Connecting India village by village

Author : Satyan Mishra
Date added : 2002-04-15

Brief Project Background

As we stand on the threshold of a technology era, it is important for us to look back and spare a thought for those of us who are still deprived of the basic right for information. This is a group of 700 million Indians who live in villages and who become important to the decision makers only at the time of ballot casting.

For those who are slightly more concerned, preference is given to providing these teeming millions with their basic requirements like Food, Clothing and Shelter. Resources being scarce and requirements ever increasing, this becomes a self-defeating concept. What we seldom remember is the fact that giving a fish is not a solution in itself. For those who realize the need of a fishing rod often talk of employment as a cure all. What they often miss or ignore is the fact that an urban employment for a villager often leads to their migration from their homeland. And the only employment in a village is tilling on someone else’s land for conjuring 2 square meals a day.

On 26th February 2000, Drishtee signed an agreement with the district administration of Dhar for developing modules of a low cost, self-sustainable and community owned rural Intranet project called Gyandoot. This project started with the deployment of the Software and was followed by the maintenance and management of the network, on a revenue sharing basis. This model of government - corporate partnership led to faster growth of the Information Centers and increase in the number of services. With inherent sustainability and low cost operation due to entrepreneurial ownership, the model became viable for replication and profitability. The next District, which Drishtee entered in under its own brand name, was Sirsa in the state of Haryana.

Drishtee is a platform for rural networking and marketing services for enabling e-governance, education and health services. It is a state-of-the-art software which facilitates communication and information interchange within a localized intranet between villages and a district center. This communication backbone has been supplemented by a string of rural services for example, Avedan, Land Records, Gram Daak (mailing software), Gram Haat (virtual market place), Vaivahiki (Matrimonial), Shikayat (online grievance redressal), Mandi Information System and a host of other customized services.

These services are provided through Drishtee in a village (or a group of villages) by a local villager, who owns the kiosk after having it financed through a Govt. sponsored scheme. The employment thus generated leads to a new breed of IT literate generation (45,000 kiosk owners by 2003) who can pay for their meager loans (not more than 75K) with their earnings (reasonable to high) and become a role model for the younger generation.

Starting with Gyandoot in Dhar (Stockholm Challenge Award Winner) and then extending to Sirsa, Panipat, Bhiwani and Fatehabad in Haryana, Jallandhar in Punjab, Moradabad and Sultanpur in UP, Patna in Bihar, Jaipur in Rajasthan and Bhawanipatna in Orissa, Drishtee has traveled a long distance of enrichment in content. With every villager as our partner in concept “we are all set to become the world’s largest Intranet” (Microsoft in its journal dated 12th September, 2000)

The project has been envisaged to cater to social, economical and developmental needs of the villagers through an innovative G2C (Government to Citizen) model. The project sought to mark a paradigm shift by using the information technology for rural people and changing the cutting edge of the delivery apparatus of the government, from the government servant to a man from community itself.

Drishtee is an organizational platform for developing IT enabled services to rural and semi-urban populations through the usage of state-of-the-art software. The services it enables include access to government programs and benefits, market related information, and private information exchanges and transactions. Using a tiered franchise and partnership model, Drishtee is capable of enabling the creation of approximately 50,000 Information Kiosks all over India within a span of six years. These kiosks would potentially serve a market of 500 million people, with aggregate discretionary purchasing power of Rs. 100 billion (Rs. 10,000 crores). In less than two years, Drishtee has successfully demonstrated its concept in over 90 kiosks across five Indian states.

Drishtee’s business model is driven by a village entrepreneur who is suitably trained to handle user-friendly software. The unit revenue earned by this kiosk owner is a few cents per transaction, but the volume of the operations and an intrinsic demand enable viability very early in the operation. This individual, educated to 10th Grade or above, becomes a role model and a messenger of valuable information for the villagers. With a minimum size of 800 families as a prerequisite for a kiosk’s viability, a total of 100 such kiosks or more can be successfully set up within an average Indian District. A small fraction of the combined total revenue of such centers is enough to interest a local businessman to act as a channel partner and invest for the operational cost at the outset. This partner performs the role of a franchisee and adds value in scouting for kiosk owners, developing relations with District government, and maintaining the entire network of operations within the district.

