exchange reserves, reducing inflation rates, global recognition of

technological competence, energy of 540 million youth, umbilical connectivities

of 20 million people of Indian origin abroad, and the interest shown by

developed countries to invest in our engineers and scientists, including in new

R&D centres.

Governments have been emphasising economic development by ensuring growth rates

of seven-eight per cent annually, enhancing the welfare of farmers and workers

and unleashing the creativity of entrepreneurs, scientists, engineers. This

opportunity must be fully utilised to bridge the rural-urban divide, using

knowledge as a tool. As such, I would like to focus “Empowering Rural India.”

This discussion will be in five parts. The first part cites experiences with

knowledge centres working in the country. The second part presents a case for

Village Knowledge Centres in relation to the integrated development of rural

areas through PURA. The third part deals with examples of PURA in action. The

fourth part presents the working domain services for effective knowledge

acquisition to the PURA complexes. The final part consolidates the flow chart

of data needed for farmers, fishermen and the entire rural population in an

integrated way for sustainable development. It takes a village In June 2005,

when I visited Nagapattinam, I saw the Village Resource Centre established by

the Tata Tsunami Relief Committee in association with the MS Swaminathan

Research Foundation at Akkaraipettai. Speaking to the young members operating

the system, I found they were helping locals by imparting education through

computers, helping the Self Help Group Members to maintain their accounts,

providing weather and sea state forecast data. While it was very good, the

important issue of providing a live database on various services to fishermen

and farmers needs to be upgraded. This has to be a coordinated effort.

Recently, I inaugurated six Village Resource Centres in Ettimadi, Coimbatore

district, Tamil Nadu, established by Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetam in partnership

with ISRO. They provide tele-education and tele-medicine to six villages in

Tamil Nadu and Kerala through video conferencing. I also understand the RASI

Scheme of Tamil Nadu, implemented at Mellur taluk in Madurai district, is

providing knowledge connectivity to villages. This enables local unemployed

youth to set up village kiosks to provide computer literacy, Internet access

through CorDECT Wireless system with a limited bandwidth and allows small

value-added services through computers, with digital photographs as well as

e-mail access. This also helps villagers get birth certificates from local

government authorities and healthcare advice from the Madurai Arvind Eye

Hospital through e-mail. I appreciate the efforts by these organisations for

knowledge enabling the villagers at the Village Knowledge Centres (VKC). These

VKCs will act as a knowledge-delivery tool. How to equip the VKCs with

knowledge and purpose in an integrated way, within a sustainable developmental

framework, is the challenge. Pure is as PURA does Nearly 700 million Indians

live in 600,000 villages across rural India. Connectivity of village complexes

providing economic opportunities to all segments of people is an urgent need.

We need to innovate to increase connectivities to the villages, making clusters

out of them even while retaining their individuality. The integraed method that

will bring prosperity to rural India is called PURA or Providing Urban

Amenities to Rural Areas. This envisages four connectivities: physical

connectivity through quality roads and transport; electronic connectivity

through telecom with high bandwidth fibre optic cables; knowledge connectivity

through education, skill training for farmers, artisans and craftsmen and

entrepreneurship programmes. These three connectivities will lead to economic

connectivity through starting of enterprises with the help of banks,

micro-credit and marketing of products. We need to establish 7,000 PURA

complexes in the country, encompassing 2.3 lakh village panchayats. For

providing knowledge connectivity to PURA complexes, VKCs will act as frontline

delivery systems. The VKC should provide the essential data required for the

targeted population such as farmers, fishermen, craftsmen, traders,

businessmen, entrepreneurs, unemployed youth, and students. It has to be

acquired by visiting the village, talking to the rural people, by understanding

their requirement and core competence. Providing meteorological data for both

farmers and fishermen has to be area specific, covering say 20 or 30 villages

in the vicinity of the sea coast or farming area. Local relevance of

information offered is essential. Users have simple needs of information but

often it is tough for system integrators because of the need to update data.

Trained manpower has to be deployed to generate information that can explain in

simple terms the meteorological data, weather data, marketing data on fish,

agricultural and other rural commodities. This data has to come from various

connected institutions that provide service to the people on a timely basis.

