@ Digital Summit: Governments Kiosk Project; Does An Indian Farmer Need Facebook?
By the end of this month, every state in India would have selected the private sector operator for delivering these services via the Common Services Centres Scheme (CSCs), some details of which were given by Aruna Sundararajan, CEO of the project. The project has a three pillar architecture with state data centres, which are coming up in every state in the country, connected to state Wide Area Networks. Around 100,000 kiosks will be rolled out during 2008-09, with large scale rollouts in the coming few months: the rollout should be completed by march next year. Each CSC will cater to a cluster of 6 villages. BSNL has plans to provide broadband to 30,000 such places by June this year - and the deployment already in progress…though there’s a roadblock with spectrum allocation. The CSCs initiative is on a public-private-partnership, with the government is doing the viability gap funding. Large companies like Reliance, Wipro, ICICI Infratrech have won the bids for deployment of infrastructure. CSCs partners include the Central govt, 28 state governments, 240,00 village panchayats, 50 service centre agencies, over 500 serivce providers, 400 community service organizations, technology prividers, agriculture universities as content providers.
During the Q&A, Harish Bahl, CEO of Smile Interactive said that not many people are addressing the content situation: how many people are creating applications for Rural India? Does an Indian farmer need a Facebook? Should everything be in English? Things also need to be culturally sensitive - the way a Punjabi audience uses a matrimony site differs from how a Gujarati audience does. Access, Sundararajan agreed, is at the heart of this debate, but the real problem is that there’s a very very thin layer of services available. Murugavel Janajiraman, CEO of the Bharatmatrimony group, however, pointed out that one first needs to target the low hanging fruit - those who know how to use computers, and can speak English. There are three issues here: access cost, device cost and content cost.
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Comments (4)
Jan 11, 2008 8:58 AM
Yes on the 3 issues and I recommend a fourth: niche differentiation cost….From a providers’ standpoint.
The Indian farmer doesn’t need Zucker-book, everything shouldn’t be in English, and (excellent example…) the Punjabi matrimony site needs to be differentiated from the Gujarati matrimony site. And of course, Bharat Matrimony also needs to exist for the cultural diversity we seek to foster! ;)
So question is: what’s the cost of niche differentiation? Not much….beyond not being able to target the masses.
Real stimulation for these best laid plans(CSC) won’t come from picking out the low hanging fruits(because that’s too awfully convenient and obvious to be the right answer), but by reaching out to those that don’t know how to use computers and cannot speak English.
Because if you solve their specific(niche) problems, and make their lives efficient, they -will- adopt the world you’re laying out for them. And learn how to use computers along the way.
Jan 12, 2008 1:54 AM
Most government sites fail to live up to their hype—and consequently fail to deliver the projected benefits. For instance:
1. Interface design is complete afterthought, as is poor navigation and consistency in site design. Even most of the central government ministry sites are pathetic—not to talk of state government sites.
2. Site performance is often miserable—many are hosted on inadequate servers or have poor quality data uplinks. It can take ages to retrieve even a single page—and often the sites time out. So, users will give up in sheer frustration.
3. Content is usually poor, incomplete and often out of date. Latest circulars, notifications and the the like are usually not provided. Neither is the entire list of office staff, officers and phone numbers. Often, it is easier to get the information from visiting the office than the concerned web site. Information needs to be correct, complete and current if it is to have any value to the public.
4. Does anyone answer the emails or the contact forms? Are they even checked and routed to the concerned person for a remedy or an answer?
Unless the e-governance mission aims at providing an “ATM-like” functionality to the masses—where you can actually do something which is economically useful without interacting with sundry officious minions and babus—the entire effort will be a waste.
Jan 12, 2008 6:11 PM
excellent points, critic.
i missed out on the government angle altogether(i suppose i subconsciously felt like it wasn’t even worth talking about).
but you’re absolutely right: UIs suck, performance is pathetic, content is archaic, and communication is NIL.
which pretty much sums up the big reason broadband penetration and adoption is so incredibly sluggish: the bureaucracy is stunting the democracy.
Mar 5, 2009 1:44 PM
Facebook is the next big wave for rural media