The government lends credibility to these sets of kiosks and the channel partner’s operations by assuring speedy processing of applications and grievances at the Block and District levels. Though the District administration has no financial returns/investment in this network, they gain substantially in terms of higher efficiency and lower overheads. The service mix of Drishtee has been designed to cater simultaneously to different segments of the target market. Users save immensely on the opportunity cost of traveling and the time spent for getting these services otherwise. Presently, about 15% of an average village’s population takes advantage of the kiosk services where ever it has been set up. This percentage is likely to increase, but presently the remaining 85% also gain in terms of wider reach, modern outlook and a definite change in social perception. This win-win game would also include key future players in the corporate sector. The village market, with its high potential volume, offers an attractive expansion strategy for the demand saturated FMCG (Fast Moving Consumer Goods) companies. However, the vast expanse and negligible means of penetration make the rural market cost unviable for conventional penetration. Drishtee kiosks can offer cost effective means of reaching out to this population of about five hundred million, not only for the sake of promotion but also as a distribution network.

Identification of services is a continuous exercise which adds to the bouquet after every Need Identification survey is undertaken at the district level. During the formation of the initial idea a detailed exercise was taken up involving the villagers and the community. The selection of the services was a result of this interactive exercise and was based upon the advice and the felt needs of the villagers. In these meetings, it was learnt that due to lack of information regarding the current and prevailing Mandi (agriculture produce auction centers) rates, the farmers were unable to get the best price for their agricultural produce. Villagers also informed that copies of land records were difficult to obtain. The villager who requires a copy of the land record had to go out in search of the Patwari (village functionary who maintains all land records) who may or may not be available on that particular day at his headquarters. For small complaints or for giving applications, people had to go to district headquarter which resulted in waste of time, money and potential livelihood earnings.

Kiosks or Information Kiosks, as they are termed in Hindi, are nodes working as rural cyber cafe-cum-cyber offices. About 2-4 Gram Panchayat (Village Council), i.e. 2-10 villages with a population of 5,000 to 10,000 can access the services being provided by a single Kiosk/ Information Kiosk. The Information Kiosks are set up in the villages, which are on the roadsides and are centrally located. These are usually the major bus stands of the rural areas and villagers normally come there to embark a bus. The Kiosks have normally dialup connectivity through local exchanges on optical fibre or UHF links. Besides the computer and the modem the hardware set-up at the kiosk includes printer, UPS, furniture and stationary.

To enhance the economical viability of the Kiosks, the Kiosk owners (Soochaks) are given licenses to vendor government judicial stamps and powers of petition writer are also delegated to them. Due to the delegation of above-mentioned powers additional incomes are possible and the Information Kiosks are becoming virtual cyber offices.

The person operating the Information Kiosk is a local matriculate operator and is called Soochak. A soochak is not an employee but an entrepreneur. Soochak only needs maintenance and numeric data entry skills. He needs very limited typing skills since the Software is majorly menu-driven. Village committees and the local community interactively select the Soochaks. The same was done for originally started 20 centers. Soochak runs the Information Kiosk on commercial basis. He has an initial three-year agreement with Drishtee. He does not receive any salary and bears the cost of stationery, maintenance, electricity and telephone bills. He pays 20% of income as a commission to Drishtee for maintaining the network.

The Hub normally refers to two layers of data interaction, i.e. from the villages to the district centers and vise versa. The third layer at the block level is envisaged for the future for better coordination and redressal rate for the applications coming from different kiosks. Normally a team of implementers, managers and technical staff is required to efficiently administer a hub. With the learnings acquired through the operations in districts, Drishtee has been able to compile a manual for best practices to be adopted in partner-operated districts.

Results

The long-term objective of the project has been to use innovative e-governance, e-commerce, and e-education techniques as a tool for social change and development through wired villages within districts.

