Training Seen as Essential for India's Rural Connectivity Plans

A break-out session at the Mission 2007 training and curriculum development forum.

Following a renewed commitment on the part of the Indian government to build what will be the most extensive wireless network in the world, trainers from the many participating partner agencies in the initiative -- dubbed the National Alliance for Mission 2007 -- came together September 22-23, 2005 to develop a training plan and curriculum to support the undertaking.

Originally launched in New Delhi in July 2004, Mission 2007 aims to establish Internet based knowledge centers in each of India's 600,000 rural villages, thereby connecting the nearly 700 million people living here.

The National Alliance has become what is likely the largest multi-stakeholder partnership in the field of information and communication technology (ICT) development in the world. There are more than 150 members in the Alliance including Development Alternatives, OneWorld South Asia, NASSCOM Foundation, Self Employed Women's Association, the University of California, Berkeley; MIT, Cambridge and IDRC, Ottawa.

Training is now viewed as an important element in the overall plan and the National Alliance for Mission 2007 hopes to train hundreds of thousands of people in coming years to actually run the rural knowledge centers and kiosks. And in order to support this effort, Mission 2007 partners are undertaking a joint initiative aimed at increasing their capacity to deliver this training. In essence, they have started to formulate what is needed to "train the trainers."

The plan that emerged from the recent meetings includes the creation of curriculum that can be used to train new knowledge center operators, conducting regional "train the trainer" sessions to quickly spread training capacity, and the launch of an online community of practice that connects people who have attended the training sessions.

An initial concept brief developed in September is to be shared with Mission 2007 partners at their next major meeting October 14 in Delhi. Following this, organizers expect a full proposal and high level plan will be complete by early November.

The training initiative follows the second Convention of the National Alliance held last July in New Delhi. This was attended by many of the country's senior officials, including President of India, Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam; P. Chidambaram, the Finance Minister; Mani Shankar Iyer, Minister for Panchayati Raj; Dayanidhi Maran, Minister for Communication and Information Technology; and M. V. Rajasekharan, Minister of State for Planning.

Renewed Objectives
Recognizing that the first target of 600,000 connected villages by 2007 was perhaps over-optimistic, India's Minister for Communication and Information Technology, Dayanidhi Maran, announced that his ministry would work with Mission 2007 to roll out 100,000 village knowledge centers by 2007 -- one sixth of the overall commitment. "These village knowledge centers will provide the village folk with access to various services like education, information related to agriculture, registration of births and deaths, and communication facilities such as text, voice mail, fax, telephone, etc.," he said.

On July 12, India's Finance Minister, P. Chidambaram, also reaffirmed the government's intention to make every village a knowledge center. To accomplish this, wireless and Wi-Fi technology is being used to cover the last mile -- or in many cases, the last several miles -- separating rural villages from landline networks. With the cost of equipment falling quickly, wireless Internet is increasingly seen as a solution to close the technology gap between urban and rural areas in the developing world generally. And this is definitely the case in India.

President of India, Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, in addressing the Convention of the National Alliance in July emphasized, "Technology is the instrument for providing non-linear growth to our economy."

"Connectivity of village complexes will provide economic opportunities to all segments of people that are urgently needed to bridge the rural-urban divide, generate employment, and enhance rural prosperity," he said. "We need to innovate and increase connectivities to the villages, making clusters out of them while retaining their individualities."

"The village knowledge center is one of the essential components for realizing our goal of graduating into a knowledge society and thereby transforming the country into a developed nation before the year 2020," the President said. "It will achieve the delivery of the right knowledge, at the right place and at the right time to our rural population."

Additionally, he noted that there have now been many attempts already across India to bring information technology to rural areas as a means of providing sustainable and scaleable development. And in many cases, proponents of these efforts are passionately attached to the core idea and continue to pursue these efforts even when it does not make any economic sense, or when it is proven that they are not scaleable or sustainable. "What we need now is a serious and an impartial review to decide on the best practices for nation-wide deployment," he said.

President of India, Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, addressing the Convention of the National Alliance.




Fishing Villages Singled Out
In particular, bringing connectivity down to real-world practicality, the President singled out coastal fishing villages as one important target for the initiative. "All the fishing villages in the coastal area of the country should be linked to their district headquarters through broadband fiber and wireless connection," he said. "To accomplish this, fishermen will need to be provided with broadcasting facilities through satellite radios and a HAMSAT network. Mobile cell phones with GPS capabilities could also be provided to boats for emergency communication.

He foresees a time when the electronic connectivity through their village knowledge centers will also provide the local fishing population with local weather and sea state data from nearby meteorological and disaster management stations, thereby improving the safety and productivity in the fishing industry. KW