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India is leapfrogging eras and crises of poverty by embracing technology in a tight clinch
Bit by bit, byte by byte, India is digging her teeth big-time into the global technology pie. Piggybacking a bumper crop and explosive double-digit growth in services, the Indian economy grew 8.2 per cent in 2003-04 to close in on the heels of the fastest-growing economies in the world.
Industry grew at 7.3 per cent and agriculture registered a growth rate of 9.1 per cent. A good monsoon (playing truant now), and robust global economic trends promise to buoy the economy even further.
While symbols of the good life swamp middle-class India and cyber cities crop up like daffodils in the urban ghettos of India, rural India thankfully isn't being left behind. The world is witness to the miracles wrought by technology, and India knows only too well that she can leapfrog eras and crises of poverty by embracing technology in a tight clinch. And that's exactly what's happening now!
From Salem to Singapore to Silicon Valley, Indian technologists have set up base and earned global acclaim. "Information technology has transformed our international image from being a land of elephants and snake charmers to a land of competent engineers," says Azim Premji, head of Infotech giant Wipro, and one of India's, and the world's wealthiest men. Now, India is beginning to deploy its rich tech resources to improving life in the countryside. "In five years, it could transform the country," he asserts.
The incessant march of technology can be gauged by the number of active Internet subscribers. During 2003-04, the number of subscribers increased by 64 per cent to 23 lakh (2.3 million) from 14 lakh (1.4 million) in the previous fiscal, according to the Manufacturers Association for Information Technology (MAIT). The business segment contributed 44 per cent of the total active Internet entities, and households accounted for the remaining 56 per cent.
Aided substantially by increased consumption and a price-drop, personal computer sales touched 30 lakh units (3 million) in 2003-04, registering a growth of 32 per cent over the previous fiscal. Computer sales are expected to cross 38 lakh (3.8 million) units this fiscal.
The domestic computer hardware market, including PCs, grew 25 per cent to $5 billion [Rs23,000 crore (Rs230 billion)] in 2003-04. Computer hardware exports grew marginally to $1.25 billion from $1.1 billion in 2002-03. After the new budget and the sops offered, the IT industry expects further growth.
In the heartland of India, food, water, clothing, medicare and shelter still remain dreams. But the information revolution is exposing villagers to a world of previously inaccessible knowledge. With information and access there will be change and with change, India will shine in the darkest wastelands.
Starting from the big cities, the technological invasion of rural India is well on its way. In Andhra Pradesh, fibre-optic cables now connect central government offices with district ones. The plan is to connect all villages, even those without roads, hospitals or schools. The Internet can now be used for registering land transactions, making driver licence applications and filing complaints against government officials.
In the neighbouring state of Karnataka, where software hub Bangalore is situated, 17 million land records — most of them decades old — have been put on the Internet to facilitate easy, corruption-free transfers.
Online transactions
"With a stroke of the pen, the village accountant can create or destroy land ownership," points out Rajiv Chawla, a bureaucrat who heads the project. "With help from computers, we are trying to shut him out." The state is also using computers to make information available on agricultural prices, pension plans, criminal laws and online transactions involving silk, an important local industry.
Several states are using Very Small Aperture Terminals, or VSATs, linked to satellites to reach vast numbers of people who live in areas where there are no telephones. And both the government and private ventures have set up Internet kiosks that offer a range of services.
"Traditional devices such as PCs might not be a solution. We need places where communities can access the Internet," says Clarence Chandran, the India-born chief operating officer of Nortel Networks, the Canadian telecommunications giant.
Illiterate farmers in Madhya Pradesh, who never even had access to telephones, are transforming their lives after being hooked up to the Internet. They can now bypass the middlemen who they claim often cheat them on purchases and sales. In Dhar, also in MP, poor villagers had to earlier travel long distances by bullock carts or bicycles to government granaries to determine crop prices. More trips were required just to find out when purchases were being made. Now, one click and they have all this information on the Internet.
Leveraging the net
Leveraging the net, villagers can get details of competitive prices in nearby districts to be able to sell at the highest rates, along with local news and weather reports and details of government programmes they never knew about before.
Fishermen, who still go to sea in primitive, poorly equipped boats, are guided to their catch in western and southern India by an Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) project. Satellites identify warmer sea temperatures around reserves of phytoplankton, the primary fish food. "The fishermen have increased their gains by three to four times," points out S. Krishnamurthy, spokesman for ISRO.
In Sikkim, awestruck women from yak-herding tribes are getting computer training at small centres in the mountains. Officials hope the training will help them get jobs and become independent within their families and community.
e-literate village
In Kerala, India's most literate state, village women work in small offices typing out government documents in English on computers for a price. Traditionally, the bastion of literacy in India, Kerala is also working towards setting up India's first citizen sponsored e-literate village in Malappuram.
In Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous state, poor village women step into video e-mail booths to send messages about domestic problems to their husbands working in faraway cities. The husbands receive the messages by paying a small sum of money in similar booths.
In Baramati, 270 kilometres east of Mumbai, India's commercial capital, technology has changed an unremarkable piece of land into a lush stretch of milk and honey. Its recently installed computerised and automated milk collection centres are helping India retain its new-found position as the world's largest milk producer.
Cutting-edge technology used in the collection, processing and sale of milk has triggered a 'white' revolution in the 150 dairy-farming villages around Baramati. The computerised and refrigerated milk collection centres, locally known as bulk coolers, have changed the way local farmers have lived for decades.
Baramati's technological gains are not limited to milk collection and processing alone. Computers now help maintain a database on the town's cattle. A complete history of e
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