Since the start of the network since January 1, 2000, several examples of public benefit came up initially from Dhar-- Farmers in Bagadi village were getting rate of Rs. 300 per quintal from local traders for their potato crop. On taking the prevailing market rates from the Information Kiosk, the farmers could not believe that the current rate in Indore Mandi (auction center) was Rs. 400 per quintal. Consequently, they took their potato produce to Indore Mandi. In the interior remote hamlets of Anandkhedi and Umrela village, the local guruji / teacher of Education Guarantee Scheme centers had not received their honorarium for the period between March 1999 to July 1999. Upon receipt of this complaint through the Information Kiosk, the problem came into the notice, which was promptly rectified. Shankarlal son of Ambaram Malviya resident of Deharisarai village gave an application for caste certificate. The enclosures submitted by him along with the certificate at the Information Kiosk were sufficient in themselves. As a result, immediately upon receipt of his e-mail his caste certificate was prepared and intimation of preparation of caste certificate was sent back promptly through e-mail. Different kinds of experiences and demands have come up at different Information Kiosks. At Gunawad village, private school operators approached the Soochak for training school children on computers and also demanded desktop composing of question papers and report cards. The Soochak in Bagadi village started training of 6 rural youths.

Efficiency level in the functioning of the government departments has increased many fold resulting into better and prompt services to the rural masses Self Help Groups in the rural areas are getting more organised and empowered due to transparency brought about in the government services and rural economy e.g. Farmers’ Association in village Kod are demanding a new kiosk in the village. The lower government functionaries have become computer-savvy. This is apparent from increased number of applications for computer loans from Employees Provident Fund and increased number of officials who have joined computer-training classes. Computer literacy has increased in the rural areas. This is evident from the fact that around 120 rural youths are getting trained in the Soochanalayas in the remote areas. The state IT policy has been re-oriented after the impact of the project to provide fruits of the IT to the rural masses through similar project model. The project has generated national debates on the new models of e-governance.

Story by a journalist: Patrick Smith in http://www.bloomberg.com

Kalan Wali. Six bumpy hours from New Delhi. It takes minutes of travel in India for the Socio-Economic landscape to change. Camels, muddy tractors, piles of grain & raw cotton spread all over the village square. These are the few signs of modern times. A 10 foot by 10 foot room in the district office building. A 25 year old women by the name of Alka Narang with a young son in school has a table with a computer, a modem, a printer and a telephone on it. There are plastic chairs, a map on the wall, a casement window giving onto a dusty street. And it's enough. Ten or 15 times a day, six days a week, villagers arrive to request a service from officials running the district in Sirsa -- the county seat, 25 miles away. If they are BPLs -- Indians below the poverty line -- they might want a loan to buy a buffalo, for which their status makes them eligible. They might need an identity card. Or a driving license. Or a land record. Or a loan -- common request -- to acquire some sheep. Maybe they want to file a complaint: The water system is malfunctioning, the teacher in the local school isn't showing up, there's a rut in the road that can no longer be negotiated. Alka Narang offers 12 such services at this point and will put more on the menu in time. Until she set up shop a year ago, it was difficult for the
4,000 folk of Kalan Wali to avail themselves of government services. Taking a bus to Sirsa cost 30 rupees or so -- not quite 60 cents -- and a day's work. Getting a license or land record might cost a bribe atop that. And they never knew how long they would have to follow around any given bureaucrat -- or whether he would be there that day. Many villagers here, as elsewhere, never bothered. Ramchandra Verma is proud of an award for the best Kiosk owner. Reward is not the only motivation. He earns 5 $ a day. It comes out to be an equivalent of Six Thousand Indian Rupees per month. In the era were Government has ceased to be the primary employer without the common people properly sensitized of this fact, a new wave of entrepreneurs is on the horizon. They are the crusaders of modern India. Taking technology to its real test and determined to erase the denials of decades. They have got the opportunity. An opportunity they have availed. An opportunity that has come alive due to the collective vision of project Drishtee. The impact is instant. Curiosity is like a child. Boundless and virgin. This transforms into a new hope of revival. Revival of a realization that real India resides in villages. Realization of a cherished goal of Drishtee to ‘Create Strength Where Weakness Lies’. Governments have spent Millions of Rupees all over India in E- Governance. Drishtee has put the power of democracy in the hands where in actually belongs. Each click takes a giant step towards equality of opportunity. An opportunity which has created a 5 $ per day income for an unemployed youth, which till date has not happened inspite of Government and Non Governmental Social Organizations pumping in Millions. Yes they earn 5$ a day and the number is increasing.

