Print Version Self help groups show the way Author : Dr Jyoti Jaju Date added : 2003-09-26 Brief Project Background These is a story of Ambica and many such women living in rural parts of India and are being deprived of the fruits of development and are at the fringe of scheme of things for ages. It has been quite often said that lasting and sustainable development can be achieved only if these marginalized communities are mainstreamed. This equally is a story of the many unfortunate and impoverished citizens who continue to live at margins waiting for the delivery systems to improve and come to their rescue. While this has been repeated many times, the administration in the District West Godavari in India visualized that the lack of empowerment was primarily due to information gaps and thought that once the right access is ensured, a real change in the outlook of these communities can be made possible. The administration conceptualized and started a project to strengthen the women self help groups in the district and through them allow access to various government services to the citizens in a user friendly and transparent manner. The initiative uses the tool of Information Technology to further this objective. Technology is a major factor in all round development of society. Mass production technologies of industrial revolution triggered economic development in the world. Information Technology, though, at a nascent level now, has already permeated into various disciplines because of its all pervasive nature. The low capital requirement of this technology and adaptability for deploying human resources gave an opportunity to the administration here to innovate and lead and the administration quickly grabbed it. ‘Mind over matter’ is not just a popular euphuism. It’s a reality that highlights the supremacy of the brain and thinking ability of individuals. The administration here has displayed the same. The project e Seva (e services) began in the district West Godavari which falls in the province of Andhra Pradesh in India. The project is a tool to bridge the digital divide in the rural areas and has used Information Technology for providing access to various C2C (citizen-to-citizen) and C2G (citizen-to-government) services to the people living in rural areas. Under this project web enabled rural kiosks have been established at the mandal (a sub district unit of administration) level. The unique thing about these centres is that they are run and managed by the women self help groups and have been able to position the rural women as information leaders to help bridge the gender divide. Taking cue from the idiom ‘think globally, act locally’, the computerized package and the district portal have been developed in house with a flexible management structure. The project was monitored and headed at the level of the District Collector, the members of the district self employment agencies and the district computer centre became copartners in this management team. The district training centre provided the training and consultancy support to the project. The district computer centre has a pivotal responsibility in improving upon the project design and also helps in evolving new features and services in the district portal. It took them three months to complete this process. They also decided to give some grant to the women groups as part of the capital cost of the kiosk. The women self help groups were rigorously trained to handle the computer and the package. They have now been positioned as information intermediaries helping in improving their relative bargaining power over the men. While on the one hand, the kiosks run by the women groups act as a tool for their socio economic empowerment, the citizens on the other hand coming from the poorer economic strata of the rural areas are the major beneficiaries of this project. The initiative began in the year 2002 and has been gaining grounds day by day. "Ultimately, the government worker of the future has to be a knowledge worker" . Democracy as we all heard in our high school has been defined as government of the people, for the people and by the people. While the first two goals have been to an extent met, the true test of democracy lies in it transiting to the state where it is administered by the people themselves. In order to realize the latter dream, an effort has been made in this project. The Project is an effort to bring government close to the people rather it makes government possible by the people. The fully computerized e seva centres are on a district wide network connected through the dial up circuits and interact with the district server that act as a remote access server. In order to save on the networking cost, project has developed a unique synchronization tool that allows the kiosks to work offline and allows the databases to be periodically synchronized in minimal time. This has huge potential for replication in hinterland elsewhere and should be considered as the USP of this project. The district West Godavari has a total population of over 3.8 million out of which over 70% i.e., 2.1 million lives in rural areas. The district has over 22000 women self help groups which have been formed over the years to achieve the twin objectives of gender empowerment and rural economic growth. The women population in this district which is over 1.8 million has previously been subjected to exploitation and comparatively inferior treatment vis-à-vis their male counterparts. The project therefore envisaged a strategy that can catapult this women’s movement to a different plane and allow their evolution as information leaders. The e Seva centres run on a district portal (http://www.westgodavari.org) that allows access to various citizen centric services. These services range from the issuance of various certificates to getting information about various programmes and also go to the extent of networking citizens to each other and allow them the flexibility and convenience of mutually beneficial transactions. The horizontal portal is eventually put on the global World Wide Web and thus allows vertical integration with the expanding frontiers