GKP Gender and ICT Award 2003 - Winner: Individual/Community-Based Initiative (Capacity Building).

The project e Seva (e services) in the district of West Godavari, in the province of Andhra Pradesh in India, was initiated as a tool to introduce ICT in the rural areas, especially to women.

Using ICT, the project provides these people with access to various C2C (citizen-to-citizen) and C2G (citizen-to-government) services.

Web-enabled rural kiosks termed e Seva centres, have been established at the mandal (a sub district unit of administration) level. A unique feature about these centres is that they are run and managed by the women from self-help groups, positioning them as information leaders, and helping to bridge the gender divide.

The women's groups act as change agents while drawing strength from the project. ICT has played a crucial role in facilitating this change.

Another important aspect of the project is that it replaces the traditional form of governance and its accompanying deficiencies with a modern, more open, transparent and responsive service delivery system.

The e Seva centres run on a district portal that allows access to various citizen centric services. These services range from the issuance of various certificates to getting information about programmes and also go to the extent of allowing citizens to network with each other for mutually beneficial transactions. Citizens can file grievances at these centres. Every grievance is acknowledged and transferred online for field action. They can also publicise their projects and goods through the portal for online auctions.

Even a marriage bureau has been operationalised so that prospective brides/grooms can place their bio-data online to attract suitable offers, thus making the search for life partners easier and more cost-effective.

Through the portal, the centres expect to provide a virtual meeting place for the citizens to discuss issues relating to their districts/villages, their problems and prospective solutions.

The citizens can freely interact with each other and post their ideas. This acts as an online forum for them to vent their grievances, air their opinions and cause necessary social change. It also provides an opportunity to conduct opinion polls on important topical issues leading to improved decision-making. The kiosks have also become an important mode of communication between the administration and the community. The initiative began in the year 2002 and has been steadily gaining ground.

The benefit is that rural villagers no longer have to travel for miles and go through lengths of red tape in order to get financial grants or access various government services.

It has empowered the women's self-help groups who own and run the kiosks. Moreover, the women who run the centres are trained to use ICT and they become information intermediaries and information leaders. This change in their status has helped improve their relative bargaining power.

Most of these self-help groups come from the poorest segments of the society and the project helps them achieve economic independence. With almost over 80 kiosks operating in the district, the project has been able to carry out more than 300,000 transactions relating to various C2C and G2C services.

These centres have been able to deliver 120,000 certificates while over Rs 50 million has been collected for the payment of electricity bills without any hitches. All the centres are doing good business and becoming self-sustainable. They are earning anything between Rs 6,000 to Rs 15,000 per month. Over 5,000 various grievances from citizens have been channelled through this project; over 4,000 of them have been redressed.

The project has helped in the creation of a knowledge and information economy thereby bringing in more opportunities and prosperity to the impoverished areas of this district. It helps dispel the myth that IT solutions are not for the poor and not for women.

Abstracted from "ICT for Development Success Stories: Youth, Poverty, Gender" - A Knowledge for Development Publication Series of the Global Knowledge Partnership (GKP) ISBN 983-2588-05-7    This publication can be read in full here.