Lessons

In countries like India the people still consider Government as the main service and employment provider. The economic realities were suppressed to a great extent by subsidies regimes prevalent in most economically developing countries. The first step towards reforms have struck at the very basic root of subsidies. Suddenly a harsh realization of pure market driven economy has dawned upon the masses. The service provider tag stays, employment is no where. These masses in India have 80 % economic base in villages. They were never in the same league as their urban counterparts. Drishtee has its initiative predominantly in these environs. All the services are focused towards the rural citizens banking upon a realistic need that exists. Transforming this need to a market based delivery mechanism has been the greatest challenge for Drishtee. The unique system devised for the above incorporates zero government support in terms of finance and banks upon the entrepreneurs success. This has thrown up the following issues:

A question is raised. While this project can be described as a rural extension of democracy, one could also consider it the marketization of the political process -- people paying to exercise their civic rights? This is an odious notion, surely. Drishtee has a viable answer to this "You have to start where you are, and villagers in India have practically no opportunity to participate in the process, this meets a real need in India. Drishtee identified it and then determined how to fulfill it."

Entrepreneurial zeal is there. Transforming this to a sensible approach towards profit maximization still needs a more mature model. Channel partners are more excited looking at the urban model and have unrealistic expectations of instant returns. Only after an actual test run they get to grips with reality and refocus their approach.

The services being provided are all fee based but mostly seasonal, like land records, certificates, etc. Hence the cash inflow is not constant. It has a high degree of variance like Ramchandra Verma has had a collection as high as Rupees Eleven Thousand and maintains an average of Rupees Five thousand.

Poor education level in villages make any new system of delivery, even where none existed previously, potential victims of rejection syndrome prevalent due to a comfort attainted in ignorance. A new device of which they have heard that it delivers all and has transforming powers creates an unrealistic expectation level. Any failure in such scenario makes the system totally unviable.

Government is a massive machinery. It has lots of inbuilt safety mechanisms which has totally eliminated any realistic direct participation of citizens directly in a democratic process. There has been a lot of resistance from lower level functionaries due to the transparency and openness it has brought about in the system thus striking at their unauthorized incomes thriving on ignorance of the rural citizens.

Government still is the authentic service provider duly formed by a democratic process. A public private participative platform sharing a common objective is still in its nascent stages, and initiatives like Drishtee have to be more synchronized with government via a business process reengineering exercise on a continuous basis.
IT is not a put off even in rural areas. It is the ease of use, practicality and the value it creates is what is critical. A hand that ploughs the field can click a mouse if it provides value.

Information goods typically have the characteristic that one person’s use does not reduce their availability for another person. Thus, a message or weather news can be viewed by many people, simultaneously or sequentially. Depending on the content of the news or message, different people may place different valuations on the information. Only friends and relatives may be interested in a personal message, all farmers in a district may be interested in local weather news, and so on. The ability to share information among users can impact the feasibility of providing it on a commercial basis. IT dramatically increases shareability of information, and this affects the economics of private provision of information goods and services.

For both government and private provision, one of IT’s main direct benefits is in increasing efficiency by economizing on resource use. Information that would otherwise be conveyed through face-to-face contact, post, courier, print delivery, telegraph or telephone may instead be communicated in digital electronic form via the Internet. Efficiency gains from Internet use are not automatic: the telephone, in particular, is an efficient means of communication for many types of information. IT also requires new investment, so the benefits of trips, time and paper saved must be weighed against the costs of installing and maintaining the new infrastructure. Efficiency benefits of IT are not restricted to the communication itself. IT can improve the efficiency of the telephone network, and it can make it possible to track and analyze communications. Word processing, maintaining accounts, inventory management, and other such activities that may not require long-distance communications are also made more efficient by IT.

