I-WAYS, Digest of Electronic Commerce Policy and Regulation 27 (2004) 190–196 190

IOS Press

E-Commerce Developments

Enhancing Developmental Opportunities by

1
Promoting ICT Use: Vision for Rural India
Narinder Chhibber
Secretary-General, PTC India Foundation

Abstract. The foremost benefits of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in developing countries can be in
improving governance including public safety and eradication of illiteracy. The benefits of ICTs have not reached the masses in
India due to lack of ICT infrastructure, particularly in rural areas, where two-third of the population of the country lives. Even
in cities and suburban areas, use of ICTs is not popular due to lack of awareness to its use, computer illiteracy, and absence of
practical applications.
India is the largest country in South Asia, with a population of over one billion people and its telecom sector is presently
experiencing fast growth phases. However telephony penetration in villages is less than two percent of the rural population and
about 15 percent of the villages are still without any telephony service. Universal access to ICTs in rural areas has been planned
and is being implemented through Public Tele Info Centers having voice data and video, as majority of villagers in India cannot
afford a separate home connection.
Illiteracy in rural areas is as high as 40 percent and in some tribal belts hardly about 20 percent people are literate. There are
35 million children in age group of 6–11 years, who are out of school and one out of four drops out during primary classes.
Education and training, therefore, must be given the top priority if advantages of ICTs are to be harnessed.
Indian economy is agriculture based and employs maximum workforce. Improvement in agriculture productivity can help in
reducing rural poverty. Adoption of ICT in agriculture will play an increasingly important role in crop production and natural
resource management.
The other critical factor is technological challenges for universal access to ICTs to bring down the network access cost. Two
impressive projects, named ‘Gramdoot’ and ‘Gyandoot’ are being implemented in some states for e-governance and to provide
Public Tele-Info Centers for voice and Internet access. One is through use of optical fiber technology using rapidly deployable
cost effective, low capacity, fiber optic cable and the other is based on wireless local loop/V-SAT technology, However, so far
only small parts of some states have been covered and large parts of the rural area are still uncovered due to financial constraints
and absence of a workable business model. Universal Service Obligation fund or Government subsidy is also in place to speed
up universal access coverage. Work is also going on development application programs and content in different local languages.
The need is, a coordinated effort through a nodal agency under the central government with full involvement of the industry, state
governments/local administration, education, medical and agriculture sectors, to provide universal access to ICTs with important
services/information integrated, to the rural masses. ITU has also plans to provide guidance and help, as these objectives are part
of WSIS 2003 declaration.

1. Introduction tructure facilities and hardly any employment opportu-

nities except agriculture or manual labor in the fields.
Majority of the rural population in India have very Not very many people in villages can afford even an
low per capita income, low literacy rate, poor infras- ordinary telephone connection at home and hence the
concept of village public telephones has become a stan-
1 Presented at ITU Telecom Asia 2004, Busan, South Korea, 7–11 dard practice in rural areas of developing countries. In-
September 2004. ternet and broadband access are now considered essen-

ISSN 1084-4678/04/$17.00  2004 – IOS Press and the authors. All rights reserved
 N. Chhibber / Enhancing Developmental Opportunities by Promoting ICT Use 191