of universal knowledge and information bank. The project allows access to hitherto marginalized communities and therefore helps bridge the existing information gaps and is a step towards digital unite. The project offers host of services to the citizens living in the rural areas. The project allows citizens to file their grievance and applications for various government programmes in these centres. Every grievance is acknowledged and transferred online for bringing in field level action These areas range from getting a loan under self employment schemes to applying for an old age pension or asking for subsidized agricultural inputs. The project works on the principle that the citizen need not go himself to the authorities if someone can carry his grievance and in this case if a telephone wire can do that, where is the need for them to act otherwise? The Citizens now need not wait if there is a drinking water problem or a non functioning Fair Price Shop or a government functionary not doing his duty. All this is only one click away now. The information relating to land plays a very important role. These may include primary information about land presented in terms of its geological information like the shape, size, land forms, soils; economic information related to land use, irrigation and crops; and the information pertaining to the legal rights, registration and taxation. The farmers now approach the kiosks and can ask for the Land Records abstract or can get a mutation to their land records done (change in land title) at kiosks, get acknowledgement for the same and can monitor its disposal. One fundamental reason for the rural-urban divide is the lack of well developed markets in the rural areas hindering efficient sale and purchase of goods. The project has been trying to fill in these information gaps and allows the citizens the facility to post their products for online auctions at any of the centres. The kind of products that can be put for auction may include agricultural commodities, farm implements, land or buildings etc, literally anything that a rural household would like to buy or sell in the rural areas. The rates prevailing in other markets elsewhere are also available for the citizens to watch the trends and make the right decision after weighing all options. The citizens require a friendlier environment to pay their dues be it the payment of electricity bills or the telephone bills or the land revenue. The Kiosks now offers the facility to the citizens so that while transacting other services, they can clear off their pending accounts as well. The provision of basic and primary health care is the principal duty of the welfare state. There are however many situations when expert advices is needed and instead of the patient traveling all over, the request can travel on wire and the right prescription can travel back. The portal acts as a round the clock tele-agriculture helpline. The only thing farmer needs to do is to come to the centre and place his question for answer by the expert. The farmers are also able to see the real time weather and accurate forecasts pertaining to their area for planning their agri-practices. Besides this, a marriage bureau has been operationalized through the portal so that prospective brides/grooms can place their bio-data eliciting suitable offers and gradually as things move along, a huge record of eligible wed-seekers is created making search for life partners easier and cost effective. The Centres through the portal expects to provide a virtual meeting place for the citizens to discuss issues relating to the district/villages, its problems and prospective solutions. The citizens can now freely interact with each other to post their ideas. This acts as an online forum for them to ventilate their grievances, air their opinions and cause necessary social change. It also provides opportunity to conduct opinion polls on the important topical issues leading to improved decision making. The digitized inputs on computer enabled education are being made available in these centres so that the analytical and thinking abilities of the rural students is enriched opening to them the advanced frontiers of knowledge. The Portal through the kiosks also enables the administration to pass down important social communications and advocacies for broadcast to the communities. To quote, “e-seva in West Godavari district is seen as addressing several issues that are of Concern in ICT interventions -- through its multi sectoral inclusion of self-help groups, women, and innovative services as part of the e-governance solution.” http://www.i4donline.net Results The project has had a tremendous impact in furthering the gender and digital unite in this district. On the one hand, it has been able to buttress the women self help groups while on the other hand it has been able to provide the civic services to the citizens in the user friendly and hassle free manner. Ever since the project has been started it is generated tremendous goodwill both for the administration and for the self help groups. With almost over 80 kiosks operating in the district the project has been able to carryout more than 300000 transactions relating to various C2C and G2C services so far. These centres have been able to deliver 120000 certificates while an amount of over Rs 50 millions have been collected as electricity bills without any hitch. All these centres are doing good business and are becoming self sustainable. They are earning anything between Rs 6000 to Rs 15000 per month and are providing tremendous ease to the citizens to access government services. Many of the centres have also been adopting innovative methods of revenue generation. Somebody has started doing VoIP while somebody is doing bulk data processing to improve their earnings. They could make lot of money for giving the printouts of examination results this year. The students also were happy as they could get their results in time without moving from corner to corner. Governments enter into the daily lives of the citizens in many ways. There is a fair degree of discontent amongst the citizens about the delivery of these