Since government-provided goods and services, including redistributive transfer payments, are often aimed at lower income groups, to the extent that IT can increase the efficiency and effectiveness of government, the benefits of IT will be more widely spread, partly reducing ‘digital divide’ concerns. However, achieving these benefits requires more than just internal use of IT: beneficiaries of government services (particularly the economically disadvantaged) must be able to access IT resources also. While governments may invest in such front-end interfaces with citizens (and have done so in developed countries), the cost of doing so for governments in developing countries may be prohibitive. Such governments typically already have difficulties in raising sufficient resources through taxes and user charges.

While successful examples of implementation of ‘e-governance’ initiatives exist (for example, in the state of Andhra Pradesh in India), there is a conceptual alternative. This comes from recognizing the fact that citizens typically incur private costs (often substantial) in availing of government-provided services. If the use of IT can reduce such costs, even low-income individuals may be willing to pay at least some fraction of the cost savings, and there is scope for private provision of intermediate services that reduce the cost of access to government. Of course, this idea is not specific to IT: private intermediaries already help in filling out forms, getting access, and so on. One difference that IT can make is in reducing costs even further, often by an order of magnitude. In broad terms (as is also the case with electronic marketplaces and job-matching boards), IT changes the scope and nature of intermediation.

Development Impacts

The Concept of Drishtee revolves round the viability of the Kiosk Operation. Therefore to relate to this topic we are presenting the Story of a Drishtee Kiosk Owner.

Krishna Kumar, 26, lives in village Bassi, some 80 miles off New Delhi in the northern indian state of Haryana. A commerce graduate, Krishna has grown on a staple diet of the Indian heritage & culture fed to him in large doses by his septuagenarian grandfather, Inder Kumar, a veteran of the Indian freedom movement and a true gandhian at heart. Krishna’s father, Mohan Kumar toils on the fields every day from dawn to dusk to make ends meet for his rather small family, his sun-dried hair belying his 48 years.

Krishna has always been the apple of his grand-dad’s eye... the old man would put little Krishna to sleep with an anecdote from the freedom struggle and the man he idolized - the Mahatma himself. He reminisced how Gandhi dreamt of a self-sustaining rural economy - gram swaraj as he called it - of education, food, clothing, shelter, equality and independence for one and all. Mohan also did his bit by teaching Krishna the importance of saving for the rainy day, of living frugally and above all else, he ensured that despite all odds, the son got a good education. Krishna Kumar had traveled some 8 miles one-way every day for over 16 years to earn his bachelor’s degree. The degree by itself had aroused dreams of a high-paying, fashionable job in Krishna, who’d decided on trying his luck in the Indian capital’s umpteen accounting firms. The farms, he reasoned, weren’t where he could put his degree to use. It was during one such job-hunting trips to New Delhi that Krishna had bumped into an old acquaintance who was assisting a city-lawyer. Catching up on old times, Krishna couldn’t resist narrating his dreams of a happy, prosperous, hassle-free life for all back home in his village... how Krishna had always wanted to make the stock of his people better, of getting social justice and recognition to these unseen faces, to lend decibels to their unheard voices. The lawyer, for his part spoke excitedly about the project he had just finished working on, for his clients, a certain Drishtee.com Ltd., a dedicated, hard-working lot of IT professionals who were out to bridge the digital divide across the length and breadth of the country. Surprised, though, Krishna didn’t give it another thought, till one Sunday morning, when the newspaper carried an article on the power of e-governance and how some states were using the tool to connect to the citizen.

Krishna remembered the Drishtee.com project his friend talked of and rode the next bus into New Delhi. After the formal exchange of pleasantries, Krishna asked his friend if he could take e-governance to his village and help the cause of rural upliftment. Immediately his friend placed a call to his contact at the IT company who explained the mechanics at length over lunch. Enthused with the belief in its potential, and armed with a soft loan from his local bank, Krishna got onto the information technology bandwagon with an initial capital investment of about US$1850. He reckoned, this was the best way of getting himself gainfully employed, while serving the village and helping his family realize its long-cherished dream of achieving Mahatma Gandhi’s Indian mission - that of a sustainable rural economy. His friend advised him to undergo a primer on IT & Computers at a nearby institute to which Kumar readily agreed to.