tial for economic and social development of a coun- Tribunal has also been formed. While world-class
try. The Department of Telecommunications (DoT), telecommunication services including broadband ser-
Government in India has, therefore, already started up- vices are now available in urban areas, rollout of net-
grading the public telephone kiosks into Public Tele- works in rural areas still remains a cause of concern.
Info Centers, where voice, data (high-speed Internet) Major responsibility of rural communication services
and video conference facilities will be provided to the and its modernization are still with the Government
nearby citizens on nominal charges for availing on-line owned incumbent operator as there has been a general
services. Similar initiatives are needed by education, reluctance amongst new entrants to meet the rollout
health and state administration departments to plan and obligation in rural areas due to low return on invest-
provide funding for integrating ICTs in schools, health ment.
centers and for providing on-line government services The Government of India has set up a separate sec-
tion for administrating Universal Service Obligation
to the people.
Fund in the year 2002, under Ministry of Commu-
Agriculture is the primary occupation of nearly 70
nications for implementing Universal service support
percent of Indian population, but it contributes only 23
policy. The funds created by Universal Service Levy
percent of GDP. There is thus a need for improving its
are spent in rural and remote areas on both public ac-
productivity and efficiency. The economy of the agri- cess telephones and individual household telephones.
culture sector largely remains vulnerable to whether USO Fund is provided for installation of new Village
uncertainties, market inefficiencies and investment re- Public Telephones (VPTs), additional rural community
lated hurdles. ICT can educate and encourage farm- phones in villages where population exceeds 2000 and
ers to diversification of agriculture into less explored replacement of VPTs installed before 1.4.2002 (not
areas like horticulture, floriculture and oilseeds. Sim- working satisfactorily due to out-dated wireless tech-
ilarly, use of ICT can encourage organized financial nology). Up-gradation of existing VPTs in a phased
institutions for lending cash to farmers and make in- manner to Public Tele-Info Centers (PTICs) is also to be
tegrated risk management approach through insurance undertaken to provide wideband applications like tele-
cover available. This will not only make the agricul- education, tele- medicine, based on two basic channels
ture economy to grow faster but would also stimulate of 128 Kbps. Implementation is through multi-layered
off-form rural employment to village youths. bidding process on least quoted subsidy support basis.
Government of India has set a target of 20 million The Government of India has reaffirmed its commit-
broadband connections and 40 million Internet sub- ment to faster development of rural infrastructure. The
scribers for the country by the year 2010. This includes Government in its budget for the year 2004–2005 has
at least one Public Tele-Info Centers in each village allotted Rupees 80 billion (US$1.75 billion) for rural
with a population exceeds 2000. Even the World Sum- infrastructure development that includes telecommuni-
mit on Information Society (WSIS) convened by ITU cation services. Ownership restriction has been a ma-
in December 2003 at Geneva has outlined a target to jor obstacle for foreign companies interested in enter-
bring ICTs within the reach of half the world’s popu- ing Indian markets. It has been estimated that to meet
lation and with all schools, villages and hospitals by an overall projected growth of 7–8 percent; the Indian
telecom sector would require around US$50 billion, a
2015.
requirement that can only be fulfilled through interna-
But India has the capability to reach the target earlier
tional funds. To overcome the ownership restriction,
and integrate ICTs providing affordable Internet/simple
the Government of India has envisaged raising the FDI
broadband connectivity of minimum speed of 256 Kbps
limit for telecom sector from the present 49% to 74%.
to meet the requirements of e-learning, e-governance, Recent studies and international experience of fast
tele-health, e-transactions and entertainment. emerging economies have shown that broadband In-
ternet is the next Internet evolution and will have sig-
nificant impact on enhancing developmental opportu-
2. Policy Approaches for Faster Rollout of Rural nities and global competitiveness. The gap between
Communications high speed Internet that has become an important ICT
service and simple broadband is reducing to meet the
Liberalization of telecommunication sector in India needs of applications like e-learning, e-governance, e-
started in early nineties and by 1997 an effective and health, but its growth and the business to remain vi-
a fairly independent Regulator was in place. Sub- able will also depend on its uses like e-commerce and
sequently the Telecom Disputes Settlement Appellate increased consumption of entertainment.
192 N. Chhibber / Enhancing Developmental Opportunities by Promoting ICT Use