services. The craving for better services couldn’t have been stronger. Everybody wants an outlet to report their individual or communal grievance and would be very happy if the same is attended to with alacrity and promptness. The project allows citizens to file their grievance in these centres. Every grievance is acknowledged and transferred online for bringing in field level action. We have also so far received over 5000 different grievances from citizens through this project out of which over 4000 of them pertaining to various problems have been redressed. The real time summary statistics and performance summary statement of the individual departments can be seen and verified. The citizens can verify and track the status of its disposal online. As a result, the self help groups belonging to women like Ambika are drawing strength from the project and on the other hand buttressing the project with their existing strengths, a win-win situation for the twosome. The interconnectivity and linkage with the citizen database also helps in weeding out bogus and repeat cases. The old age pensions being given in this project were computerized and put on the project website along with the photographs and the citizen identification number helping the administration weed out over 7000 bogus names saving over Rs. 7 million yearly for the state. Over 110000 certificates have so far been issued to the citizens that tantamount to a saving of over Rs. 30 million to the citizens, an indirect cost that the hapless citizen incurs due to rampant corruption in issuance of such certificates. The project has been able to support development of a citizen centric land records system resulting in evolution of a transparent and effective land record delivery system which fully addresses the insecurities and concerns of the farmers. The process of mutation (change in land title) was very cumbersome before. Applications were being given to village officials who virtually enjoyed discretion of either processing them or not. As records were maintained in decentralised manner, there was no reporting mechanism available at the district level about the pendency of such applications. Lack of any monitoring mechanism in the manual system made farmers amenable to all pressures from the hierarchy of the Department. The project has been able to redress this to a great extent. They then get their updated land record in a fixed time frame without the need of approaching any authority. As against earlier time of 70-200 days, mutation now require less than 30 days, that too without going to any government office. The project has also opened the possibility for the self help groups to market their products directly without any middlemen to citizens horizontally within the district and vertically outside. Under the project, the women self help groups through these e-seva centres have so far collected over 125067 bills amounting to Rs.48 millions without any hitch. The individual departments have the benefit of expeditious collections and can also save on collection costs and at the same time also monitor their collection performance. The matrimonial columns made available in this project have been so far utilized by over 250 prospective wed seekers. 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. The project has also induced transparency in the implementation of the government programs and has facilitated weeding out ineligible cases so that corresponding benefits can be passed down to the needy. Ambika who was relegated to sitting at home and doing the daily chores was at the mercy of her husband previously. She had no choice but to lead a sub optimal existence. But now the situation looks much different, Ambika not just stands on her own feet but enjoys a pivotal position in her village. She can hardly believe that a computer in hand could so easily wipe out the gaps that had existed for ages. Her happiness has no bounds. The project has already been awarded the 1st prize for the National IT Awards 2003 by the Computer Society of India. Lessons The Project recognizes that no matter what the rhetoric is, real right to information is possible only if the information is put into the public domain and new technologies provide the most cost effective solutions for doing that. An Information Technology project in order to gain wider acceptability requires the active and willing participation of various stakeholders. The various stakeholders in this project viz. the women self help groups who come from the lowest socio economic strata have to be rigorously trained not just on the usage of computer but also on the processes which governs the entire project. Besides the initial training, continuous skill upgradation programmes are being taken up to keep them live and updated on various aspects related to the project. The success of this project can be attributed to the back office computerization of the various government departments. Government employees at various levels also needed sensitization and exposure to the Information Technology needs of their departments and to the project concepts. The capacity building of the self help groups was also followed by a strategy to create mass awareness about the project. The success of the project hinges upon the commitment shown by the groups and also by the extent of their capacity building. The project therefore has a periodic system of assessing the strengths of the groups managing the kiosks. One of the indicators that is being used is the monthly turnover that the kiosks are able to do in financial terms. A kiosk doing better business provides a clear indication of its popularity amongst the wider cross section of the people. The project also employs the subsidiary methods of eliciting citizen response through surveys and media perceptions. The design of the project is as such that it allows all the stakeholders to get adequate return on their investments. All the centres are being run on commercially viable lines and user charges are collected for the services rendered by the centres. The equipment provided to each centre has also been given on finance through the banks. An