Soon, word spread of Krishna’s beige box that could tell not just the latest price of various commodities in the market, but also help monitor the price trends for the common commodities. Krishna helped many a poor farmer borrow money for the next crop from the local bank rather than the lecherous village money-lender. For a token fee, Krishna would print a copy of the state land records helping the farmer establish his land-holdings - both as collateral and for proving eligibility for the said loan. From the comfort of his shack, Mangilal from a nearby village lodged a complaint with the district administration about the school that stayed shut, while Shanti just as well applied for her caste certificates. The civic administration is bound to follow-up on the requests within the committed time-frames and all non-conformances get reported regularly to their superiors. There’s actually a lot of action on the ground... and not just on paper. Like the umpteen portals targeted at their urban counterparts, in drishtee.com Bassi and nearby towns and villages have found the perfect friend who’s help them find markets for their wares, find a suitable match for their children, jobs for the educated-unemployed youth, and information on government’s development schemes. During the day, Krishna Kumar spends time introducing the village’s children to the wonderworld of IT and the children are loving every bit of it! The one soul who’s blessed Krishna Kumar a zillion times is Abdul Aziz, the village barber, whose son practices hair-art in Dubai, for Kumar’s computer has let Aziz communicate every other day with his son.

Today, the Bassi villages wear a festive look with business on an upswing and education a reality. For the first time, the administration too has become accessible and accountable, thanks to the Chief Minister’s support to the e-governance initiative. Just the other day, he’s been invited to Badagaon, a hamlet quite like Bassi, to deliver a lecture on the powers of the ‘chamatkari baksa’ (magic box). Krishna Kumar is proud of having so many hard-working villagemen realise their dreams of a better quality of life today and a prosperous’n’bright tomorrow.

What’s more, Krishna Kumar has pleased all at home by being gainfully employed - he’s buying himself a new motorcycle next month and most pleased of all is Inder Kumar - the grand-dad - for his grandson has actually managed to bring a smile on every villager’s face. Krishna Kumar has unwittingly become a local hero. Grandpa Inder Kumar can actually see the Mahatma smile at him from above!

Project Information

Organisation : Drishtee
URL : http://www.drishtee.com
Total budget in US$ : 750000
Country of activity: India [IN]

Are there any partners involved : Yes
What is partners role?: Drishtee has a daunting task at hand of connecting 5,75,000 odd villages in the country. This mammoth exercise is not realistically possible for any single organization to achieve within a given timeframe. A close look at the business model would suggest clearly that there are simultaneously several vertical business lines integrated within Drishtee’s. With the concept of Profit Centers and SBUs (Strategic Business Units) clearly embedded in the Drishtee structure, the management understands that the core business of Drishtee has to be focused in one strategic direction and partnerships should be sought for all other functional areas.

For the first 18 months of its operation, Drishtee’s was a lone voice in support of commercially viable IT enabled rural service market. The first partners who understood the operations in detail were the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), which as a part of their ‘pro-bono’ (philanthropic consultancy) efforts chose Drishtee out of several competing worldwide projects. The role of BCG included the fine-tuning of Drishtee’s revenue model and to forge strategic alliances. The first success came in the form of a partnership with a thousand plus crore Tractor company. The agreement included the incentives for inquiry generation at the kiosks and sufficient motivation for the Tractor Company dealers for becoming DDCPs. The BCG has further started deliberations on behalf of Drishtee for tie-ups with other service/Software/hardware providers. The list includes big and small private and public sector companies with a definite focus on the rural market.

In addition to this, Drishtee is partnered by 2 layers of entrepreneurs. The kiosk owners constitute the base of the pyramid which defines size of the network. There would be no less than 45,000 odd Kiosk owners within the next three years. The middle layer is suitably filled by the District Channel Partners who add immense value in terms of the management and the maintenance of the Network.

Contact Information

Satyan Mishra
satyan@drishtee.com
D-81, Kalkaji
110019
New Delhi
India

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