3. Technological Issues for Affordable Service consideration. Even though satellite connections are
more expensive than other methods of delivery, they
On the technology side, two major developments provide a viable option to rural and remote areas that
have taken place. One is the rapid growth of cellular have no other real broadband options. However, for
mobile with data capability and the other is Internet point-to-multipoint occasional use applications where
Protocol (IP) enabled technologies and services. Tra- bandwidth is required on a part-time basis, satellite
ditional voice only telephones in villages are no longer proves more cost effective. Satellite operators offer ser-
considered adequate to bridge the digital gap between vices either direct to end- users or to resellers who pro-
the urban and rural services. Villages need to be pro- vide last mile access through wireless/cable network.
vided Voice, data and video for Internet and other on- The reliability of V-SAT connectivity is very high.
line services for education, health, governance, trans-
actions and for management of agriculture resources 3.2. Terrestrial Wireless Technologies
and development etc.
The main access paths for bridging the last mile for
The last ten years have witnessed spectacular growth
ICT connectivity to Public Tele-Info Centers (PTIC),
in the usage of wireless and short message services
health centers, schools, business and residences are
copper loop, cable TV network, terrestrial wireless ac- over cellular mobile networks. While voice and SMS
cess, satellite communication and fiber cable. With are likely to continue as major revenue earners for the
hardly any existing copper access in rural areas, Dig- years to come, there is a lot of work going on to use
ital Subscriber Line (DSL) on copper is not a rele- broadband wireless technologies and delivering of high
vant access solution in rural communications in India. speed data to offices, homes and the users on move.
Similarly the existing cable TV services in villages do There are a number of problems that are to be resolved,
not conform to any standards, because no standard ex- when such broadband services are delivered over the
ists, and need substantive expenditure for up-gradation wireless channel, especially the access part of the net-
to bring the network to offer advanced ICT services. work. The business case for broadband wireless access
In some states (Rajasthan and Punjab) low cost fiber becomes attractive only when it co-exists with 2.5/3G
optic cables have been successfully used at competi- and co-working with wire-line/optical cable. Broad-
tive prices in providing broadband access in villages band wireless access is considered a viable business
for public kiosks under the Government funded project model when compared to building out new DSL net-
named ‘Gramdoot’, (Village messenger). works, reworking/augmenting the lines that exist or up-
Thus terrestrial wireless for far flung villages and grading the existing cable TV plant to carry two-way
satellite technology for certain remote areas are the traffic is expensive.
most cost effective solutions for access technology for One of the attractive and cost effective wireless op-
rural communications. However no single technology tions that have emerged globally is IEEE 802 series
can be the solution for all types of terrain and various standard. Internationally the spectrum required for
options are available that can be improved with inno- these technologies are 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands, which
vative approach. are de-licensed and free for broadband usage. The low
cost of IEEE 802.11 (Wi Fi) equipment and deployment
3.1. Satellite Technology makes this an attractive business option for operators
to provide broadband access to multiple users located
Satellite based services offer an alternative to DSL in close-by area.
and cable networks for providing broadband and Inter- Under the Department of IT, Government of India
net services. Very Small Aperture Terminal (V-SAT) initiated project, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT),
and Direct-to-Home (DTH) technologies can deliver Madras is working on rural 802.11 networks that will
last mile connections, but the cost of both V-SAT and solve the last 25 Km problem, as many rural communi-
DTH are high due to reasons which can be overcome. ties in India are now within 25 Km of fiber. Earlier this
Presently the rules and regulations for the use of satel- organization had developed corDECT technology for
lite make this option very expensive due to restrictions providing access technology for public kiosks in vil-
on use of open sky policy, laid down minimum size for lages. The corDECT based access networks have been
V-SAT dish and throughput, and high satellite license set up in number of villages, but work on maximum
and spectrum fees. All these points are however under speed of 70 Kbps only.
 N. Chhibber / Enhancing Developmental Opportunities by Promoting ICT Use 193