But the transformation of data into user-friendly information is the real

challenge. The main focus of the VKC should be to empower youth to undertake

development tasks of villages and establish rural enterprises that will provide

largescale employment. So it is essential to skill enable and knowledge enable

through academic institutions, industry, banking and marketing institutions.

The VKC should act as a facilitator. Blended knowledge is better knowledge.

Nuts and bolts of connectivity A low-cost multi-task handheld computer with GPS

and wireless mobility should be developed and should reach fishermen and

farmers. They should add value to this tool for their benefit to increase their

earning capacity. Every VKC should have a computer terminal, wireless (Wi-Max)

connection or fibre broadband or satellite connectivity to connect to the nodal

centres for acquisition of knowledge and dissemination of updated real-time

data. Each PURA should have “Nodal PURA Knowledge Data Centres,” which should

be the hub for all activities. These centres should be linked to the nominated

domain service providing organisations in agriculture, including fisheries,

cottage and small-scale industries and commerce, education and HRD, and

healthcare. These domain institutions will have a mechanism to create

continuously updated information systems needed to service the VKC. PURA in

action I have visited many rural areas, and seen working systems of PURA such

as the Gujarat-BAIF model and the Vallam Periyar PURA model near Thanjavur. I

have also recently visited tsunami-affected villages of Nagapattinam and

suggested the implementation of “coastal PURA’’ to the district administration.

The Bharatiya Agro-Industries Foundation (BAIF) is an integrated village cluster

development programme in two village clusters, Chonda and Lachakadi, in south

Gujarat. Every summer, tribal people used to migrate to nearby towns. The BAIF

model was installed in these two villages with the cooperation of the people

and the participation of state authorities. Water harvesting was undertaken.

Every home was provided with livestock and also a market for milk.

Simultaneously, fruit orchards were established with various fruitcrops such as

cashew and mangoes, tolerant to drought.? Today, the tribal population is

harvesting crops, packaging and carrying milk to different supply points. The

project was implemented through self-help groups. The groups took the

responsibility of helping weaker members, which boosted progress. The results

were phenomenal. Last year I visited the Periyar Maniammai College of

Technology for Women and inaugurated the Periyar PURA Complex. Over 65 villages

near Vallam, Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu, have been transformed as a PURA cluster.

This PURA complex has all three connectivities — physical connectivity, with a

circular road and interconnecting roads covering major villages, along with bus

transport; electronic connectivity through Internet kiosks; knowledge

connectivity through the academic bakcground of the promoting agency — leading

to economic connectivity of 65 villages. The centre of activity is the

engineering college for women that provides the electronic and knowledge

connectivity. Periyar PURA has healthcare centres, primary to post-graduate

education and vocational training centres.? This has resulted in largescale

employment generation and creation of entrepreneurs with the active support of

850 self-help groups. They have innovative water management schemes for

irrigation and providing potable water for all village citizens. All 65 Periyar

PURA villages have only rain-fed irrigation. Two hundred acres of wasteland have

been developed into cultivable land with innovative water management schemes,

such as contour ponds and watersheds. Villagers are busy in either cultivation,

planting Jatropha, herbal and medicinal plants, power generation using bio-mass,

food processing and, above all, running marketing centres. Due to shortage of

rainfall in that locality, farmers were suffering water scarcity, for

agriculture and for drinking. Periyar PURA developed six percolation ponds and

five check dams to harness rainwater amounting to 2.73 lakh cubic metres per

year. This water is supporting the irrigation of 300 acres of land through

recharging open wells and borewells. It also supplies drinking water to the

people. More than 5,000 farmers are benefiting from this programme.? Recently

Periyar PURA has introduced a number of employment-oriented schemes for

tsunami-affected Nagapattinam villages and trained self-help groups in tile

making, paper manufacturing, alternative building blocks manufacturing. This

lone engineering college has empowered villagers through skill-oriented

training, provision of finance and provision of market connectivity for their

produce. PURA on the coast When I visited Nagapattinam, after reviewing the

tsunami rehabilitation schemes, I proposed coastal PURAs, ideal for bringing

sustainable prosperity to this region. The salient features of this PURA are

the following: * Physical connectivity: Construction of jetties and small and

medium-sized boat-landing centres on the coast in the interval of 10 to 15 km.

Each of these will have a good link road to the main coastal road.