upfront subsidy has also been given in the beginning to minimize the burden on the women groups. Once the centre is established, the groups are in a position to not just meet the incidental expenses but are also in a position to repay their commitments and to make adequate returns for consumption and ploughing back into the project. This therefore ensures that each stakeholder gets adequate returns which would sustain their interest in the continuance of the project. The design of the project is also from the ‘demand side’ rather than the ‘supply side’ as far as the citizens are concerned. Most of the services being offered in the project do not require publicity for their acceptance as the citizens were in any case availing these services before as well albeit with lot of hassles and harassment. That’s the reason why the citizens have accepted this project with folded hands and would not settle for anything lesser in future. The pressure from the citizens would keep the administration on their toes and would ensure its long term sustainability. The design of the project is fairly simple. On the one hand, the project has been able to spread the need for IT solutions and back end computerization amongst the various government departments while on the other hand has been able to provide access to various government services to the citizens through the kiosks run by the women self help groups on commercially viable lines. The additional burden on the government through this project is therefore almost minimal and the investment of the project is shared across the wider cross section of the people. That is the reason why the replication of this initiative should not be a problem anywhere else. The fully computerized e seva centres are on a district wide network connected through the dial up circuits and interact with the district server that act as a remote access server. In order to save on the networking cost, project has developed a unique synchronization tool that allows the kiosks to work offline and allows the databases to be periodically synchronized in minimal time. This has huge potential for replication in hinterland elsewhere and should be considered as the USP of this project. Land Records contain various useful data like soil type, Irrigation details, trees, crops grown, crop yield etc. All such data is very valuable for various administrative purposes. As data was previously manually maintained, it was not possible to collate and analyze such data resulting into mine of such useful data not being used in any meaningful way. The manual system of land records maintenance was highly opaque wherein the land records were maintained by the village accountants and therefore there was a situation of virtual monopoly of village accountants over these records. Records were not open to public scrutiny and were updated many a times only on various considerations. Many a times farmers faced harassment and extortion for not only provision of land records to them by the village officials but also for processing requests for change in land title. On many occasions such delay was unintentional. Even if a village accountant was willing to give such records in time, he was not available when farmers wanted him most as he was manning more than 4-5 villages. Therefore, there was no certainty about timely availability of such records when a farmer required them. This exemplifies that any project that purports to make meaningful progress in rural areas should therefore have the land record as its major bulwark. Another interesting aspect is that because of involvement of multiple stakeholders, the project has only taken two months from conception to commissioning and holds tremendous promise for all those who intend to replicate. A clear commitment and desire to take everybody along can make even seemingly impossible tasks look attainable and plausible. However still the task is not fully done, the agenda is still wide open. A gap that characterizes the rural areas and the marginalized communities that live here would still need many a mountains to be climbed. The need for a relentless and sustainable pursuit with a clear focus is the advice of the project authorities. To sum up with a quote, “A young IAS officer from AP cited how his was one of the first states to not only use IT but also advocate "open architecture" – patent-free software – for this purpose. In West Godavari district, where he worked, there is an "e-seva" or service portal, which makes it possible for anyone who is barely literate to access crucial data on such services as old-age pensions, women’s self-help groups and waiting lists in the housing department, while district supply officers place their requests through the net. A third of 18 such services had been computerised by the beginning of the year. This may not seem an earth-shattering advance for urbanites, but for the illiterate villager, such information may literally prove a matter of life or death”. (THE SUNDAY POST, KATHMANDU) Development Impacts Most of us can hardly be blamed for imagining that information technology (IT) conjures up the image of software "geeks" ensconced in plush IT parks on the outskirts of cities like Bangalore and Delhi. They are young professionals who earn a fortune, work virtually round the clock and are almost a breed apart, even if they burn out quickly. Not for a moment would one expect them to be in the least concerned about the well being of their less privileged fellow citizens. Development experts are only too painfully aware of the "digital divide", which separates all those who do not enjoy the benefits of being connected – not just to the Internet, but to the telephone itself – from those in the cities who take these things for granted. As we are constantly reminded at world development meets, there is a staggering number of people who have never made a phone call in their lives, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. This project has the potential to modify this paradigm. This project dispels a myth that the Information Technology solution is anti poor and is an unaffordable luxury to nations like India. One has to