Wi Max, which is based on IEEE 802.16 standard, Basic education is crucial to eradication of poverty
is expected to be another wireless replacement for a and in bringing awareness towards improving the liv-
wired broadband. Wi Max, which is expected to be ing standards of the masses. There has been massive
commercially available soon, will cover range up to expansion of schooling facilities during the last two
50 Km and speed of 4 Mbps in fixed point-to-point or decades in India but schools in villages are badly man-
point-to-multipoint configuration. aged, under staffed, resulting in poor quality of edu-
CDMA 450, a CDMA 2000 technology in 450 MHz cation. The worst sufferers are the girls belonging to
range is likely to become a highly efficient 2.5/3 G tech- the urban slums and villages. There is already aware-
nology in broadband functionality. Its biggest advan- ness among the policy makers that modern informa-
tage is larger coverage, as cell site is 50–60 km radius, tion and communication technologies (ICTs) can help
resulting in considerable lower costs than a wire-line in increasing spread and quality of education in the ed-
network. The technology can theoretically serve rural ucation sector. But integrating ICT with conventional
areas as a fixed wireless deployment as a DSL alterna- education system to provide universal access to good
tive as it offers speeds up to 2.4 Mbps. But standards quality primary education is a big challenge.
are yet to evolve, and may take about 2 years to develop In India roughly 200 million children are in the age
for commercial deployment. group of 6–14 years. One-third of them have never been
Wireless connectivity is ideal method for outdoor to a school or are the dropouts, despite Shiksha Ab-
kiosks as well as for connectivity in remote located vil- hiyan (Education Initiative) scheme started by the Gov-
lage schools. It is important that regulatory environ- ernment in 2003. The school drop out ratio is nearly
ment should encourage competition and co-existence 25 percent. The quality of rural schooling is often in-
of each technology. This will ensure world-class qual- adequate, as reflected in low level of learning achieve-
ity service at attractive prices and allow for fast Internet ment and high drop out rate. The ever-improving de-
and broadband growth. velopment of Internet, fast spreading use of computer
multimedia technology, increasing availability of net-
work bandwidth has given new working concept to the
4. Application of ICT for Development of Rural modern education.
Masses In developing countries not all schools even in metros
and big cities have computer networks and equipment
Agriculture sector has a vital place in India’s eco- that are up-to-date. However more and more students
nomic development. In India, agriculture output per are learning on computer systems at schools (where
unit area is one of the lowest in the world. There is available), at work, at home or at computer training in-
a need to create awareness amongst the farmers about stitutes. Distance learning by some of these traditional-
managing healthy crop production, market support and aged students as well as many older adults is becoming
financial support through bank loans etc. ICTs for the popular, particularly with those who cannot afford or
masses can become useful, only if people are able to have missed campus education.
get information they need for improving the knowledge To bring IT learning to every child in India, an orga-
and efficiency of their professions and approach vari- nization named Shiksha India, a venture of Confedera-
ous agencies on-line for services like payment of bills tion of Indian Industries (CII) and encouraged by Times
for utilities, taxes, admissions to hospitals, educational Foundation, is functioning to increase earning capacity
institutes etc. Once people become familiar in use of and to promote entrepreneurship. The course has been
ICTs and its advantages, its use will keep on increasing introduced in schools for higher classes, and supplied
among the masses. free of cost. Computer labs of 60,000 schools have
Literacy is another factor, which influences use of been interconnected to facilitate computer usage, Inter-
ICT. In India, around 35 percent adult people are illit- net access, and academic services. In another project,
erate and women literacy as high as 50 percent. In rural Microsoft has signed a MoU with some of the state
areas illiteracy is higher and even, out of literate people governments, aimed at accelerating IT literacy in the
only 10 percent people are fluent in English. Some states. There are other similar projects like ‘Honey
work is going on development of application programs Bee’ network that has been created by an NGO with the
and content in local languages, but with as many as 16 backing of the World Bank for ‘Information for Devel-
different main languages in use, the progress is slow opment Program’ by providing public access points in
due to enormous effort required. villages, and ‘Computer based Functional Literacy’ to
194 N. Chhibber / Enhancing Developmental Opportunities by Promoting ICT Use