Establishment of community sheds for repair of nets, storing the nets and

related equipment of the fishermen. * Electronic connectivity: All the fishing

villages in the coastal areas have to be linked with the district HQ through

broadband fibre and wireless connectivities. Fishermen should be provided with

broadcasting facilities through satellite radios and the HAMSAT network. Mobile

phones with GPS facility may be provided for each boat for emergency

communication. This will also provide the local fishing population

meteorological and sea state data through SMS from the VKCs. * Knowledge

connectivity: The government should facilitate the training of fishermen in

cost-effective yet safe fishing techniques, application of technology for

improving productivity, storage and preservation systems and marketing, banking

and financing systems through the district HQ and connected VKCs. It ust also

provide adequate warning data for fishermen out at sea. * Economic

connectivity: These three connectivities will motivate and enable the local

population to create cold storage infrastructure, fish processing and packaging

and marketing for realising the value-added price. This will also provide

alternative employment-oriented schemes during non-fishing days, and for people

who are involved in agriculture and other activities. Here I would like to

appreciate the work of the Alaimagal Self-Help Group, which in partnership with

DRDA and NGOs has successfully got an export order of quality candles and other

crafts products to the Netherlands. Such activities should be the objective of

our rural development schemes. So far, we have focused on ‘‘live’’ PURAs in

action and on VKCs. How do we get the periodically updated and relevant

information to the VKCs, so that the best knowledge base is available to

farmers, fishermen and craftsmen. Call centres for kisans I have studied a

system currently used by farmers and fishermen in different parts of the

country. This is the Kisan Call Centre (KCC), established by the Ministry of

Agriculture in partnership with Telecommunication Consultants India Ltd (TCIL),

an enterprise under the Ministry of Communication and IT. The KCC offers three

levels of interaction and support in agriculture, fisheries and animal

husbandry domains, through national experts and corresponding directorates at

the Central level. In its one year of operation, the call centre has provided

consultancy, information, assistance and guidance to over five lakh callers

from eight states. Anywhere in India, people can call 1551 as a toll free

number to access the service. The top users are Maharastra and Tamil Nadu,

followed by Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan. I have studied some of the typical

questions answered by the call centres: *From Warangal: In cotton, what are the

suitable varieties to be taken and when can we avail the varieties * From

Anathapur: What is the seed treatment of groundnut, with dosage. * From

Cuddapah: What are the ways to get citrus fruits ripened quickly. * From

Indore: In which market will I get a good price for my cotton produce. * From

Jalandhar: What is the method of controlling yellowing in a paddy nursery.

These questions were answered by KCC agricultural and fisheries specialists.

This is the working system for providing domain services in agriculture,

fisheries and animal husbandry. Typical knowledge requirements in agriculture

extend to soil, seed, water management, post-harvest management, productivity

increase, crop insurance, banking and financial systems, education, healthcare,

and employment or entrepreneurial opportunities. Flow chart for rural knowledge

As we have seen in the KCC example, similar domain service provider call

centres are required in commerce and industry, entrepreneurial skill

development and employment generation, travel and tourism, banking and

insurance, meteorological forecasting, disaster warning, education and HRD, and

healthcare. These call centres will act as service providers to the PURA Nodal

Knowledge Data Centres located in the PURA complexes, which in turn will

provide the area-specific and customised knowledge to the VKCs. There have been

many attempts across the country in taking information and communication

technology (ICT) to rural areas. Each of the proponents of these efforts is

passionately attached to the core idea and continues to pursue it even when it

does not make economic sense or when it is proven not scalable or sustainable.

Some of these efforts are successful only when centred on a creative leader.

What we need now is a serious and impartial review to decide on the best

practices for nationwide deployment — a “best of breed’’ solution for

sustainable PURA. Technology is the instrument for providing non-linear growth

to our economy. Hence PURA driven by technology for sustainable rural

development will bridge the rural-urban divide. Access to technology is the

means to generate employment potential for sustainable rural prosperity.

Village Knowledge Centres are the essential component for realising our goal of

graduating to a knowledge society and India’s transformation to a developed

country by 2020. Higher the knowledge dissemination and its absorption by

society, wider the perspectives of its citizens — leading to reduction in

societal tensions and increasing cooperation and collaboration. Dimensions of

political, societal and media thinking will also be wider and focused on

relevant aspects of social and economic development.

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