only realize that information technology is only a tool that influences the objective and if the objective is to make the system more transparent, open and accountable, there is no way it can be anti poor. Most of the rural areas suffer on account of lack of right information regarding the markets, products, agriculture, health, weather, education etc and if all this can be addressed through connectivity and information technology, a sea change can be brought in the conditions of the rural communities. This is why creation of a knowledge and information economy can bring in more opportunities and thereby prosperity to the impoverished areas than any other rhetoric. The project recognizes that and envisages that all the villages can become knowledge hubs and gain symbiotically from each other and derive benefits from the global networks. The philosophy behind this intervention is that Citizen always loathes approaching a government department for the fear of getting discourteous treatment and being subjugated to corrupt practices. The project therefore improves upon this interface and expects them to come to a centre run by their own peers, a place that is much more accountable, open, transparent and subject to public scrutiny. One fundamental reason for the rural-urban divide is the lack of well developed markets in the rural areas hindering efficient sale and purchase of goods. As a result most of the decisions made by the farmers and the rural poor are based on insufficient information and are therefore sub-optimal and in majority of the cases go against them. The middlemen present in all such areas therefore are having a field day and the citizens suffer. The project has been trying to fill in these information gaps and allows the citizens the facility to post their products for online auctions at any of the kiosks. In short, as days go by and as the citizens get used to this facility, it may trigger a chain reaction for opening up the window of opportunities to rural populace to have more informed choices in their trades. The right to information has now been recognized by the National Parliament; the kiosks through the District Portal allows access to all kinds of valuable information to the Citizens The advent of communication facilities like telephone, television etc have already widened the information base of the rural populace but these gains can become manifold if they are suitably harnessed by using this technology in its entirety. This also underscores the point that the advantages of Information Technology cannot be made limited to the few sections of the society and everybody has an equal right to access the same. Internet is now emerging as the biggest library and knowledge bank of all times thereby helping the citizens gain access to a brave new world of information. One of the objectives of the project has been to improve the transparency and accountability in government operations and to demystify the entire process that governs them. The project is a method in achieving the citizen centering of the various services being offered by the government and also helps in fixing the responsibilities of the various government departments to follow the citizen charter while delivering these services. It also helps in fixing up the accountability of the various departments with respect to the time they take to react to such citizen requests. The networking of citizens with each other for mutually beneficial transactions should be the ultimate objective for a vibrant civil society. Other than the government-citizen services, host of citizen-citizen (C2C) services are being rendered through this project. The kiosks being run by the women self help groups provide a virtual meeting place and a focal point for synergizing and pooling in their efforts. Instead of individual groups maintaining their own accounts, they are in a position to use the project computer for maintaining their internal lending records and also to enter into online transactions with their banks. Some of the banks also propose to put the ATM counters in some kiosks which would further facilitate the groups. As one feminist activist puts it, "Fire can be dangerous. It can burn and destroy and kill, but the same fire, when used judiciously, can also be used to nurture life, it can provide warmth and comfort and light..." If those elements of globalisation that promise benefits to all sections of the populace rather than just a few can be adopted, globalisation could well be redefined. In the West Godavari district of the state of Andhra Pradesh, for instance, e-seva kendrams (low-cost ICT centres) have been set up by Self Help Groups (SHGs) to bridge the rural-urban digital divide, and enable lower income groups to share information ( THE TRIBUNE) In short, this project is an ideal switch over from a representative to popular democracy. Project Information Organisation : Consultant , WHO URL : http://www.westgodavari.org/ Total budget in US$ : 400000 Country of activity : India Are there any partners involved : Self Employment Generation Agencies Commercial Banks Self help groups What is partners role? The project’s most important partners have been self help groups, the government departments, the local political representatives, the local banks and the citizen groups. The women self help groups have shown the way and have come forward to take up the responsibility of running the kiosks. The government departments are the major partner in this project primarily because most of the services rendered by these centres are of the G2C type. The local political representatives have also played a major role in agreeing to this changed relationship of power moving from their hands directly into the citizen hands. The local banks have come forward and financed these units. Contact Information Dr Jyoti Jaju jjaju2002@yahoo.com c/o Collector's Bungalow, 534006, Eluru, West Godavari District (AP), +91-8812-231050 << back Disclaimer: No stories on this website shall be reproduced or stored in any other retrieval system without the written permission of the infoDev/IICD. 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