teach children and adults in basic education. But until tion satellite, dubbed ‘EDUSAT’ in August 2004. The
Public Tele Info Centers having facilities for voice, data satellite will carry five Ku band transponders and is the
and video are provided in villages and computer train- first of several intended to link classrooms across the
ing is introduced in rural area schools, benefits from country for interactive learning.
such projects will remain limited. At the same time,
emphasis on village public telephones should continue
so that more and more people living in rural and remote 5. Some ICT Integrated Rural Projects
areas have access to basic telephony service for their There is a healthy competition in Indian states to
use. set up its own dedicated networks to bring the benefits
Distance education has so far been mainly developed of ICTs to the villagers living in these states. Ironi-
and is imparted for secondary school and university cally there is hardly any project developed for improv-
level education. Not much developmental work has ing primary education in schools to attract children for
been done for primary and upper primary school e- increasing literacy level.
learning. There is thus a need to restructure e-education Some of the projects being implemented for agricul-
to assist schools, teachers and students for boosting ture productivity and for e-governance are given here.
literacy in rural and sub-urban areas.
The new telecommunication techniques with con- 5.1. Rural ICT Centers for Management of
vergence of technologies and web based Internet must Agriculture Resources and Development
be exploited to achieve faster access of quality pri-
mary education. Some of the areas, where ICTs can be The basic concept of integrating ICT in agricul-
helpful in improving primary education in developing ture sector is to provide more and effective informa-
countries are as given below: tion that can reduce the uncertainty farmers/producers
face in decision-making and unmeasured variability in
– Improvement in quality of instruction. agronomic conditions. Rural ICT Centers can play a
– Teacher shortage. Overcrowded classes. Single significant role in providing such information devel-
teacher can manage more students. oped by agriculture professionals and agriculture re-
– Going to school could be made attractive and stim- search institutes. This new information will simulta-
ulating to the child. neously improve farm profitability and reduce environ-
– Effective teaching aids and extra curriculum. Sub- ment spillover from agriculture.
stitute for textbooks. A program for pest disease information as part of
– It can add art and craft skill, color and music. its bio-informatics initiative for four major crops i.e.,
– Better teaching methods in place of copying and paddy, coconut sugar and cotton is being developed
cramming. by Indian Institute of Chemical Technology in coor-
– Standardization of teaching. dination with Indian Farmers and Industries Alliance
– Difficult habitation pattern can be covered faster Federation for implementing in 22 villages in Andhra
and economically. Pradesh state. This part of the rural action plan by the
Department of IT, Ministry of Communication is for
Thus the first job is to improve penetration of rural the development of village information centers called
telecommunications, so that at least one Public Tele- ‘Samadhan Kendras’, meaning ‘Problem Solving Cen-
Info Center having simultaneous voice and high speed ters’ in local language. The Center aims to provide an
Internet is available in every village and the connec- integrated information system using database contain-
tivity extended to the nearby schools and health cen- ing baseline information both on health and agriculture.
ters. The technology should be such that it makes A similar project interconnecting 70 villages through
the teacher’s job easier, allowing them to interact with Internet has been initiated to serve the information
students in a familiar manner, but also provides them needs of farmers in the state of Maharashtra. The
facilities that allow them to investigate new ways of project named ‘Warna Wired Village’ is meant to pro-
teaching and learning. Work is already in hand in the vide information on different crop cultivation practices
concerned departments in the Ministry of Education to of major crops, pest and disease control, marketing in-
develop a model to introduce ICTs in teaching and to formation, dairy and sugarcane processing. The Gov-
aid teachers training for its use. Indian Space Research ernment of India through National Informatics Center,
Organization (ISRO), a Government of India project Government of Maharashtra and Warna Co-operative
will be launching India’s first Educational Communica- Society has jointly implemented the project.
 N. Chhibber / Enhancing Developmental Opportunities by Promoting ICT Use 195

