NEW DELHI: India is moving ahead on its agenda of putting knowledge centers (KC) in every village by the year 2007 on a mission mode, under Mission 2007, Every Village a Knowledge Centre initiative. The steering committee meeting of the National Alliance on Mission 2007, held in New Delhi, on February 1, noted positive developments and a receptive environment from the government and private quarters.
Prof. M S Swaminathan, Chairperson of the National Alliance, inaugurated the meeting. National Alliance is an informal forum of about 100 + multistakeholder organisations representing the government, private corporations and civil society. The meeting took stock of the progress made towards establishing knowledge centres in Indian villages by 2007 and decided on the future course of action on the proposed goal.
Union minister of state for planning, M V Rajasekharan, put focus on connecting rural areas of the country as 70 percent people are living in rural areas. Internet access and timely access to services is the key to the success of the project, said the minister. He also felt the requirement of concessional funds from banks to establish knowledge centres by local youths.
Sukanya Rath, Secretary General of the National Alliance, proposed the networking of the villages on the east cost of the Indian peninsula. This is also essential for the disaster preparedness strategy, she added.
The steering committee was happy to note that telecom regulator (TRAI) has announced broadband policy; the government was committed to setting up 100,000 knowledge centres and other progress made on the goal.
Senthil Kumaran of MSSRF presented the direct experience from tsunami-hit areas in Tamil Nadu. He demonstrated, how technology could help save the lives and livelihoods of people in the costal areas. He also emphasised the relevance of using HAM radio as an effective tool in emergency communication.
Mahesh Uppal, Director, Telecommunications and Computer Information Systems, proposed a plan to support establishment of the 100,000 knowledge centres. He pointed out that the government has committed INR100 crore annually for three years. These funds could be channelised by NABARD and the scheme could cover the capital expenses of the establishment. NABARD could support 10,000 centres in first year, he suggested.
Ashok Jhunjhunwala of Indian Institute of Technology Madras presented the choice of technology available. He recommended, that rural/niche service providers be allowed to build 2 Mbps rural backbone. Towards this, he further suggested that TRAI / DOT should reduce fiber leasing charges for such network by a factor of four. Also spectrum towers could be built in each taluk and be shared by such service providers on nominal lease. Also, spectrum charges for all technologies should be free or reduced to a maximum of two percent of the total revenue.
IT & C Secretary of the state of Andhra Pradesh presented the state governments plan to connect 25000 villages via optical cable at the cost of INR 395 crore. Which is much lesser than INR 1250 crore asked by the BSNL to lease its already present optical cables.
Dr. Basheerhamad Shadrach of OneWorld South Asia proposed a pressure group to initiate a dialogue with the BSNL so that they should ask the progressive rates for leasing out their cables, rather than asking the historical rates, considering that the cost of laying optical cables have come down drastically in last couple of years.
Ashok Khosla of Development Alternative, warned against the kiosk proliferation rate of 400 percent per annum. He proposed that we should be targeting for the 2008 to achieve the goals. He also proposed that the management of the kiosks should be coordinated by a social enterprise and there should be little public inputs except for that of connectivity.
Dr. R Chidambaram said that services have to be demand driven, and we need coherent synergy among the actors. We also need to use infrastructure developed by the private entities.
TRAI informed the meeting about the regulators effort in this direction. Tariffs have gone down and service providers are still making profit because of the increased number of users. Rural area is a huge opportunity. TRAI would further reduce the tariff of international bandwidth, domestic and lease lines. Said Pradip Baijal, Chairperson of the telecom regulator.
Vijayaditya of National Informatics Centre (NIC) emphasised on addressing the need of the local people. Proper marketing and financial systems needs to be developed, so that ICT supports livelihood of the local population, than only proposed kiosks could be sustainable.
Ravi Kant, IT secretary, West Bengal, drew attention to higher rural population density of the West Bengal that makes it viable for the kiosks operation on enterprising basis.
Dr. Swaminathan summarised the proceedings of the meeting by clarifying what is knowledge centre and what is information centre. The location of the KC should be in a public space because access could be a problem for some communities in private space he said.
On debates of numbers, he said that having 600,000 KC is not the idea. Idea is to integrate 600,000 villages, which could be achieved, by integrating radio and Internet. He was also concerned about the non-utilisation of the BSNL optical cables.
Namrata Bali of SEWA proposed to involve membership based organisation to map the resources in the community.
Sir Dorabji Tata Trust expressed the willingness to support the mission secretariat financially.
K S Sharma of Prasar Bharati informed that they have started Direct To Home (DTH) television and radio service and is reaching out to every village in India. The system has the potential to become interactive, but the government mandate is to not become interactive for the moment. He also asked for the support from the forum on this issue.
He also offered a radio transmitter to be used by non-profits to air social messages free of cost.
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