5.2. e-Choupal by ITC The kiosks are linked to central server located at
the district council’s office through optical fiber and
e-Choupal has been set up in India by International copper cables using dial-up connections. Along with
Business Division of the multinational company Inter- e-governance, e-commerce and e-learning services are
national Tobacco Company (ITC) to establish a more also offered. Each service is on chargeable basis but
efficient agriculture supply chain aimed at delivering the charges are very nominal keeping in view the af-
sustainable value to its customers around the world. fordability of the rural people. This program that has
The model has been specifically designed to tackle the brought computer literacy and IT awareness in each dis-
challenges posed by fragmented farms, weak infras- trict covers over 10 million rural people. Tribal farm-
tructure and involvement of numerous intermediaries, ers are able to get better returns for their agriculture
as it is seen in India. Choupal literally means ‘village produce by utilizing the services offered through this
assembly of farmers’ in local language. program.
Launched in the year 2000, e-Choupal reaches more
than 18,000 villages through 3000 kiosks across five 5.4. corDECT Technology-based Rural Network
states and adding more links is increasing the chain.
The problems encountered while setting up and manag- corDECT is a wireless local loop technology, jointly
ing these kiosks are mainly lack of infrastructure, poor developed by a group of professionals, academia and
reliability of power supply, non-availability of telecom industry. A separate company that implements the
connectivity and bandwidth. The biggest challenge has setting up of village kiosks based on Local Service
been of imparting skills to first-time Internet users in Provider (LSP) model handles the business part. This
remote and inaccessible villages. ITC has set a target model takes care of elements like Internet connectivity,
of covering 100,000 villages across 15 states. broadband growth needs like infrastructure for access,
e-Choupal uses ICT to cluster to all the value chain access device and content. This program is primarily
participants, remove intermediaries and provides infor- working in the southern states of India, mainly Tamil
mation and market signals directly to farmers. Village Nadu state.
kiosks are managed by farmers themselves and enable The foremost achievement of this Group is to having
direct access to information in local language on the been able to bring down the cost per rural line from
weather, market prices, disseminate knowledge on sci- the existing US$800–1000 to US$400. The corDECT
entific practices and risk management, and also facili- wireless local loop (WLL) model plans to provide a
telephone and Internet kiosk in every village, to be op-
tate the sale of farm inputs and purchase of farm pro-
erated by a local entrepreneur, who will also make other
duce from the farmer’s doorsteps. This process greatly
services available to the villagers. The kiosk will con-
reduces transaction costs, resulting in benefits to the
sist of a corDECT wall set with its accessories includ-
farmers as well as to the ITC.
ing a telephone with its meter, a multimedia personal
computer, power back up and software in Indian lan-
5.3. Gyandoot guages. All supplied to the entrepreneur for the equiva-
lent of US$800 only. Since bank loans and government
Gyandoot, which literally means ‘Knowledge Mes- assisted schemes to promote rural entrepreneurship are
senger’ in local language, is an e-governance program available, the local operator will need about US$200
jointly implemented and managed by public private to set up a kiosk. The kiosk will provide voice and
partnership. There are three entities involved in this en- Internet (at 35/70 Kbps) services simultaneously and
deavor: Gyandoot Council, the district government and hence the break even can be reached quickly.
the kiosk manager. Gyandoot is a non-profit organiza- It is planned to divide the country into service areas
tion, while the kiosk manager is a private individual, (operation units) approximately corresponding to a sub
mainly a local entrepreneur. The District Magistrate is district with a radius of 25 km. Fortunately 85 per-
the president of the Council and the Council has a Chief cent of the sub district headquarters have optical fiber,
Executive Officer as its secretary. There is also a Pro- which can provide backbone for telecom and Internet
gram Manager, who is a paid employee of the Council. connectivity. The corDECT technology based Relay
The Gyandoot Council is financially independent and Base Station (RBS) will cover an area of 25-km radius,
the state government plays the role of a facilitator only using DECT (Digital Enhanced Cordless Technology)
and ensures timely delivery of e-governance services. frequencies. Wide spread deployment of this technol-
196 N. Chhibber / Enhancing Developmental Opportunities by Promoting ICT Use

ogy is underway by BSNL (the Government controlled satellite for broadband access as V-SAT and DTH
incumbent company), private basic services operators (Direct-to-Home) services. Rules and regulations
and systems have also been deployed in other devel- on limiting of technical specifications of maximum
oping countries i.e. Brazil, Argentina, Fiji, Kenya, throughput and minimum satellite dish size should
Nigeria, Yemen, Iran, Egypt, Thailand, Nepal, Angola, be relaxed.
Tunisia and Madagascar. – A co-coordinating committee under the nodal cen-
Presently the data speeds are limited to maximum of tral government agency, like Ministry of Com-
70 Kbps when voice is not in use and along with voice munications/Department of IT should be set up
it reduces to half, but the technology is meeting the to prepare time-bound plans for implementing
present service requirements. The Group is working projects of integrating ICTs in education, health
on developing the equipment to upgrade the kiosks to services, agriculture information and deploy-
ing e-governance. The Committee should also
speeds up to 256 Kbps.
be responsible to resolve inter-departmental is-
sues concerning broadband services amongst the
departments of telecommunications, IT, health,
6. Measures Needed education and state administrations. Mem-
bers/representatives from the concerned associa-
Development of ICTs has traditionally been confined tions of ICT industry be incorporated in the com-
to urban areas in developing countries and rural com- mittee as important members.
munication has remained neglected. In the initial stage,
there is not likely to be enough demand in rural areas
to justify investment required to create a simple but 7. Conclusion
effective network covering vast rural areas. However,
Inadequate infrastructure continues to remain a ma-
the situation is changing and the tremendous demand
jor constraint to rural progress. Telecommunication
for rural telecommunication in India is being recog- has recently been included in the category of basic in-
nized. The agro-based industry is coming up in villages frastructures and an important support service needed
that are going to propel rapid development and raising for rapid growth and modernization of various sectors
living standard in rural economy. of economy. ICTs can help in an effective way to com-
Measures that could facilitate faster growth of bat poverty and improving the reach of education and
telecommunication services in rural as well as urban healthcare for rural masses.
areas are as given below: There is a need to integrate rural infrastructure with
– All government employees, teachers and health/ urban infrastructure. ICT is the most effective tool to
achieve this. Even simple broadband at data rates of
medical workers are trained for minimum skill re-
128/256 Kbps when available in villages could make
quired for computer operation.
villagers to access the same facilities that are available
– The Governments should organize e-literacy cam-
to city people. While e-governance projects in various
paigns in rural and sub-urban areas and set up IT states are being taken up vigorously, the integration of
training centers to impart basic IT literacy to at ICT in other areas is rather slow. There is a need to
least one member in each family. launch a program to make at least one person in each
– Frequency bands in 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz spectrums family computer literate for basic usage.
should be released as unlicensed frequencies for The foremost need is to bring the quality of primary
use of wireless broadband services under IEEE education in villages to a satisfactory level. It is not
802 based standards. possible for the state governments or private sector to
– Standards be laid down and regulatory issues re- provide simple broadband connectivity in all the vil-
solved to make cable TV networks capable of pro- lages for schools, healthcare centers and community
viding broadband services. centers for making available services and information.
– Abolish/reduce duties, taxes; provide bandwidth The funds needed and the plan implementation is a
at lower prices and loans on easy financial options tremendous and complex task. It is therefore necessary
to unemployed youths to encourage setting up ICT that the Central Government with help from interna-
kiosks in villages and sub-urban areas. tional agencies like World Bank, IMF, ITU, should un-
– Streamline the procedures and policies by cre- dertake this task, involving the industry and voluntary
ating suitable regulatory environment for use of organizations.